Tank birthday, 47+ years

[Paul B]

In a few weeks I am going to have some surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff and torn bicep. This is the fourth time I tore this rotator cuff on my left arm and I think I had it done twice on my right arm.
(I also had maybe 5 knee surgeries) But these are Man surgeries and not Sissy surgeries so they don't bother me. I really enjoy the sleep too. (as well as the nurses)
I worked construction all my life and if you don't wear out your parts doing that, you didn't work hard enough.
I went to the surgeon today and told him to try to fix the thing this time so it stays fixed even if I pick up a heavy pint of beer. Maybe use some good toggle bolts that you don't get from Home Depot.
The recovery is three months after a month of physical therapy, which I kind of enjoy because the place I go has a couple of Supermodels working there.
Today I winterized my boat and put up the Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations around my house. My wife used to help me but she has MS so I do it myself. I put up a lot of decorations for all of the holidays. I just like my house looking good. Next week I will also winterize my sprinkler system because after this operation I won't be able to use my left arm so I want to get all of that stuff done you need two arms for.
Years ago I devised a method to winterize my boat using a shop vacuum. I disconnect the water hoses and suck out all the salt water using the vacuum. Then I installed a small bilge pump in a five gallon bucket and pump antifreeze through the engines and exhaust manifolds. I also use this to pump water through the air conditioner and water system for the sinks and showers.
I am also changing water in my reef because I only do that every 3 or 4 months anyway.
My neighbors will also have to remove the snow for me so It all works out well

 

[meir]

Where in long island do you get the pods

I got them from the sound deeper in off a dock

 

[Paul B]

Today is my 43rd wedding anniversary. I thought it was 44 but my wife corrected me. It doesn't seem like a day over 42 years. I am taking her out to one of the best restaurants in New York. We are also friends with the owner.

 

[edinphilly]

I have broken down and am now quarantining all new fish using the transfer method. I transfer from the LFS bag to a Tupperware bowl and then to my display. The length of time is long enough to quickly adjust the fish from LFS salinity to my reef's salinity. I would try putting a penny in the bowl i.e. you in the old days but I'm not familiar with money that is physical in nature and my iPhone won't fair well in water.

 

[DrewBrees713]

Hot dang it. How come i cant see some of the pics? Got red X's instead of pics. I wanna see this amazing tank and i wanna see them now

 

[Paul B]

Sounds like a plan except for the penny unless you have a pre 1965 copper penny. Pennies now are made from old VCR tape players and I Phone 3s.
I have been doing that transfer method for decades and so far no problems unless that Tupperware bowl was made in China. I don't use those.
I also don't use my cell phone to pay for anything because I don't know how to do that and I am sure if I tried, I would go to jail as that I Phone stuff doesn't work for my generation. I only use my phone to make phone calls which is why they call it a "phone" and not a camera, bank card, pinball machine or music maker. I have a record player for that.
I also never walk down the street staring at my phone. My wife looked at my phone yesterday and said "Do you now you have text messages on here from Christmas?" I said "which Christmas?".
If people want me they will call me and use their mouth to form words. My phone makes all sorts of noises but the only one I hear is the old fashioned telephone ring that came with the thing.
I got along perfectly fine for fifty years without a cell phone and if it exploded tomorrow like some of them seem to do, I really couldn't care less. Of course I do take pictures of my Grand Kids. But that's as much technology as I want the thing to do. Besides that, sometimes I use it to squash a bug.

 

[Paul B]

Hot dang it. How come i cant see some of the pics? Got red X's instead of pics. I wanna see this amazing tank and i wanna see them now

That's what my tank looks like, A big red X

 

[Paul B]

I really need to re-design my DIY venture valve in my DIY skimmer. The skimmer used to have 3 air pumps running it because it is about 4' tall and the venturi isn't strong enough to pull air down that far so the air pumps push water into the valve. This worked well for many years but I had to keep replacing air pumps because of the high pressure so I bought a much stronger air pump. You can fill up tires and air mattress with this thing or if you like, blow your brains out through your ears from across the street. Now I think it is putting out to much air and the bubbles aren't small enough. It's OK but I want very tiny bubbles.

My old pumps produced tiny bubbles but not enough of them so I either have to re-design the valve or get a larger water pump to push water through the venture valve. The pump running that now is probably 20 years old and I really don't want to touch it because you know what happens when you touch a 20 year old pump that has never been serviced.

I am in redesigning mode.

