Tank birthday, 47+ years

[chris85]

Are they warm white or cool white? I am not real big on the fuzzy sticks I just have a few softies, mushrooms, and local anemones and macro. I don't need much light, but I am running t5 and t12 vho in my garage and it gets kind of warm in here during the summer(august my tank runs 86). Plus I like to build things for no reason for a cheap as possible. With leds there are so many possibilities why not.

I think I saw some ulva(sea lettuce) in that pod bucket, have you ever had any luck with it growing? I collect it during winter , but I think I have to many herbivores it doesn't last long. I thought it was a temp. problem because I usually don't see any during the summer, but the last couple of years I have found some during the summer months so I am not sure. Anyway thanks paul!!

 

[Paul B]

I am not sure the white color because they were from an old fixture.
Ulva I can collect by the fifty gallon buckets and that's about as much as I pull off my anchor at that tide pool. My fish don't eat it and it doesn't last for more than a couple of weeks. There is a stringy algae that I can sometimes collect at low tide on the ocean beaches that grows well but they eat it. It looks like very green, thin grass about 8" long.
I can also collect loads of this Codium seaweed on the east end of Long Island. When I go out there (about 70 miles) I bring some home. The fish don't eat it and it lasts a few months.



It can look very natural in a reef.

 

[beaslbob]

My wife's stem cells seem to be working, but it is too early to tell. We should be able to tell in another 6 months and we are praying.
My acupuncture was uneventful as was the result. I feel no different but will go two or three more times just for fun.


...
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good to hear. Hoping with you also.

 

[Paul B]

Thank you. Most of me is working fantastically and Supermodels wave at me all the time. At least in my dreams but it doesn't matter to me.

 

[Rybren]

Happy belated 4th Paul. I was off at my cabin in the back country letting the black flies, mosquitoes, deer flies, gnats and who knows what else gnaw away at me for a week. My poor dog's belly was raw and she kept giving me an evil look.

How is Greta doing?

 

[Paul B]

Thanks Rybren. Same to you. Hope all is well and you are coping.
Today is Greta's fifth birthday. I can't believe that went by so fast. She is doing well even though her biopsy didn't come back as good as we wanted. She seems as happy and healthy as any 5 year old. Climbs trees, dances, does a very little Karate and anything else she wants. Of course she is still on steroids and will be for life and is still allergic to just about everything but she can deal with that especially now that she is older and knows what she can't eat. Thanks for asking.




This morning I came downstairs and looked at my tank and all of a sudden, the tank lights went out. I walked around the back of the tank in the closet, and the lights came back on. I stated looking at the fish and the lights went out. 15 seconds later, they came back on and I walked around the back, and they went off. Every 10 or 15 seconds the lights would go out.
It is easy to fix a problem if it stays a problem but much harder to fix something that keeps fixing itself.
But in this case, I figured it out easily. I touched the copper tubing that the LEDs are mounted on and it was hot. Then I touched the "radiator" I built that is supposed to cool the water running through the tube that ther LEDs are mounted on and it was cold. That means the water is not circulating and the LEDs were getting too hot.
I didn't even think the pump was needed but now I know it is.
The tiny pump was very hot so I knew it was getting power but it was not pumping. Luckily, I have a spare.
I drained the water out of the water cooled lighting system and installed the new pump. The old one does not come apart so I will just buy another spare. This one lasted a couple of years and they are not that expensive.

 

[Rybren]

Glad to hear that she is managing as well as she can be. Seeing little ones sick just breaks my heart.

 

[beaslbob]

pump almost looks like a windshield washer pump. LOL

 

[Paul B]

It's a pump for a solar heating system but it must be a tiny system for a dog house or something as it is tiny.

 

[biecacka]

Paul, good to see that the super models still love you and the family is doing ok and the tank is as well!
If you vet get tired of the supermodels, or have extra, send them my way....

Corey

 

[Paul B]

You can't have too many Supermodels. But once I was in Manhattan going to a job and a tour bus stopped in front of me. The most beautiful girl I have ever seen stood up on top. I waited there and watched her as she was all decked out in jewelry, clothes, hair etc. Then another one stood up, then another until there was 52 of them. They were the contestants for the Miss America contest there for a photo shoot. I called my boss and said I will be taking off the rest of the day. He came to join me.

