Tank birthday, 47+ years

[Paul B]

I can barely walk through my house as we emptied out all the closets and drawers and it is all in boxes. I left out two spoons, two forks and two dishes so we can still eat. My garage hardly fits the car because I did the same thing, most of my tools are in boxes around the garage as well as the King Size bed that I built and is in 4 pieces. We still don't have the closing date on the new place but should be this week, we hope. As soon as we hear, I will rent a truck and after we close I will take a lot of stuff out there. I ordered a 125 gallon tank and I built the stand so i will pick up the tank on my way out there and put it on Styrofoam on the trip.

When I get there and unload the truck I need to put a vinyl tile floor in my workshop at least under where the tank is going. Then I will put the tank in place, level it and go to collect water about 2 miles away. I can collect it in back of my house but there are a lot of steps there so i will drive to a more convenient beach where I can back up to the water. I can only put maybe 30 gallons at a time in my car, then drive back to my house and pump it in the tank. I want to make 3 trips and put at least 90 gallons in there. The rest will be rocks and water from my existing tank.

It will take a few days to heat it because I think it is about 50 degrees now. After it heats, I will come back here and take my rocks, fish and corals and hopefully they will fit in my car for the one and a half hour trip out there where i will quickly aquascape and throw in the livestock. I expect to lose some or maybe all my corals because the nitrates in that NSW are zero and mine are 160. The shock may give them a coronary.

I will try to bring my existing water cooled LED lights out there but they are very delicate and don't travel well. If they don't work, I won't have time to fix them so I will just glue gun some flashlights to the hermit crabs and they will have to deal with it.

We are bringing my friend, my wife's cousin and our cleaning girl out there to help put away stuff. (we hired a cleaning girl because my wife has MS and can't crawl around or get on a ladder to clean like she likes to do)
Then I will install the lights I built for the new place.

We are both going to miss our old house as we raised our Daughter here and have lived here for 39 years.


I also built almost everything in the house including this boulder outside which is about 4' wide and hollow.




We will miss the sunsets over the Bronx from our boat.


And the boat trips around Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. We can't get there easily from our new marina.




I probably won't miss this as it is a condo and they do that for you.


But we went to our new marina Saturday and met some new friends. They have a band there and a nice outdoor restaurant and bar next to the bay and the indoor and outdoor pool.
They give you free Kayaks and canoes and have a few free bar be cues a year along with tables on the water. We will get used to it. And it's not to far for our lifelong friends to come and stay with us. Our closest friends live next door.

This is from our new house. The sun just set on Connecticut.

 

[dbraun15]

Awesome! Happy Memorial Day Paul and thank you for your service! Good luck on the upcoming move .

 

[Dash]

Good luck on your move Paul - hope all goes smoothly. I am very sentimental about houses so I know how you feel.

 

[Victoria M]

yes, Paul I think you guys will get used to it. That kinda change is bitter sweet, though.

 

[Chasmodes]

Great pictures, and a nice one of where you'll enjoy sunsets!

I will try to bring my existing water cooled LED lights out there but they are very delicate and don't travel well. If they don't work, I won't have time to fix them so I will just glue gun some flashlights to the hermit crabs and they will have to deal with it.

This cracked me up!

 

[Paul B]

Thanks Guys.
Getting back to fish tanks I went to my LFS on Sunday because I needed food. Besides clams and worms I use LRS food but I don't like the stuff for spawning because the particles are to small and I can't use the vegetarian food because I have no algae eaters and I can't use Chunky because the pieces are to big. They are out of the stuff I use, I think it is Reef Frenzy. So they gave me this stuff that they thought would work. It is supposed to be Krill but it is compressed into little sticks.

My fish hate it and spit it out in my direction while giving me the evil eye. Nothing eats it except for maybe the crabs and they will eat "Play Doh."
I have to go out and get more clams now because I have nothing else to feed them and Jenny Craig doesn't deliver here.
I really need the stuff especially for when I move because it is a ride to get live clams in my new house so I need something easy for a few weeks.

 

[Dash]

My fish are spoiled too. In the beginning I fed a Hikari frozen seafood mix & they were fine with it. Then I thought I would try making my own fish food as seafood is plentiful here, and save myself some money, and they went crazy for it. So I tried to give them the rest of the store-bought stuff to finish off, and the puffers spit out! They kept swarming around until they got the homemade food.

I just made a fresh batch recently: scallops, mussels, clams, squid, prawns. Hand-chopped so it doesn’t get all smushed, and seasoned with selcon & vitamins. All the fish are happy

 

[Paul B]

That's what I had for dinner last night.

 

[Brew12]

That's what I had for dinner last night.

Good, gotta build up strength for the stressful move ahead!

 

[Dash]

I hope you ate the guts because someone told me that’s the most important part.

 

[Paul B]

It is, that's why I don't get sick and my Mother didn't have to quarantine me.

