49 Year Old Tank

For 2 weeks we have been hearing this "wind" noise coming through the ducts in the house and I just assumed it was the wind going over the vent pipe on the roof because we are very near the sea and it is windy here.
Yesterday I was downstairs where the tank is with my friend and he was behind my tank and he said, I hear a motor noise.
My hearing isn't that good from Nam so I don't hear high pitched noises which is why I can't hear it when my amphipods scream when the mandarin eats them. But I could barely hear the motor noise.
I told him there are no motors there. Then he pointed to this tiny motor on my DIY Sodium Denitrifying thing I built which I completely forgot about as it is tucked in between the tank and the duct. The motor got air in it and wasn't pumping water, just making a slight noise which went through the ducts because it was up against it
He unplugged it, and the noise went away. Like Duh. :m15:
 
A few weeks ago my wife gives me this stuff you are supposed to spray in the shower to disinfect the walls and glass doors.

Yesterday I decided to use it. after I took a shower. It is strong stuff and you can't stay in there as it smells like nerve gas.

Anyway, after I used it I accidentally left it in the shower and by mistake put my liquid soap away. My liquid soap comes in a bottle that looks similar to that disinfectant stuff.
(I think you know where I am going with this)

So this morning I get into the shower and pick the stuff up and spray myself.
It is like a mixture of Clorox, Battery acid and riot gas. It wasn't pretty. :m24:
 
My tank is doing really well, even my wife came and said that and she didn't even know we had a fish tank.

I have life all over the place as well as some cyano which I think looks kind of nice. All the corals are trying to reach the ceiling and the fish can't smile any broader. I think my young watchmans are spawning, or watchman and watchgirl.
I want to be PC just in case there are any Snowflakes that mistakenly fell into this thread.

I think my experimental Sodium De-nitrifier is working, or at least it looks cool. My algae scrubber that is hanging over the tank is growing algae. But I changed the grow bulb to a red bulb which was a mistake. The stuff grows much better with the normal bulb.

I am all excited, I got a rare look at my Janss pipefish as he never comes out. He must have thought I was out of town.
I never expected this guy to live this long as they are considered difficult. He did bite my male bluestripe almost in half, but besides that he is a great and beautiful fish. If you could ever see him of course.



I also finished (almost) my fireplace. The entire structure is on wheels and I can move it away from the wall in case I want to hide back there. All I have left to do, if I decide to do it, is to add hydraulics to that stone below the hearth so it lifts up to store stuff. It's about 400lbs and almost 10' long so I am not sure I want to do it or not.

 
I had to bite the bullet and order a new culture of white worms. And I really hate biting bullets.

My old culture is just to old and the flies and Godzilla larvae over took the thing and are eating all the worm food.

If I had a small lizard I could easily keep him fed with these flies but I have no place for a lizard right now so I will just dump the entire culture in the dumpster so those flies can fight with the flies already in the dumpster. It will look like Star Wars in there. .


I wanted to order them before it got to cold because I doubt they ship them in an insulated container. As it is they may freeze before they get here anyway but they are not that expensive.


My old culture may be 10 years old so maybe the worms are Geezers and can't fight flies. Bunch of Sissies. :cool::p
 
I got up at 5:00 today and baked some really nice looking apple, nut muffins. I get bored in the morning waiting for the world to get up so I have to do something and my fish don't want to be bothered.
I will invite my neighbors (and best friends) over for breakfast because they are snow birds and will be heading back this week to "Sissy land" I mean the Florida Keys for the winter. :cool:

Soon we will be getting real Man weather with snow and all.

I would like to collect water at least once more before it freezes and this time of the year it is tough as the sea is angry and very rough. I take it from shore and will probably get soaked. But I am a Man so it doesn't matter :p I just have to go a few hundred yards from here to the sea.

My tank is doing really well but a lot of people wouldn't like it as it has some cyano, a little algae and the tips of some of the SPS bleached. That is fine and just the way it is in the sea. It is very natural, the corals fight each other and some win and some lose. My pistol shrimp makes a lot of noise because my purple psudo keeps trying to eat him and he will have none of that. He sounds like he could break the glass which is difficult for a 3/4" crustacean.

