Actually let them soak for a weekend, with many hot water change-outs.
Here it is with somebody hanging out minutes after i pulled my hands out of the water:
And, a pulled back view of it's location:
It sticks up a little farther than i had hoped, but I'm pleased overall.
This is the large one, still deciding where the small ones go.
It's a fifty-five gallon tank, and I'm thinking of changing to an Eheim Classic 2217 - from an emperor 400. (My wife said something a bout a birthday present

-and they are on sale at Dr's. Foster's and Smith.)
http://www.fosterandsmithaquatics.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=3578+3579+3603&pcatid=3603
There are eight loaches the biggest two being around six inches-the rest three to four inches, two pictus cats, an eleven maybe twelve inch pleco, and a rainbow shark.
As they are getting bigger i know they will be outgrowing this tank soon, what I'm wondering is how much overkill would that filter be in the meantime? It will be ideal size when i move them to something around a one hundred gallon tank, but that wont happen as soon as i would like, but when i do, it would be nice to have the filter good to go.