 

[siggy]

I will need to get a GPS card for the Peconic bay as mine doesn't work there

Plumb Island around there? I hear that's a great picnic destination. Great place to get out of the wind and Anchor. Nice Sea Ray, EC or DA

 

[Paul B]

Yes Plum Island isn't far. That's where they did experiments for Anthrax and other condiments.

 

[Paul B]

I am really going to hate moving this tank. The corals are reaching for the ceiling, (or they are trying to get out)
Everything really looks great and I can't understand it with my parameters. I am even afraid to have them tested. I know the real seawater I am going to use is going to kill these things. It's a shame and I think I will bring most of my scurvy water to put in my new tank and gradually change it to clean sea water. I need to go and collect some soon because when I am taking stuff out of this tank to put in buckets, I have to add more water to the tank for the fish.
The fish are also doing very well and you can tell healthy fish by the colorful shimmer you see on their fins. Fish in stores or new fish don't exhibit that kind of coloring and sometimes it is hard to see but all fish in the sea have it. It may take some experience to notice it but it is there and you can't see it much in pictures. But the clear parts of many types of fish get it. I haven't had a fish jump out in probably a year and of course nothing would dare to die.
I say one of my porcelain crabs just now and even he is very colorful and he doubled in size. I didn't even know they got this big. I think I have 3 of them in there someplace. The Duncans really love live worms I think because they squirm around when they hit the tentacles and it drives the Duncans nuts. An hour after feeding they seem huge.
I still use my baby brine shrimp feeder every day and my mandarin is still smiling. Those shrimp also feed my anthiuses and gorgonians.

I just gave my white worms a bath because I have so many that they started to stink. I added more dirt because there seemed to be nothing but worms there are so many of them. Even the baby worms are so thick they look like jelly. They also stay alive in salt water almost 5 days.

 

[Victoria M]

Paul, I want to start a white worm colony next year after I get enough fish to feed. My poor husband is like good lord now what do you want to do? Breed worms?

 

[Paul B]

LOL. My wife never saw my worm culture. Thats how I got to stay married for 44 years.

 

[Victoria M]

LOL. My wife never saw my worm culture. Thats how I got to stay married for 44 years.

That is funny. It does not work like that for me though. I hafta ask him to help me with the heavy lifting and turning hard stuff like vise grips. And then he notices stuff in my fish room like a new tank. He used to say crack would be cheaper.

 

[Paul B]

Yeah I know. My wife takes medical Marijuana for her MS and it is legal here in NY. You can't get high on it so I don't know why they put you through so much nonsence and deliver it in practically a tank. It's like $400.00 an ounce and it's oil. You take like a drop. If you drank the whole ounce you may go to sleep but that's it. You can't smoke it. A joint is so much cheaper if you wanted to get high and that would work. This stuff doesn't really do anything and I don't know what the big deal is.

 

[Paul B]

Today I went out to my new house even though I can't get in yet but I wanted to collect some water for when I move because I am going to bring to the new house my existing water so I needed a lot of new water so when I remove rock and corals I will have water to put back in the tank. I will probably change my water first with this new water and keep the old water to put back in my tank while I make the move.
My new collection device works great but the place where I collected was full of algae so my water was full of tiny pieces of chopped up seaweed. I needed to clean that out because as soon as the water warms, that stuff will die and cloud the water. The only problem was I already packed my diatom filters and powder.
I tried straining the water through some material but it was still green and scurvy looking so I had to dig through my packed boxes and I found some hoses. Not the right hoses but hoses none the less. Then I found some diatom powder, not enough but some. I looked and looked until I found a XL Diatom filter that I know leaks like a sieve and fills with air, but that was the best I could do. I got the hoses to fit and dumped in the powder and got the thing semi working. It will work long enough to filter the 35 gallons of water I collected. When it is finished I will try to pack this stuff back up. I can hardly move in my house with all the closets, drawers and cabinets emptied and in boxes.

I backed my car up to my workshop window and pumped the water to my workshop with my new water collecting device.

 

[Paul B]

That big blue container has a float switch near the top. When I make ASW I connect that to my reservoir bucket near my ceiling and when it gets full, the float makes it stop so I don't flood the house. It has been working for years but in my new house I plan to use almost nothing but NSW unless it is winter and it gets to rough to collect. The water I collected yesterday was ice cold, after it warms up I will change water in my tank and take that used water to put back in my tank when I remove the rocks. Yes I know I said that in my last post which means I am bored and waiting for my wife to get up so we can go to breakfast.
I don't want to wake her because she gets tired during the day. Yesterday she dropped a tray of fish she was broiling in the oven. It splashed burning oil on her face and she had 4 or 5 burns that turned red and will probably peel. One is right on the end of her nose. It was painful. Because of the MS she drops a lot of things because she doesn't have a lot of feelings in her fingers.