I don't like a pristine reef tank as that is not the way Mother Nature designed it. I also have quite a few flatworms which are just free life. I am sure a few of my fish are feasting on them because 3 of my fish are so fat, they can hardly swim and I rarely see them eat. The flatworms are sun bathers and contrary to popular opinion don't hurt anything. Of course there are some species of them that cover corals so we need to make sure what kind we have, if any. But the reefs all over the world house flatworms and a lot of fish eat them. I would never use Flatworm exit or any other chemical for sun bathing flatworms. If I had Godzilla Larvae, I may use something, maybe Alka Seltzer.

Of course I never dip any corals as I think that is just silly.

I didn't collect one amphipod this summer. Amphipod collecting in my new home isn't very productive and it is mostly sand here. You need rocks for amphipods so next year I may have to take a trip to the old neighborhood to do some collecting.

My muffins are ready,, Have a great day ;)
 
I got back form the surgeon just now and it seems he wants to tear out my new titanium knee and try it again.
There is a problem with the plastic part that the titanium rubs against and it is not making the tendons happy so they go into spasm.

I am scheduled for the surgery in February but I am not sure I am going to go ahead with it. It will be another year recuperation and I don't want to put my wife through that as she needs me to be able to walk so I can help her walk.

If the both of us can't walk, we will have to buy a drum, fife and flag and walk down the street like that. :cool:

It won't get any better but it may not get much worse so I am thinking of trying to see if I can hold out for a year, like a real Man would do. :p

I just gave it a freshwater dip and now I am soaking it in Prizapro .

The Dr. said to isolate it for 72 days and keep it far away from my other knee.



On another note, the doctor is near an LFS so I bought 3 fish which I just threw in my tank. Another possum wrasse, a bananafish and some other kind of wrasse that looks really cool.

The possum doesn't look to good but he didn't look to good in the store either. I think he will snap out of it and be fine as soon as he realizes where he is. :)
 
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I just cleaned my pumps and venturi valve in my skimmer. It's amazing the amount of stuff that grows on things in a salt tank. Everything is clogged with those hard tube worms, brittle stars and bristleworms, especially the intakes for the powerheads and I really hate those Korilia type pumps with the exposed grills, they are the worst and the hardest to clean. \

If I get ambitious I need to cut back the blue sponge because it wants to take over not only my tank, but my Man Cave.

I think the possum wrasse I added last week is fine but I am not sure because I have two of them and I rarely see one of them so I doubt I would ever see the both of them at the same time. There are a lot of hiding places in my tank so a lot of my fish I almost never see but those tend to be the fish I like the best.

I also have a huge decorator crab but I see him before the lights come on.

Those acropora "sticks" I added a few weeks ago which I thought croaked colored up nicely and are covering the epoxy that I stuck them on with.

I still haven't seen the last Queen Anthius I added a week ago, but as Queens, they do that and I am not concerned.

I took some video's
I wanted to get this purple guy. I think he is eating flatworms


 
These Fireclowns just won't give up. They just spawned again as they do every week, it looks like they only laid a dozen eggs this time. That large male is I think 28 years old.

I devised a thing to collect the eggs but I won't use it as I don't have the time to raise them anyway. Maybe after the Holidays I break it out if I can find the thing.
The eggs are the orange things to the left of his (or her) pectoral fin just below the coraline algae.
It's not exciting to spawn clownfish as they will spawn in last weeks damp newspaper.

 
It seems my Steam Punk pieces are worth more than I thought. I brought them to a gallery here on the North Fork and she wouldn't let me take them home. They are on display for more than I was expecting. :p
 
I am not certain on the age of my Copperband with the neurological problem because I am hardly certain of my age. She could be 8 or 18. :confused:(I could be 50 or 82)
I get fish, throw them in my tank and go out to dinner for some calamari and maybe try the Merlot.

Yesterday I bought an anthius. I already forgot what kind of anthius it is but I don't think I ever had one of these and I got him in a store which I don't like because I don't get a discount there and don't like the place. It is also filthy and the people working there seem like they would rather be working at Burger King running the French Fry machine. :p

My wife had a Dr. appointment near there and I go there to kill time because in her Doctors office the only magazines they have are Golf Digest and Pregnancy Today. Two books that I have always wanted to read but since they have those same two books for the three years we have been going there, I already read them.

The fish was 80 bucks and I probably could have gotten it in another place for $50.00 or less. But I was there and the fish kind of looked at me and caught my attention so I had to take him home.

(I will remember the name probably in August)
Of course I threw it in the tank and he is now behind the rocks but should be out today. (or last night he became bristle worm food)
Like usual I had the guy in the store feed him as I asked him to.

