I do not give saltwater aquarium advice

Paul B · Jun 8, 2013

Post count is not everything.

Do people really look at post counts? I just looked at mine for the first time and didn't even realize that post counts were listed. Like who cares? It just means you spend to much time writing on fish forums. Most of the posts are something like: "Ug I don't understand" or "Really?" or "OMG I screwed up". That makes your post count go up. On some forums I have many thousands of post counts as I just looked so I could write this with a slight bit of truth to it.

You were attacked by a bird....underwater?

Yes, and a few times I was attacked by a fish above water. I know fish, I eat fish, I grew up with fish and I slept with fish. I even dated a girl in Colorado who looked like a flounder (but she had the figure of a mermaid) I was probably drawn to her because I like that fishy look. We broke up when she got ich. Anyway the purpose of this thread was not to stop people from asking questions. Ask away (on another thread) I only try to answer questions if I feel I know about the subject or I feel my answer won't sound ridiculous because I know my methods are not exactly mainstream. That is due to the internet as now everyone does things the same way. I had it easier when I started because there was no information, books, magazines, "experts" forums, computers, color TV, Paris Hilton, IPods, Justin Beebers, Toyota 4 Runners, or anything else except wood. When something died, I did something different and learned the right way to do it. Yes I killed a lot of fish but there was no one else in the hobby so the amount of fish I killed was not that great. Besides I eat fish almost every day.You may be wondering why I am ranting here without anything obvious to say. My fish tank lights didn't come on yet so I don't have anything else to do right now. Anyway, I bored you enough and will go away for a while. Have a great day :amen:

oceanparadise1 · Jun 9, 2013

You can't even see post count when your on the phone app ( which is all I use now lol)

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tmg1286 · Jun 9, 2013

I love this thread

Tommy Gee

Rikerbear · Jun 9, 2013

ritter6788 said:
So what fish do y'all recommend for my 14 gallon bow front?

A school of powder blue tangs!

Paul B · Jun 9, 2013

So what fish do y'all recommend for my 14 gallon bow front?

Manta rays, but small ones.

JPUA · Jun 9, 2013

I want to breed mermaids. Would a sump be necessary?

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Mike J. · Jun 9, 2013

Depends, what are you breeding the mermaids with? You might need a waterbed.

JPUA said:
I want to breed mermaids. Would a sump be necessary?

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Paul B · Jun 10, 2013

Yes, mermaids need a water bed and mermen like Brad Pittmermen. I guess, I wouldn't know about such things.

Paul B · Jun 11, 2013

I've never changed one drop of water as fish and corals "recycle" the nutrients, gosh if I tell one more person that....

I love these posts. Especially when someone will say something like, my parameters are perfect, my fish are eating and happy, corals are very colorful and the tank is packed with them. I never had any problems including ich, I don't siphon, I don't dose and never, I mean never, not once changed water.
I started the tank last tuesday.
Don't laugh, OK laugh, but there are so many posts like that. "I have not changed water in 4 months" I never change water for at least 3 months, that means nothing. I change some water 5 or 6 times a year so that comes out to changing all my water once a year.
I don't like to mention it but new tanks with all new water look lousy, do they not? I wonder why?
For some reason many people (no one on here) think that changing water will cure and prevent everything. No, it won't. If you feed your fish flakes every day, you could change water every 15 minutes and it is not going to give you healthy fish. It may annoy them but thats about it. Speaking of annoying fish, I have a tiny pond in front of my house with about 5 gallons of water in it. There is a goldfish in there and a big copper bird standing in it that opens his mouth every 15 seconds or so and spits water into the pond. My Daughter says that poor goldfish has PTSD from all the splashing. I guess he does, maybe the copper from the fountain cures him, I have no idea. :horn:

NanaReefer · Jun 11, 2013

Thanks to *Tanked* I was able to put my ole coffee pot to good use

My Target Mandarin is fat and happy

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Bartmmackey · Jun 20, 2013

Paul, how are the snow, birds and the gold chain? I have a silly 75 gal with fish and corals....what should I do?

solar · Jun 21, 2013

Love this thread!
Thyats all move along now nothing to see here!

Paul B · Jun 21, 2013

I started a thread about this on this forum, but I will also puit it here, just because I can.
I don't know everything and I don't want to. For me it is the challenge of the unknown that excites me and the more knowledge I get, the less challenge there is. If we knew how to definately cure ich with say a pill or eliminate hair algae in an hour how boreing would this hobby be.

The same thing happened just before fish keeping began in the 1800s. Women in England would collect ferns. And eventually their fern collections grew to include all of the ferns in Europe and there was nothing left to collect. They had all the knowledge there was to know about ferns, how to keep them, how to identify them etc. There was drawings of all the various varieties and their hobby stagnated as the thrill was gone. Then they started walking around in the shallow tide pools and started to collect marine sea creatures. That is how this hobby started.

But when we know how to cure everything, keep everything and raise everything there will not be any reason to get excited if your bangai cardinal spawns because it will be a normal, almost daily occurance.

When they build powerheads, lights, and skimmers to last forever it will be very boring, for me anyway as I love to experiment with new things.

I am sure that any time now there will be no need to dose as they will most likely make ASW with time release nutrients as they do with pills. Nitrates will most likely be eliminmated with some device like a catylic converter that removes piollutants from car exhausts.

