I just realized my reef is 44 years old this month.

[Paul B]

Beaslbob, I think I have 4 or 5 diatom filters in various stages of rust and disassembly. A few Silent Giants also along with some Dynaflo HOB filters.
I didn't have a tank in Viet Nam. I also didn't have under ware in Viet Nam so that wasn't an issue. Besides I flew a few times a week and they wouldn't let me carry it in the helicopter. I am also sure the constant rain would cause me to keep adding salt and the nearest electricity for the power heads was in a different country so the extension cord would have been uncannily long. I wouldn't have had a problem feeding the tank as we had plenty of 4' lizards, 7" scorpions, besides your normal size tigers, elephants and monkeys. Being I never saw a road, wall or roof in that country keeping the temperature steady would have been a problem as it was a little to hot for a tank. Water changes would have been easy and cheap as it rained for 8 months usually hard enough to float an Oldsmobile in a few minutes. I would imagine I could have kept the tank on those sand bags behind me here but we moved every few days and had to empty the bags, then blow up the place. Leveling the tank would be easy because everything was sand bags so you could make any kind of stand you wanted. As long as it was made out of sand bags. I also would have to keep my friend here away from the fish as he ate rats. He walked up to me one day out of the bush and we became friends. During the dry season our drinking water was dredged up from a muddy river and had iodine pills put into it to kill the worms, leaches and other cool wildlife living there so I wouldn't have had to dose iodine. Corals may have liked that.



Here is what that place looked like from a helicopter, so you can see setting up a tank there would have been a piece of cake. I just didn't have the skills then

 

[reefwiser]

Paul,my last Vortex motor when out!!!! Love the Vortex filter for keeping a tank clean. It sort sets us old timers apart from new hobbyist. I love to use it while tank cleaning to get out all the funk it the rock work noting beat's it. Going to have break down an buy something. They still show them for sell on Amazon.

 

[Paul B]

Out of all the broken ones I have I put together one that still works, kind of. I need it and use it quite often. I really want to build one from scratch with a better design because as I am sure you know, they are not built very well.
New hobbiests don't have a clue as to how that old stuff worked and how it made this reefing so much easier. Now it is all high tech which means high price and high problems. I think we need to get back to simple which I tried to emphasize in my book

 

[BigMike81]

Ya some of it is over my head. I just do a little research to see what is essential and stick to that.

 

[Paul B]

Most of it is over my head.

 

[reefwiser]

I have had so many things go over my head over the years I am Bald now. But I still stand up an try to learn [emoji3]
Was also thing about using a marine land 250 hang filter as they can be used with diatomaceous earth too.

 

[beaslbob]

is this still valid?
http://www.diatomfilter.com/

I understand there is a guy someplace that still rebuilds the silent giant air pumps.

my .02

 

[Paul B]

Those Diatoms are still sold. As for Silent Giants they are very simple to re build but you may have to build the air valves yourself as they are the only part that goes.

 

[beaslbob]

Most of it is over my head.

Perhaps you should lower your tank or raise your head.

 

[Homebrwr]

The new, or I should say, re modeled fixture worked out well. It added 25% more light and a staghorn coral that was croaking, stopped croaking and seems to be recovering slowly. I only had about 100 watts of LED lighting over a 6' tank which is way under lit. Now I have 136 watts of light which is still way under lit but it will stay like that until I see how that works out. I can always add another 36 watts on another strip but it seems fine so far. I probably can't keep certain corals but there are a lot of things I can't keep. like Claudia Schiffer so I will deal with it. More lighting is easy to add. I still have my old snow blower in my yard and I was hoping someone would steal it because I doubt I will have time to fix it which is why I bought a new one. <y bluestripe pipefish is still pregnant and will probably give birth tonight or tomorrow. The same with the ruby red who is also very pregnant. My female mandarin is slightly pregnant but the large male is not getting enough food so he lost some weight. He is very large and there are so many pod eaters and so many fish at the feeder that he is having a hard time getting enough. I have 7 fish that just eat pods so not enough to go around and it is hard to hatch enough brine shrimp. I may have to build a second feeder just for him. I just need time because it is almost boating season and it is also planting season. Not enough hours in the day and I get up at 5:30





Video

So what is the disk the Mandarines are feeding on in the video??.. Do tell..

 

[Paul B]

That's the feeder

 

[Paul B]

I took a video

 

[reefwiser]

Great Job.

 

[Paul B]

Thank you. I just noticed that all my important fish were hiding in that video. The mandarins, ruby reds, possum wrasse and marine betta must have been out to lunch

 

[Homebrwr]

Awesome.. Love the bottles..
Where can I get one of those feeders?

 

[Paul B]

Which one? This one

Or one of these?

 

[Homebrwr]

Ha The mandarine feeder.. Those are pretty cool as well..

 

[Paul B]

The mandarin feeder you have to build yourself. It is one of the things explained in my book. Everything I built is explained in my book which is the reason I wrote a book.

 

[Homebrwr]

well it seems you have some great ideas and experience in reefing. What is the name of said book and where could one purchase one?

 

[Paul B]

The name has not been finalized but I am working on it. I can't find a Supermodel to put on the cover either as I offer them $200.00 and they want another three zero's added to it so we are close to an agreement. The book is in the final editing phase and will be printed very soon.