I asked what they feed him and he said flakes. I said, Do you feed your kids flakes? I want to see him eat something else so he threw in some frozen stuff which the fish ate.

It's a thick looking anthius with a reddish design on it's face sort of like an American Indian Mohican,
Or Native American Mohican, whatever is PC, I don't know. I myself am Italian, Sicilian actually but I was born in Brooklyn so I am American. I don't feel bad if you call me one of the many Italian slurs as I am not a snowflake, but you may wake up with a seahorse head in bed next to you. :eek:;Meh
 
I myself am Italian, Sicilian actually

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I just spent almost an hour cutting sponge out of my tank with a friend of mine. We removed over a pound of the stuff which will now go in my dumpster along with all the associated bristle worms that live under the stuff. I just couldn't clean the front glass any longer and it had to be removed.

It will grow back in a few weeks and need to be done again.
This is last nights bristleworm haul

 
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Man I really dont like bristle worms, not even sure why. They just give me the heeby jeebys.
 
Last night we came home from dinner and my Christmas lights were out. I didn't think much about it and figured the timer from Home Depot (China) croaked, melted, blew up, went on fire, was stolen etc.

I checked the timer and it seemed fine. Then I plugged the lights straight into the outlet and still nothing.

This is a newly built house that I didn't build but I noticed the outlet was a GFI (or as you people like to call them GFCIs. In the trade they are just GFIs)

Anyway, I pushed the button to re set it and it still didn't go on.
Now I have been a Master Electrician for fifty years so I know I can figure this out. But first I want something in the refrigerator.

I open the door and the refrigerator is dark. I assume it is dark when I shut the door but it isn't supposed to be dark now. It wasn't that cold either.

I went to High School and everything so I deduced that the outdoor outlet and refrigerator were on the same circuit. It's not really supposed to be, but it isn't illegal. Just stupid.

I go to the circuit breaker panel and see that one breaker is tripped. It is also a GFI breaker, which is also stupid. There is no reason to put a GFI breaker on a circuit with a GFI receptible.

I have been retired quite a while and it may be a new code. If it is, it is stupid and I will tell the guy who wrote that code as soon as I find him. A GFI receptible is very sensitive and if you put that on a circuit with a GFI breaker and then have it on the same circuit as your refrigerator "And" an outdoor outlet in the rain where you will plug in Christmas lights. You are at some time going to come home with no lights on and a dark, warm refrigerator.

Today I will remove that GFI receptible and GFI breaker. Carefully walk over to the dumpster, and throw them both in. Then I will replace both with normal devices.

I hate GFIs unless they are needed like for a fish tank, bathroom or near a sink.

So far I removed about 6 GFI breakers from my panel as I hate stupidity, even if it is a code.
So I guess I could call myself a "Code Breaker" :cool:
 
My tank is doing great and the few SPS that I thought would croak are growing "arms" all over the place.
My old copperband who I have not seen eat in a month is also fine and doesn't look like he lost any weight, kind of like me. :rolleyes:

I am also surprised my janss pipefish is still living as I never thought that fish would make it but I have him maybe 4 years or so. I never remember these things. But I do know that in 14 months my tank will be running for 50 years. o_O
I am kind of proud of that. I am also proud that I got to this age.

The only paired fish I have continuously spawn, thats fireclowns and watchman gobies. One of them is obviously a Watchgirl.

My Hippo tang is beautiful (because I never quarantined, medicated, dipped or sang to) She is a little fat but doesn't have a mark on her. I have also never fed her any greens, just clams, worms and LRS food like everything gets but I do have some algae growing although I have never seen her eat any of that. I wish she would.

I "think" I have two possum wrasses but they hide so good that I have never seen the two of them at the same time so I am not sure if I have one or two.

My new Starburst Anthius only comes out into the open if I shut the lights, don't play Rap music and put a bag over my face. If I get back to that LFS that has them I will get another one as they are kind of nice and not very common like those silly tangs that I find boring.

I also have a very large long spined urchin that I think I got as a tiny baby. I have no recollection of buying it but It must have been ten years ago. I think I got it in a place in Flushing and I have not been there in at least that long.

My female bluestripe pipefish is very well and I would like to get her a male but my much bigger Janss pipefish doesn't play well with male pipefish of any species and he killed my last one.
The Janss Pipefish is about 4 times larger than the bluestripes.

I also need a male for my female Mandarin. Her mate died probably of old age. I think they only live about 10 years but I lost his birth certificate so I don't know.