So I think that if we feel we have a problem with something in our tank, we should view that is an exciting, learning experience and not a harbinger of doom as most people view it.

I personally like it when something goes wrong and I can find a way to fix it and discover ways to stop it from happening. I don't just want to view my perfect tank forever just the way it is with no changes and all the same creatures living forever. In my living room there is an 8' painting of an undersea scene. I may as well just stare at that.

Liquid360 · Jun 21, 2013

I grew up with my fathers 500g reef in the early 80's, pre-Internet. He's a chemical engineer. Now that I'm a reefer I've got a profound appreciation what he accomplished. He built a skimmer like device before there were skimmers. I can't imagine participating in this hobby without the benefit of the net and groups like this, but I certainly have a profound respect!

Paul B said:
I started a thread about this on this forum, but I will also puit it here, just because I can.
I don't know everything and I don't want to. For me it is the challenge of the unknown that excites me and the more knowledge I get, the less challenge there is. If we knew how to definately cure ich with say a pill or eliminate hair algae in an hour how boreing would this hobby be.

The same thing happened just before fish keeping began in the 1800s. Women in England would collect ferns. And eventually their fern collections grew to include all of the ferns in Europe and there was nothing left to collect. They had all the knowledge there was to know about ferns, how to keep them, how to identify them etc. There was drawings of all the various varieties and their hobby stagnated as the thrill was gone. Then they started walking around in the shallow tide pools and started to collect marine sea creatures. That is how this hobby started.

But when we know how to cure everything, keep everything and raise everything there will not be any reason to get excited if your bangai cardinal spawns because it will be a normal, almost daily occurance.

When they build powerheads, lights, and skimmers to last forever it will be very boring, for me anyway as I love to experiment with new things.

I am sure that any time now there will be no need to dose as they will most likely make ASW with time release nutrients as they do with pills. Nitrates will most likely be eliminmated with some device like a catylic converter that removes piollutants from car exhausts.

So I think that if we feel we have a problem with something in our tank, we should view that is an exciting, learning experience and not a harbinger of doom as most people view it.

I personally like it when something goes wrong and I can find a way to fix it and discover ways to stop it from happening. I don't just want to view my perfect tank forever just the way it is with no changes and all the same creatures living forever. In my living room there is an 8' painting of an undersea scene. I may as well just stare at that.

Tabasco1 · Jun 21, 2013

I'll just say it. This thread is awesome. This hobby started because of bored women? I love it! I will say that if ha could be cured in an hour I would not be sad.

Also... the points made in the first post were spot on and very eloquent. I vote sticky.

BTW... have you seen my post count?

beaslbob · Jun 21, 2013

I never changes water in my 55g and my parameters were always perfect. :xd:

Paul B · Jun 21, 2013

I am glad you like it and I don't know what my parameters are. Wait I will look behind me and find out.....OK almost everything looks fine but I see these two floats bobbing around in the tank which was the floats on top of my surface skimmer prototype. So now I can get excited because I know I designer it wrong and I can re think the thing. I love this stuff. OK I re built it and it just needed a little more weight in the right places so I got 2 minutes of excitement.

Mike J. · Jun 21, 2013

Well, if dealing with problems with my tank is excitement, I guess there's never a dull moment at my house.

Paul B · Jun 21, 2013

Mike I am going to try to put this into perspective as to why I started this post. Remember I am not a philosopher or the God of fish but I figured this would make for an interesting discussion.

A little over 100 years ago all the money in the world along with all the brightest minds couldn't make a machine to allow a human to fly a couple of feet off the ground. Then the Wright Brothers invented a plane and today for $29.00 you can but a remote controlled helicopter that will fly all over your house and there are millions of people flying all over the place. There is no more thrill trying to develop a way to fly. I could design a flying machine with just what I have laying around my workshop.
It is the same with our hobby. It is not that I don't want to know everything about it but the longer I stay in it, I know more and am less interested in certain aspects of it. For instance, people ask me all the time why I don't breed fish or why I don't raise the fish that are the result of the spawnings in my tank. It is simple, I have done it enough times that there is no more thrill. The first time I bred and raised blue devils, that was all I could think of, today I could raise them every week if I wanted to, but why would I. There are other more interesting I things could be doing like building rocks or designing a better chiller.
I also remember that ich used to be a really big problem for me and at the time there was no information so I spent a lot of time experimenting and losing fish. It was disheartening for me but at the same time, thrilling as I enjoy the experimenting. It's like when I do a crossword puzzle, I don't want to finish it or to have someone give me the answers. If I finish it, it was to easy and if someone gives me the answers, I would have no life as that would just be copying what someone told me.
My fish no longer get ich as I have found out after almost 60 years at this how to prevent it. So ich is no longer a concern and I don't get any thrill from it as it is a non issue. It is the same with hair algae and almost all maladies. I used to stay awake nights thinking of ways to remedy these "problems" but now I realize that was my most enjoyable years in the hobby. When I used to go to a store or wholesaler I would always see something new and couldn't wait to get it in my tank. Now I can't even think of an animal that I have not kept at least once so now when I go to a store, I know I will probably not see something new and will settle on another angel, tang or gobi that I have had many times before.
I still love the hobby and relish when I see something new that I can think about, like my pistal shrimps living together and hosting two different gobi's. If they spawn, that would be a first for my tank and I look forward to it.