 

[Paul B]

I couldn't help myself. I had to take this pump off to clean it and of course one of the threaded studs that hold the impeller housing cracked.
I fixed it but while I had the thing off I found in my workshop a much larger pump that I got a few years ago when a LFS here went out of business and they gave it to me. Brand new.
Now I got it working and I have plenty of bubbles but I still want smaller bubbles so I think I am going to make two venture valves and parallel them into the skimmer.
Soon, if I keep designing this thing, I can turn this thing into a space shuttle.
Here is the old pump

 

[gettaReef]

Mag drive pumps seem to last forever. They have been very reliable for me. Please be sure to post your progress when building and installing the two new venture valves, with lots of pictures!

 

[Paul B]

That mag drive pump is so old I don't remember buying it. It may be 20 or more years old and I never did anything to it because it was under my tank in a closet in a very small space. I was a lot younger when I crawled under there to install it.

 

[Paul B]

It's a good thing I just looked at the pump to check for leaks. It is making to mush foam that it almost filled up my five gallon bucket that it goes into. Now that it is broken in I have to adjust it way down.
To make these modifications I turned off my ozone generator, of course that doesn't go back on either. You just can't touch these old things. Now I have to take that apart and see if I have any parts from old units to fix it with.

 

[Chasmodes]

Today is my 43rd wedding anniversary. I thought it was 44 but my wife corrected me. It doesn't seem like a day over 42 years. I am taking her out to one of the best restaurants in New York. We are also friends with the owner.

Happy belated anniversary. Hope you both had a great time!

 

[Paul B]

Thanks, we did have a great time.
I also fixed my ozone generator, but not on my anniversary.

 

[Chasmodes]

Paul, do you currently keep any "true" blennies? Have you kept any in the past, and if so, what types did you keep? Any favorites?

Also, have you tried keeping northern pipefish since you created your pod feeder? I know that they're tough to keep, but was wondering if your feeder might make a difference. I'm curious because I am working on a "native" tank build, and would not want to waste my time trying to keep them if it wouldn't work out (more so for the sake of the animal).

Thanks.

 

[Paul B]

You can see a northern pipefish in the center of this picture. I don't have a lot of luck keeping them and I collected them many times. They are very common and you can sometimes collect fifty of them with one pass of a 2 man net. They come from water that is teeming with life and they are huge eaters. I know people keep them with no problems but I always kept them in a small tank and they didn't last more than a couple of months so I don't take them any more. Maybe next year I will try a couple in my reef. I never used my baby brine feeder on them as they prefer adult brine shrimp.
As for bleenies, I am sure I have kept every type of bleenie there is. There are so many different kinds that I don't remember their names.

This is a native tank and you can keep loads of northern stuff like flounders (illegally) lobsters (illegally) grass shrimp, green crabs, invasive Japanese shore crabs, blue claw crabs (illegally) minnoes, baby blackfish (probably illegally) hermit crabs (but they only live a couple of months, snails by the millions, starfish (but they all disappeared) raccoon butterflies, blowfish, burrfish, seahorses, sea robins (very cool, legal and get big fast) rock crabs, also very cool but get big fast, fiddler crabs and eels.
That blurry fish near the bottom is a blowfish



Tiny rock anemones


New York seahorses transferring eggs.


Burrfish


Butterflies and hermit crab


Female fiddler crab. You need sand for her that is out of the water and a way to get in the water. Very cool creature and very common.


Rock crab


Grass shrimp

 

[Chasmodes]

Cool stuff Paul, thanks for sharing. Why do you think that those hermit crabs don't live very long? Short life cycles maybe?

 

[Paul B]

I think it's temperature. The water here gets into the 30s in the winter and about 68 in the summer.

 

[Paul B]

So a couple of days ago my Daughter was in Washington Square Park in Manhattan where my Grand Daughter who was riding on her scooter. Greta is 4 years old and a little kid about the same age comes over to her and takes her scooter.
My Daughter sees this happen and follows the kid with her scooter as he brings it over to this old guy who I found out is her Father.
My Daughter says, "excuse me but that is my scooter." The guy says, "do you need it right now". My Daughter says "Yes, I do". So the guy reluctantly gives her back the scooter and seems to be looking at her as if to say, "Don't you recognize me".
The guy was Alec Baldwin who was there with his wife, who is probably younger than my Daughter, but I don't know that for sure. I think Alec Baldwin can well afford to buy his own scooter.

 

[Paul B]

I am not sure why I have two tank threads on here, but here is the other one https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/tank-birthday-40-years.55423/

If any Mods see this, please merge the two threads somehow. Thanks