My tank just reached 50 years old.

[Paul B]

OK, but remember if you want to try my method there can be no quarantine, no medication and no dry food. Howling at the moon helps almost as much as the whiteworms you now have to raise.

Then you need to come up with witty answers for all the people that will tell you it is cruel to not quarantine. You can answer those people on the disease forum because thats where they will be spending a lot of their time.

 

[fishybizzness]

Don't forget the reverse flow undergravel filter!!!

 

[rppvt]

Thank you. I also feel is a milestone but to me it is also the last milestone.
Here is a stupid video of a milestone.


I think we all need to set milestones for most of the things we do. I always did in my job and my life (which rarely go as planned)

I feel I had milestones for my tank but at the time of each one, I didn't think of them as milestones.
Of course as pertaining to this hobby our first milestone was to get the tank, water fish etc.

It takes a while to figure what lights you want, how to build, get the money, win them on "Name That Tune" or buy them.
So that was everybody's first milestone.

The second milestone was to get them to live a few days or a week. That took a little time. Some people are still stuck on that milestone.

After we get them to live, our next milestone is to keep them healthy enough that they only die of old age like they are supposed to do and what I want for myself. I would like to live to at least 157.

That last milestone is where 95% of the members are still stuck. I myself was lucky because I passed that milestone probably between 1979-1983. That was because Steve Jobs and Bill Gates didn't perfect computers yet so we didn't have so much wrong information and we had to think about this stuff using our brains and common sense.

Our brain is that often unused blob in our heads that is normally used to control our thumbs so we can text a person of the opposite sex (sometimes the same sex) and try to mimic conversation that makes us "seem" intelligent without actually having to have words come out of our mouths as many of us speak in Klingon using "words" such as LOL, ROTFLMAO, DUH, ERRRR, OMG etc.

I discovered, mostly by accident, somewhat through SCUBA diving "alone" and not in a tourist resort with 57 other people that learned how to swim last Tuesday and discovered SCUBA diving that morning about 8:00 - 8:30 am after breakfast of pancakes with that fake Maple syrup instead of the real stuff.

I dove with fish in places I couldn't pronounce, laying on the bottom which was a DSB until I either ran out of air or remembered my wallet was still in my Speedo that I was wearing to impress the cute little French girl that I met that morning sitting next to the guy who just learned how to swim.

From that I learned a few things. French girls don't like me, and fish are getting along very well without us.

There are predators all around them but they don't swim around shaking in fear like we do if we see a Great White Shark smiling at us. ;Jawdrop

I also learned that the majority of fish do not eat flakes or pellets and very rarely eat anything freeze dried although a Great White Shark will eat an accountant no matter how dry he is.

Fish eat fresh seafood. Mostly whole seafood and they don't even spit out the bones like I do.

I also learned that fish in the sea do not "look" sick. They are all much better looking than the fish in tanks but not that French girl with the long hair and..........OK forget her.

That milestone in the early 80s I learned that as long as I "left the fish alone" and fed them the right stuff they lived forever or until they jumped out like many of my fish do. Unfortunately healthy fish in spawning mode jump very high.

When fish in tanks die, it is "always" our fault. Not the drunk who hit the power pole causing your power to go out (buy a generator) the owner of the LFS that told us that Achilles tangs stay smaller than an inch and can be fed goldfish pellets, (read a book) or the guy in the canoe in WacaWaca land in the South Pacific who was just trying to make a few cents so he could feed his pet iguana.

It is our fault. 100% all the time.
And if we fail to learn or don't want to know how to keep fish healthy, we will lose the fish. Probably all of them then get out of the hobby and work in Home Depot loading toilet bowls onto minivans.

You want to learn? Don't ask that guy eating pancakes or that French girl. Ask somebody who has never been on the disease forum. Not me because I am old, cranky, ornery, set in my ways and past my milestones. My milestone was 50 years and I achieved that so maybe now I will start to feed all my fish nothing but boiled gold fish flakes, install a DSB, quarantine everything in hydrogen peroxide for 75 days and soak my corals in tree stump remover like many people do. You can usually find those people in the disease forum with a heading of "HELP"

You had me at not the fake maple syrup...