I really should write down when I get these fish.


For Christmas my Son N Law gave me a book about the Dawn of man and how we evolved over a few million years.
I actually love this kind of stuff especially the fact that we are the last of dozens of Hominids that were "almost" human.

I feel some people today still fit into that category but I won't go into that. :rolleyes:

I find it amazing when these anthropologists find a relic like I was just reading about. They found a "piece" of a tooth
and a tiny piece of bone fragment from a femur.

From that they named the "Guy" with a Latin name. He was from Africa so maybe his name was Latin like Homer or Moses as opposed to Jim, Bill, Eddie or Bubba

They surmised he walked upright, probably with a Manly swagger, wore stylish clothes, ate buffalo wings and hot dogs.
Preferred red wine, was a decent dancer. Didn't like Rap music, preferring the classics and his Mother was a Sagittarius.

Then they had an artist rendering of the guy and he looked like Ringo Starr.
I am amazed they can get all of this from a tooth and bone fragment.

My wife has been a lot of pain lately and tomorrow is going to get fitted for a leg brace which is supposed to help her walk better. I hope so but unfortunately it will do nothing for the pain and fatigue.

Maybe some of the money I gave the MS society will hasten a treatment in our lifetime.
 
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I found this on Facebook which I never go on but accidentally fell on there. I wrote this 2 or 3 years ago and don't even remember it.


This morning my wife and I were discussing how we lived when we were much younger and how the world has changed. My Dad and her Dad had retail stores. My dad had a fish market and just like her dad and everyone with a food market there was piles of saw dust on the floor. The cutting boards were wood, the knife handles were wood and the fish, and meat came in wooden crates as plastic was not available then. I am talking about the fifties.
I used to play in the back yard of our fish market and shoot flies with a rubber band. We also had live carp and eels in old bath tubs.

At the end of the week my Dad would sweep the floor and throw out all the old, fish scale infested sawdust and put down clean sawdust. Every night he would clean, using soap and bleach the knives and cutting boards.

Today, you are not allowed to use saw dust, wooden handled knives or cutting boards probably because of lawyers. I am sure someone, some where got sick and saw dust was blamed just like coffee can't be hot any more.
But it was the saw dust, cutting boards and wooden knife handles as well as numerous other things that enhanced our immune systems.

I was always an out doors kid and cut myself many times. I would rinse it off in a puddle or pond and go about my business never thinking about it.

I had an uncle that worked at the docks in NYC, one of the roughest places on Earth at that time. He got stabbed in the belly twice when 3 guys tried to mug him. (the muggers didn't fare very well) My Uncle wrapped the wounds in the same rag he cleaned eels with and lived to be about 90 never seeing a doctor or dentist in his life.

When my Mom would get a cold as a kid, her Mother would make her sleep in the horse stables thinking the smell of horse poop would cure her. (my Mom was born in lower Manhattan in 1910) My Mother lived to be 99 years old, she died of old age and was never sick and never even took an aspirin. How many people today could say that?

The point of this is that today how many kids do you know with allergies? How many kids are allergic to peanuts? How many kids are home from school with colds?
How many people in their 60s or 70s can you name with allergies?

Probably very few. As a kid no one in my school had any allergies and we all ate peanuts. I always got an attendance award because I was never out sick. I think in the 40 years I worked as a construction worker in Manhattan I was out maybe 3 or 4 times from being sick and never for having a cold, allergy or anything else except maybe a broken bone or disk problem.

That is IMO because I was brought up in a natural environment surrounded by bacteria and never having access to that silly sterilizing hand spray that people today feel they have to take baths in.
I still almost never get a cold, flu or any silly infection.

The little kids in My Grand Daughter's school almost all have some sort of allergy. My Grand Daughter is allergic to everything and half the kids in her school are allergic to something. Peanuts are outlawed in many restaurants and schools.

Kids today, (Like fish) get all sorts of things and in some homes it is an adventure waking up to see if the kids have some sort of infection.
I feel this is a big problem in our fish tanks and the biggest cause of all the posts on disease threads.
This is also why I go to a muddy bay and collect mud to throw in my tank. If I didn't live by the sea, I would throw regular dirt in there as I did when I started my tank.

I also feel we have to start thinking of bacteria as a good thing instead of a bad thing.
Just my thoughts of course and not meant to be taken as fact. Just an observation that is obvious to anyone who is a lot older than most fish people.
 
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