 

[Paul B]

I know I keep saying my bangai cardinal is dying of old age but he is still with me. As a matter of fact, his cataracts cleared up and he is livelier than ever and he eats much more than he ever did. I think he is having a mid life, or end of life crisis as he looks like a teenager. I can't make heads or tails out of it as he didn't hardly eat anything for a couple of months and he is making up for it now. Very weird.
On another note one of my flasher wrasses jumped out. I wish it was my much to big blue wrasse. Soon I will catch that guy and give him away because he is about 7" and much to big for my tank. He also jumped out once and it was so quick that he jumped into my hands and I threw him back. I should have thrown him in a bucket but I didn't think fast enough. At my age thinking is much slower than it used to be. I am still waiting for the results of the last Presidential election.

 

[biecacka]

That must have been a glorious day Paul!!!


Corey

 

[Paul B]

One of the better ones.

 

[Paul B]

Yesterday I got an E mail, or a PM, I forget from a guy who said he owned a LFS right near me. It's on a street I travel all the time but never saw it. He just opened and he said he had 3 Janss pipefish. I have been looking for a pair of Janns pipefish for a couple of years but when my other favorite store gets them, another guy who is faster than me runs in and buys them.
But now I got them. They are very cool but in the back of my tank. I am sure they will come out soon as I keep throwing baby brine shrimp in there.
I like Janns pipefish because they are weird and you don't see them every day, or even every other day. I don't do tangs or angelfish because I find them boreing and just to common although I realize many people love those guys.
I go for weird, odd, unusual, rare, or obscure sort of like overweight Supermodels wearing heal less shoes eating ice cream. Something you rarely see

 

[Paul B]

I also posted this on my other thread "Why do so many people leave the hobby" and I am putting it here also because only two people read that thread and at least four read this one.

Now it is boating season so I have little time for my tank. Sometimes I get home after the tank lights go out so the fish go to sleep without dinner. They get over it. Sometimes I can't change water for 3, 4 or 5 months, I never got a bad text from my fish as they understand. My algae screen is so full it put up a sign that reads "Produce Stand". My fish know me and forgive me.
I think we think too much into this, especially with those stupid test kits where many people believe the numbers have to be exactly in the blue area of that little paper that comes with that $5.00 chart.
If the fish are smiling and the corals are living and opening up, forget those kits and go out for a nice Merlot, watch the sunset, have a chocolate covered strawberry. The fish are fine.
But too many times we go nuts and get all stressed. If you want to get stressed, tell your wife she looks fat in those shorts or after she spends $175.00 on a hair cut, tell her she looks like she combed her hair with an egg beater.
If you get stressed about anything in this hobby, sell everything and get out, maybe sell canoe's.
It's a hobby and everything about it is supposed to be either fun, interesting or at least make girls like you. (If you are a man of course)
My wife is a little mad at me right now because a few days ago our Daughter invited us to a dinner at a very expensive restaurant in Manhattan for a party.
I hate Manhattan and tell people all the time that if not for my Grand Kids you would have to give me at least $5,000.00 to go there for anything. If you offer me $4,999.00, I won't go. I worked there for 40 years and that's how I feel. If course if you offer me $5,000.05. Then I may go.
Anyway. My wife has always been GaGa over Tom Sellic.
We didn't go.
Guess who was sitting in the next seat that my wife was supposed to sit in? Yep. Tom Sellic.

The Janss pipefish are doing better than my wildest dreams. Well, maybe not my wildest dreams as they all involve Supermodels, but my other wild dreams that don't involve Supermodels. like less than one percent of my dreams. The ones that involve pipefish.
The pipefish are eating new born brine shrimp. My biggest concern is that I can't hatch enough shrimp for all my pod eaters as I have plenty.
I may have to build a larger shrimp hatchery. I have the 2 Janss pipefish. 2 bluestipe pipefish, 2 mandarins, another unknown pipefish, a clown gobi, 4 or 5 queen anthias, a lepard wrasse and 2 or 3 flasher wrasses.
I can't tell exactly how many fish I have because I have a lot of rockwork and behind my tank is in a closet where 3/4s of the tank I can't see and the thing is 6' long.
The queen anthias and flasher wrasses all look the same, sort of like Supermodels and I can't tell how many I have. I have a lousy memory as it is and don't remember when I got any of them except for the Janss pipefish because that was yesterday.

Tomorrow I will forget about them and in a few months, I will be looking at the tank and say: Wow, what cool looking pipefish, I wonder where they came from.
I always had a bad memory. When I met my starter wife almost 50 years ago, (the one I am still married to)
I used to call her on a "pay phone" (google it) and hope she wouldn't answer the phone right away so I had time to look at the little piece of paper in my wallet that had her name on it.

