It’s been a few months now since I built my multi-tank stand, and I’m happy to report that it’s still working wonderfully. Here are some recent photos of it in action:
I’m considering moving my 30 gallon green spot puffer tank to the left side and removing the cabinet doors entirely. Not sure if that would be tank overload or not, but it would probably be outlet overload. 
When looking through various websites to see what cool gadgets or new ideas might be available to try on my tanks, I ran across these on a website out of Hong Kong called Aquarium HK. I went back to find them to make this post only find that the site has been transitioned over to Hinterfeld.com, but these pics were still up of the moss hanger.
I wasn’t sold on them, but I did love the look of the moss hanging mid-air (really mid- water, I guess) in the first picture posted here. Once it had fully grown out and couldn’t be seen any more, it seemed to have potential. I had been looking for ways to take up some space in my taller tanks without having to redo hardscape or really push my plants to grow faster already. The idea of just being able to place a beautiful plant wherever I might like to fill lacking spaces really appealed to me.
Then I ran across these type of terrarium holders for mosses and special air plants like this one seen on an Etsy site here.
There seemed to be many of these globe type ornaments available, but many were rather expensive. I decided to make my own instead. I found clear plastic ornaments, like these from Craftoutlet.com
Then I used an Exacto knife to cut out a circular section that included the hanging part of the ornament, like indicated below.
Then I poked two holes in the edge of the newly cut out face, about a centimeter from the edge. I ran a piece of string (fishing line would have been better) through the first hole from the inside of the ornament, then through the second hold from the outside of the ornament. Then I gathered both ends together from the inside of the ornament. This way, when hanging, the strings would pull on the lip of the opening from the inside, naturally keeping the ornament’s opening angled upward. Without the strings this way, the ornaments tended to lose much of the substrate and plants inside!
Here is an example of one of these ornaments in a small growout tank I had going at various angles.
To be blunt, putting three pygmy gourami into a single ~3 gallon tank was really stupid of me. Despite warning online, I didn’t fully realized how territorial these little guys can get. I’d worked with “territorial” fish before that have warnings listed consistently in profiles about them, but they usually just chased away threats then returned to their claimed area. These pygmy gourami are different in how they interact than the other fish I had worked with before. In such a small tank, even with ample cover, the pygmy gourami chase each other down. They follow their target through the moss clumps, leaves, around driftwood; it didn’t matter how much cover there was because the aggressor was willing to follow the fleeing fish through any terrain.
Thus, after the first week, one of the three had begun to be singled out with obvious signs of stress and aggression. I let the chasing go on for a few days, in hopes that a pecking order could be sorted out between the three. Often this works with semi-agressive fish. Once I saw torn/chewed fins on one of the sparkling gourami, I ended my little test sparkling gourami tank. At first I moved the injured pygmy gourami, but soon after I also moved out the second one. The original king of the junk tank now remains.
Here’s some shots of the tank and the remaining purring gourami that stayed still for long enough to snap some shots.
One last behavior trait that I’d like to mention with the guys is that they really do make quite loud sounds! This is where the nickname “purring” gourami comes form, but I’d say its more of a loud click. I usually hear it when one of the two gourami has found the other, perhaps as a sort of warning or signal to the other. Sometimes the more dominant one would swim up next to the other and make the clicking noise before scooting away or inciting a small chase.
Let me know if you have any questions, suggestions, concerns, etc about this setup! And please never try to push the limits on stocking pygmy gourami. These guys really, truly, with no exceptions seem to need at least 10 gallons with lots of cover and hiding spots if you want to have two.
My World of Planted Freshwater Aquariums 