 

[Willis19]

How do you summarize 50 years in the hobby in one word?

 

[Paul B]

Old

 

[reddogf5]

I also think, and I know it is very controversial that the act of quarantining and keeping fish in a tank with no fresh live bacteria or pathogens is the reason most tanks crash and the reason there are no old quarantined tanks. I feel that method causes disease, not the other way around. Again, just my opinion.
I think the "secret" is to keep fish like they are kept in the sea, fully immune from everything and it is very easy, much easier than quarantining.

This week I bought two new fish and this year I bought a few more because some jumped out. No problems. I also think most people just don't know or don't want to feed correctly and I cringe when I see what people feed their fish, then they wonder why they are on the disease forum.

Paul, two questions on your no-QT method - One, do you think your tank would survive having velvet introduced on a new fish, and two, do you ever add fish sight unseen, like mail order, or do you only obtain fish that you can inspect yourself first?

Also, congrats on keeping this tank thriving for so long!

 

[Bmw015]

Amazing!!!

 

[atoll]

Am sure Paul will agree with this and please the following is no disrespect to Paul in fact its quite the opposite.

Pauls tank is no amazing, he's not lucky or has some sort of marine fingers or practices some sort of sorcery.
What Paul does is quite simple. He's followed mother nature as much as is reasonably possible. You will have to decide what reasonable means in the context of a reef setup.
If you follow Paul and his methods you will know he's studied fish in their natural habitat and what they eat. He uses the same mud and makes or propagates his own food much of it either live or frozen. Mother nature does not provide dry foods so Paul doesn't just an example.

Do fish die of say white spot on the reef? Answer no they don't.
Do fish die of white spot in Paul's tank? Answer, no they don't.
Now I could go on but by now you will have got my drift.
You see Paul's set up isn't so technology more naturology. Follow mother nature as much as is reasonably possible and you can't go far wrong after all she's had millions of years to perfect her ways and yet people often think they can improve on them by QTing and the like. Paul says "no you can't" and I agree as my and that of a few others tanks can testify. The main differences (there are a few others) being ours aren't 50 years old.
Well done Paul, your tank is a credit to you my friend.

 

[Paul B]

Paul, two questions on your no-QT method - One, do you think your tank would survive having velvet introduced on a new fish, and two, do you ever add fish sight unseen, like mail order, or do you only obtain fish that you can inspect yourself first?

Also, congrats on keeping this tank thriving for so long!

Reddog. Thank you. I have answered this to many times to count. I will try to sum it up again. I have never actually saw a fish in an LFS and positively knowing it had velvet, put it in my tank, just like I have never taken a fish laying on the bottom of a tank with half it's face torn off or a fish with no eyes and put it in my tank. That would be silly. Those fish would probably die in my tank like they would in any tank but the rest of my fish would not be affected.
I may as well just tear up hundred dollar bills.

What many doubters can't understand is that I didn't just start this hobby last Tuesday or 2 years ago and just kept one tang, one wrasse and one copperband butterfly. That time frame could be considered "luck". Even having a tank free of disease for 5 years could conceivably be considered "luck"

Having a tank run disease free for fifty years could not be luck by any stretch of the imagination. If velvet is so deadly like people keep saying on these forums, my tank would have crashed every few weeks in the 80s and 90s.

I will buy fish from a tank with obvious ich in the tank as long as the fish is eating and not gasping at the surface.
If the fish is in such a tank and doesn't seem to have ich, it "may" have a stronger immunity. It definitely has some immunity and those are the fish I want.

As for have I ever bought fish unseen. Only twice. My present Copperband I ordered online at the beginning of the pandemic when I couldn't go into a LFS. He is fine.