I still have my little black book from when I was 18. It has all the girls I met while I was in the Army and it spans many states and countries, even Australia. Of course they are all Grand Mothers now if they are even alive. I hope so because, to me, they were all Supermodels as I feel most women are. It's a state of mind and has a lot to do with character, personality and their love of fish.
I met a beautiful girl once working at a place in Colorado that had a waterfall. She was behind a counter. We talked for a while and I really liked her and asked her out. She kept changing the subject and I figured she just wanted to stick a sea urchin in my eye.

I met her again and she was limping, so I asked what was wrong. She told me she only had one leg as she lost the other one from cancer and she was embarrassed to tell me.
That made me like her even more but I was shipping out to Viet Nam in a day so I couldn't hang around. The Army frowns on you not going to a war because you met a girl you liked. I never heard of her again.
If she saw me now, she would probably laugh as I am not exactly the "Stud Muffin" I was then

 

[Paul B]

So I go to my boat today because for some reason, there is always water in the bilge and it drives me nuts. For 10 years I have been cramming myself in the bilge with a rag and a bottle of Lestoil so I can get the grease off of everything especially those white bilge pump hoses in between the engines. You can barely make out the red bilge pump all the way in the back. There is always grease in there because even a drop of oil in a bilge will coat everything if there is water in there.

Years ago I installed that bilge pump on a 24" piece of 1/4" plexiglass and secured the plexiglass in a place in the bilge where I can easily remove a screw and take out the bilge pump that is in a place that you can't get to.



Today I brought my camera there which has a 6' flexible hose in it so I can get the camera all the way under the engines to look for the leak.



So I removed all the water in the bilge and cleaned it nice and white. I also cleaned those corrugated hoses. I then did something else for 10 minutes and when I came back, there was water in the bilge.

I again sucked out the water with a vacuum and dried it nice and clean. I went and did something else and when I came back, there was water in the bilge.

OMG, I am going crazy, there should not be water going in there but it is a very tight spot and I can't see where the water is coming from.

It didn't help that it is 90 degrees and the sweat coming off of me is also filling the bilge.



I stick my feet up in the air and get my head all the way down there wondering how I am going to get out and I see it.

A little waterspout of water is coming into the boat from a tiny hole in the middle of the bilge, under where I have that plexiglass bracket that I made to hold the pump.



Then I figured it out. When they built the boat, the Jiboni that installed the bilge pump must have drilled the hole for the screw all the way through the hull into the sea. That must have been tough because the hull is probably 2" thick there.

He probably put in a screw he got in Home Depot because it was not stainless steel and it rotted out leaving this nice little hole where water comes in.

I got a real stainless steel screw and screwed it into the hole.

Problem solved and it only took me 10 years to find it.

I would never have found it if I didn't take the pump. bracket and hoses out to clean.

The water was probably filling the bilge about 2" deep and the bilge pump would come on pumping out most of the water until it filled again.

 

[chris85]

Man that thing is clean!! I would have loved to work on your boat.

 

[Paul B]

Thanks, that's why I keep it clean, I don't like standing in a greasy bilge.

 

[Paul B]

This thread had 2,278 posts, I am sure I posted 2,270 of them, but who are the rest of you guys. WHERE IS EVERYONE?
IS ANYONE OUT THERE?
No one has anything to say. Good morning, happy birthday, drop dead, nothing!
Am I the only one who still has a tank?
I am quite sure I am the only one still on this thread from when it started, whenever that was.
I know no one will post anything about ich because I think that is just silly, no one wants to talk about leaky bilges on boats, no one has any Janss pipefish, no one built an algae scraper or SteamPunk anything.

Yesterday I went to a party on a rooftop of one of the oldest hotels in Manhattan,
(Not my Idea) But they had a raw bar and if they have a raw bar, I am there. This was a birthday party for my Son N Laws Mother.
There was maybe 60 people there and I got to meet some artists and show off some pictures of my Steam Punk stuff. My Grand Kids were also there. I don't know what this thing costs but they charge you $57.00 "extra" per person to have raw oysters there.
An oyster costs about two bucks so I am not sure how they figure that ridiculous price and I don't think most people even eat raw oysters which is fine for me because that is one of my favorite foods.
My Daughter of course was there and she is actually shorter than me.
Here she is wearing 8" shoes. No, I am not kidding, it looked like she had cinder blacks taped to her feet. The soles were about 2" and the heels were 8".
Like Duh, how do you walk in such things?