49 Year Old Tank

I found it:
Some thoughts on stressing out

Maybe it's me, I don't know. I sometimes sit in front of my tank for an hour and just marvel at the beauty. I look at the fish interacting with each other and even after a lifetime of doing it, it still facinates me. When I look real close and notice the tiny tentacles from the brittle stars or the bristle worms peering out from under a rock I am like a little kid. I try hard to see the copepods scampering over the edges of the glass where I can't clean and watch them running around bumping into each other. I wonder if they are interacting with each other, or just nearsighted. Do they pass by and wave? give a high five? or just say hello?
I don't worry about the little bit of hair algae, cyano, flatworms, bubble algae or slight tear on the tail of a fish. It's a hobby and if I did not see some of these things, I would get bored. If the corals seem to be thriving and the fish seem "happy" I never worry about any parameters. The fish will let me know if something is wrong.
I don't even have test kits. But if I see something out of the ordinary, I may buy one or have the water tested at an LFS. Let them buy the test kit.
I don't go crazy about the water temperature or salinity. It is "close" to what is is supposed to be. Close is close enough. That is also the reason I don't own a refractometer.
If I am away or out late, I don't worry that I can't feed them that day or two days. I know they will be fine, just a little mad at me.
I have no schedules as to water changes. When I have time and it seems like a couple of months go by, I change some water.
Just today my wife asked me if I did anything to the tank. I said no, why? She said because the corals all look so big and healthy. For some reason, today they are larger. Why? I have no idea but I know that tomorrow they will look small, maybe not. It all goes in cycles, I guess sometimes corals have good days and bad days, just like us.
When I read through some of these forums and see all the stress that some people have over this hobby I am amazed. It has never been a source of stress for me.
Maybe I am just older than most members. But I don't think I was ever stressed. Well, I was stressed but not from this hobby.
When I want to relax, I don't go on the forums. It is stressful, reading about all the stress.
Posts like "OMG" I see a spot on my tang" or "OMG hair algae on everything" or "Flatworms, where can I get flatworm exit", should I cook my rock?
"My temp went down two degrees".
Maybe it's me. But I am going to pour myself a nice glass of Merlot, put on some nice music. ( No, not Lady GaGa.)
and chill out while I wait for summer and boating season.
 
Once again Paul, well said, but I must say you crack me up sometimes.:lol:
I've been stressing less and less as the days go by that I now enjoy my tank more than ever, so much that I want to start up another...
The less my hands go in and fidget in the tank the happy the livestock seems.
 
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Paul B said:
Carl, my nitrates are at about 40 now. I don't stress about anything, especially a fish tank. It is a hobby and supposed to be fun, if not, why would you put yourself through that agrivation?
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:lol: You are so right @Paul B!
 
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My glass cardinal seems to be cured of his fungus or whatever it was that I got him with but my chalk bass still has a little PopEye but now the eye is back where it is supposed to be but there is a little air bubble in the covering of the eye. I could eliminate that in a few seconds but there is no chance of catching him and it too will go away by itself.
Everything is doing very well. The little shrimp gobi is still in his tunnel that is about 18" long. His companion shrimp keeps digging and clearing it out so I throw him a pellet occasionally. He may even have found a way to get under the UG filter where there are plenty of worms and amphipods so he is not as stupid as I thought.
I made a new bottle this week and I want to remove an antique milk bottle that I collected in a tide pool last summer. It is in water now getting ready to go in the tank, I needed it to hold a piece of hammar coral that I don't know where to put.
This is the most corals and fish this tank has ever had and now it is impossable to remove much rock to do my bi yearly stirring up of the gravel so I will have to do it the best I can through the coral branches. It is what it is.
I never wanted to have a tank with wall to wall corals like some of the beautiful tanks I see on here but I know that is what most people go for and that is the way corals grow in the sea. The Acropora's are growing faster than I thought they would and they are very delicate. If I never broke the original 2" frag it would now be about 15" across, but it is fragged all over the place and keeps growing towards the front glass. I will have to break some of it off soon and frag in the back.
I don't see anything spawning this week. It will take about another month before they spawn again. The cardinals are getting fat but they were much fatter before they spawned last week.
I find it interesting that this wierd red bubble algae was supposed to take over my tank last year and it is all but gone now. I kind of miss it but it did leave some nice red stuff on the rock.
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This picture of Greta has absolutely nothing to do with fish but I am a Grand Pa so you have to look at it as I do all the time. :lmao:

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I cleaned my baby brine feeder and installed a new mesh that the fish seem to enjoy. It also looks like my little female mandarin is getting ready to spawn again as she is gaining a little belly again even though she spawned a couple of weeks ago. This feeder takes care of that for me. If you look to the right you can see the gobi that lives with his shrimp. The gobi loves the feeder and tries to chase away the mandarins but he knows his limits and leaves the copperband, who monopolizes the feeder, alone.