That long nose butterfly I got in a filthy LFS and he has some internal sores. I don't know what it is but it is not a communicable disease. Fish get diseases in the sea but not ich or velvet. Those are caused by us as we destroy a fishes immunity. I imagine fish in the sea get velvet and I don't know if it kills fish there because in over fifty years of SCUBA diving, I never saw a fish in the sea with it. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist in the sea.

I also bought 3 shrimpfish without looking at them. When I put them in my tank I noticed one was covered in ich or velvet. It died in a day. The other two were fine as were the rest of my fish. I left the dead shrimpfish "and" parasites in there for the crabs and I posted about it on my thread.

You can see those shrimpfish here.



People keep linking that study 40 years ago by Burgess, Axelrod (and those other two guys, I forget their name)
I wrote to argue with them then as I thought it was silly. The lifespan of a parasite is of no consequence if the fish is immune to it. Just like I keep seeing that colorful picture of that Covid 19 virus and although interesting, I didn't need to know about it's life cycle as long as I know I could, and did get the shot that makes me immune to it.

I would much rather be immune to it than try to keep away from everyone in the world who is carrying it for the rest of my life. Next year we will probably all get a booster shot because we don't know how long immunity lasts and who cares as long as we know we can keep our immunity to it.
Seems simple to a simple guy like myself.

 

[reddogf5]

Reddog. Thank you. I have answered this to many times to count.

Thanks for answering one more time And I have read some of your other threads, but in fairness to me, the one I was reading is over 300 pages long.
Just trying to distill your success over this long time, thanks for sharing. It's a good thing you're on "old school" guy, if you were new age we'd just see you tube adds for your secrets - "Want a 50 year old reef tank? Just use this one weird trick..."

 

[PanchoG]

Congrats for your reef Paul, many people here including myself are learning from your experience. Please keep it up!

 

[Paul B]

but in fairness to me, the one I was reading is over 300 pages long.

I see you discovered I can be long winded.

if you were new age we'd just see you tube adds for your secrets - "Want a 50 year old reef tank? Just use this one weird trick..."

Remember at one time I was a New School guy because at that time, I think I was the only one with a salt tank so everything I did was new. Then Bill Gates came along and invented a computer which changed everything and probably was the start of disease forums.

Of course I tried all the New and improved methods and one at a time I dismissed them for my mostly original old school practices. I don't even have a controller or doser or know what GAC, Phosguard, Prizapro, Rowaphos or any number of things are. ;Bucktooth

 

[Hot2na]

I think Paul's natural , no QT method doesn't get much attention ...cause the people in this industry want you to keep killing fish and they are happy to supply us with plenty of drugs to do so..

 

[runcis]

I think Paul's natural , no QT method doesn't get much attention ...cause the people in this industry want you to keep killing fish and they are happy to supply us with plenty of drugs to do so..

sounds horrible, but its true... since its industry based on our greed

 

[atoll]

I think Paul's natural , no QT method doesn't get much attention ...cause the people in this industry want you to keep killing fish and they are happy to supply us with plenty of drugs to do so..

You only have to look at all the "essential" additives you just HAVE to add most of which you shouldn't need to at all to confirm that.

 

[atoll]

You only have to look at all the "essential" additives you just HAVE to add most of which you shouldn't need to at all to confirm that.

Go easy on the spirulina powder you don't need more than half a level teaspoon at a time.

 

[Hot2na]

You only have to look at all the "essential" additives you just HAVE to add most of which you shouldn't need to at all to confirm that.

I don't add nuthin' ...I have 4" pacific coral gravel on the bottom over a plenum......I just change a little NSW every few months... like the old prego spaghetti sauce commercial used to say - It's in there !

 

[Paul B]

I think Paul's natural , no QT method doesn't get much attention ...cause the people in this industry want you to keep killing fish and they are happy to supply us with plenty of drugs to do so..