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Yesterday I gave one of my urchins a little snack. There is no algae growing in my tank itself (it all grows in the algae trough) so he looked hungry. I grew some hair algae for him as a treat. He gulped it up an about an hour.
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This is how I collect tuxedo urchins
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So glad I found this thread. Truly inspirational. Any chance we can take a peak at you 5ft skimmer?
 
@Paul B, what is it? I am very intrigued, read your thread (third time in fact) and I can't figure out the contraption?:blush: Brine shrimp babies, rotiferers?
 
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It seems that a few more fish are spawning. Almost all my fish are spawning except the copperband (I wish) and some watchman gobies that don'r have a mate.
I have a school of 5 threadfin cardinals and I think at least one is a female. She grew a lot larger than the other four and she has eggs. There is another pair of cardinals but I don't know what they are called but it also looks like one of them has eggs. The fireclowns are still spawning as are the mandarins and I hope the clown gobies spawn but so far it doesn't look like anything is happening except they are dancing for each other. One of them has only been in the tank for a week so she (he) needs a little time to get settled. I never say clown gobies spawn so I will be excited if they do.
This is the first time since this tank was set up that so many fish are spawning or seem to be spawning and also the first time the nitrates have been so high, around 40.
It is also the first time that all the SPS, LPS, leathers and gorgonians are living together peacefully. Usually one type does great but the others wilt.
I really don't know what is going on but everything looks really good.
That doesn't surprise me but the fact that everything is getting along is amazing.

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The threadfins were young here.

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I just found a huge crab in a bottle in my tank, how cool is that? I am not sure if it is a tropical crab or something from the water around here in NY. It is in a green bottle so I can't see him to clearly but he may be even to big to get out of the bottle and I don't know what it is eating, but I have not lost any fish in a very long time so I am not worried about that and figure he is most likely eating bristle worms.
He is a regular crab and not a hermit crab. Looks more like a fiddler crab but his back is to me and I don't want to remove the bottle right now. I will shioot some food in there when I get time, maybe i can get a picture.
 
My two gobies and shrimp are getting along well and when the baby girl grows a little more, I hope to spawn them. The little one grew about 1/4 of it's size in a few weeks.

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The lights over my algae scrubber trough croaked so I re built the thing. Ok now this is what I am talking about, I went from 16 LEDs to 130 of them. I got it on 3 power supplies so we will see if it does anything to grow algae.
Today I got a pair of blue stripe pipefish. My last pair died after 3 years and that's about how long bluestripe pipefish live and they spawned continousely for two of those years. This pair hangs out together and I think they will spawn soon. I am hoping they find the baby brine feeder soon.
But I did have a problem of sorts. I removed the algae scrubber or trough for about 30 minutes to install the new lights over it. I don't remove the screen any more because it is fukll of corals, worms, amphipods and all sorts of things so I don't want to lose that stuff even though the design of the screen is so I can roll it up and remove it to clean. I will have to re think that soon. Anyway, when I put everything back together the skimmer went nuts, and still is. I am not sure if any thing chemically happened when I removed it for that short time but I don't think it was out of the water long enough to get any die off as I kept it wet with salt water. I think I may have an idea what happened, it just hit me. After I removed the trough, I cleaned the back top rim of the tank of salt creep. Much of that salt fell into the tank. I think that may be it. The long spined urchin climbed all the way up to the top of the water and his spines are sticking out of the water. He does that when he is mad at me. The skimmer is slowing down. all the corals look good and the new pipefish look like they need a room.
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It started yesterday like this, but I added more LEDs today
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This was just the reds
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I found a site that sold what was supposed to be super bright LEDs. But the red ones were not really that bright so I added a bunch of LEDs I had laying around.
There was always LEDs on this algae trough. I don't know how these will work yet and if they don't grow algae in a month I will build it with the same LEDs that I use for the main tank lighting.
 
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