This is true. I really don't know what so many people are spending so much money on. It boggles my mind as so many people keep saying this is such an expensive hobby. It could be, just like playing golf, especially if you want to play in Hawaii every week and you live in Ohio.

I can see you need to buy all the stuff, a tank, some lights, rocks etc. But after you do that, all you need is some electricity, food, some water and additives.

For decades I used "Instant Ocean" I don't know what it cost but I didn't change water every hour and a half like so many people do. I used to buy that salt and I think it was enough to make 50 gallons and maybe it was $25.00 or something like that.

In my 100 gallon tank I changed about 20 gallons every 3 or 4 months so that $25.00 of salt lasted me 5 or 6 months.
That is not even a half a tank of gas, a dinner for one in a cheap restaurant or a fake eyelash for a Supermodel for a year.

I used to make my own alk and calcium from driveway ice melter and baking soda. The stuff in the box you buy with the healthy looking orange spotted filefish on the box is made of driveway icemelter and baking soda.

I used to get driveway ice melter and draw a beautiful picture of a Moorish Idol on the box to make myself feel better that the stuff is basically free.

Now I buy the 2 part stuff because I am to lazy to get ice melter and I don't want to buy fifty lbs of the stuff but even that is cheap. I have a 2 gallon bucket of both calcium and alk that I mix with water and I don't remember what it cost but I have been using that same bucket for probably 3 years.

I use some LRS food which is expensive but I also feed clams that I can get in a bait shop for practically free or I can get them in a supermarket. I eat clams all the time so when I buy clams for clam chowder, or linguine and clams, I buy a few extra clams as they are like 20 cents each.
I raise white worms which are also basically free and they eat stale bread and maybe 50 cents worth of yogurt a year.

I also don't get dosers. I have to stand next to the tank anyway to feed them so while I am standing there waiting for the food to defrost and I am going "Doot Da Do, Doot Da Do" I fill a small container with calcium or alk and dump it in. Eventually like in a couple of weeks I test it and then put in a little more or less. Trust me, the corals don't care if the alk is 7, 8 or 9. They also don't care if the temperature is 76, 78, 79, 80, 81 etc.

It's the same with salinity. I once went to Germany on one of those riverboat cruises. My tank sitter let the water level drop 7". Of course all the corals above the water died, but the rest of the corals sitting in water with so much salt in it that the Lord would have no trouble turning me into a pillar of salt like he did to Lotts wife when she turned around to fix the strap on her Prada high heel shoe.

These forums make us feel like we need an abacus or the Hubble telescope to measure our parameters. We are not building space shuttles or those little things on the end of our shoelaces. (aglets)

Yes, we want our parameters close to some measurement but we don't have to go nuts.

Livestock is also cheap if you know how to keep it alive. If you need medications, quarantine and all that, it could be expensive and if you need that, you are doing it wrong.

I have this bottle of copper and formalin since the 70s and it is still almost full. I only keep it for nostalgia as it was made in Brooklyn like I was.



My fireclown is about $30.00 years old. He was probably $15.00 so he cost me 50 cents a year. Corals also. You buy them and corals are immortal like Thor. I also can't keep them forever but I can get at least 5 or 6 years out of them, some I have for much longer and most of them I have no idea how old they are. They grow and fill the tank so why are we constantly buying new corals. What are we doing? Eating them?

If you keep losing fish, do the oceans a favor and get a new hobby. There are many interesting hobbies around, my other hobby is collecting those little packets in electronics that say "Do Not Eat" and think up recipe's with them.

 

[Hot2na]

The best copper formalin product from the late 70's was from poly bio marine...so potent and effective one capful in the tank and the fish would twitch a while and the parasites would fall right off...amazing stuff...but for health reasons the company stopped producing it...think it was called "aqua cure"....

 

[PanchoG]

Yes, this hobby can be expensive or not, in my case I do expend my money in equipment as I find it interesting and I like to expend my time figuring the things out and it does help with my anxiety management.