Tank birthday, 47+ years

[Lowell Lemon]

Bean your router experience caused me to have the sweats just reading about it. I used hand routers almost every day for decades and they can bite you if you lose focus. I have several 3hp Porter Cable and about 6 or more 1.5hp routers. Take them to a local repair shop and keep them going. I am sure some of them are 20 plus years old.
I am adopting CNC routers for most of the production now days...and I still have all my fingers currently. No plans to become a high school shop teacher without a few fingers lol!

 

[Kmst80]

I still have a few from when I worked there and Penthouse because I knew the girls. That was about 1975 or so. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

I also worked in Penthouse Magazine owner Bob Guccionine's house in Connecticut. His wife wanted flood lights all around the place because it was in the woods and she wanted to be able to light up the place like Madison Square garden if she heard a noise.

He hired me to build an electric rat trap. He took the pictures of the models in his mansion in Manhattan and it was an old building infested with rats. Young female models, especially "dressed" as they were frown on taking pictures with rats. He also had two expensive dogs so he didn't want to use poison so he asked me to build him something.

It came out very cool. The rat would walk on top of the thing which was a box about a foot high wide and deep.
There was a ramp for the rats to get up. Peanut butter was on a little disk on top. When the creature touched the peanut butter the trap door he was on would open dropping the rat on angled brass plates that would send 120 volts through him for about 30 seconds or just before he started to smoke. :squinting-face-with-tongue:

Then the brass plates would part dropping the dead rat in the bottom which was a drawer to empty. Before you opened the drawer you pushed a button which electrocuted them again just in case they lived through the first part. (not likely) The thing would re set itself after each rat. I think he gave me $400.00 for the thing which was probably a week salary in the 70s.

This reminded me of this old German mouse trap.

 

[Reefering1]

Bean your router experience caused me to have the sweats just reading about it. I used hand routers almost every day for decades and they can bite you if you lose focus. I have several 3hp Porter Cable and about 6 or more 1.5hp routers. Take them to a local repair shop and keep them going. I am sure some of them are 20 plus years old.
I am adopting CNC routers for most of the production now days...and I still have all my fingers currently. No plans to become a high school shop teacher without a few fingers lol!

My right hand middle finger is about a quarter inch shorter than its left hand counterpart from similar circumstances..

 

[Paul B]

I am parting with my 3hp table saw and Incra fence setup, etc. I don't have room and my "shop" is my gym now.

The "Shop" where I am doing this woodwork is not really my shop. It is my garage and normally set up for my mechanic tools but I have my larger woodworking tools in there like that (very old) radial arm saw (it has a dado blade in it in that picture which is why there is no guard on it) I also have a large band saw and a DIY huge vacuum that I designed.

My real workshop is in my Man cave and that is where I make most things. But the woodworking is dusty so I do that in the garage.



Bean, you can see one of those copper fish on the bench. :grinning-face-with-smiling-eyes:
That belt sander folds under the bench and disappears when I am not using it. I also have a small reciprocating table saw for small projects that I am working on folding under something.



My shop is always a very busy place. Last year I built this.



It looks like this when it is retracted in the wall in the master bath.



But it automatically comes out almost 3' electrically



I also built that granite box under it. It has an outlet in it for tooth brushes etc.

My tank is also in my workshop so I don't want sawdust all over the place.






I am very proud of this fireplace. It is 8' long and all that stuff on top is plate steel I grinded like that. The entire thing is on wheels so I can roll it (not very easily) away from the wall to paint or access the fireplace.



Of course I built that live edge table last year :) It has lights under it that I can make any color.

Thats fake coral and I did not build that fish or octopus. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

 

[Paul B]

Bean I just cut off those "dovetails" and re did them. They are not even dovetails but box joints because they are easier to make on my DIY rig. They are also more forgiving and easier to make. For the prototype, they are fine.

I also realized I built the thing an inch to big and it won't fit in the cabinet because I forgot to allow room for the linear actuator that makes the thing work. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

 

[Paul B]

My reef reached 53 this week. (I think) Started in 1971. :D

 

[dieselkeeper]

Nice tank, somehow I always forget how just softies makes for a nice tank. What lights do you have?

 

[Nano_Man]

Paul lover your tank
Hope you’re keeping well I haven’t been on for awhile.

 

[Paul B]

Dieselkeeper, I have cheap Chinese LEDs Many years ago the tank was mostly SPS, but I am over that.

I also just about never test or dose and SPS require a little more care than the simple things I am not keeping.

Also my yellow clown gobies spawned all over my acropora and kept killing it.

You can see her eggs over her here and they spawn constantly and kill an inch of the coral every time they do.

 

[Paul B]

This is the receipt from the National MS Society. I always post the receipts from them when I donate to prove that 100% of my book profits go to them in my Wife's name. I don't want anyone to think I am buying Copperband butterflies with it.

 

[Cthulukelele]

Bean I was working in Manhattan and a tour bus stopped in front of me. The most beautiful girl stood up on the top. Then another one, and another. They were like gorgeous but dressed like they were going to a ball.

I stood there and more stood up. Like OMG. Then about 20 of them were there.
They all got off the bus and I found out it was a Miss America contest photo shoot. :grinning-face-with-smiling-eyes:

I docked myself for the rest of the day and stayed there to watch. My boss called me to ask why I took the afternoon off. I told him. The next thing I knew, he was next to me so we "wasted" the afternoon together.

I also helped build the New York Playboy Club and Penthouse magazine. (as the foreman construction electrician) I was in each one for 2 years. I would have worked in those places for free, but they insisted on paying me.

My wife, who was in her 20s then, visited me in work sometimes because she also worked in Manhattan and they offered her a job in Playboy and Penthouse. We decided it wasn't a job we thought she should have because we had a baby on the way but she would have made three times as much as me and all Playboy bunnies did is serve drinks. I realize most people thought they did other things, but I knew all of them and thats what they did.

Many of them were Broadway actresses and only had to appear in a play once or twice a week so they worked in Playboy the rest of the week.

I have a Bunny suit. But it doesn't fit me. :grinning-face-with-smiling-eyes:

The only connection I have with NYC is a previous partner of mine was a NYC night club promoter for a decade turned pastry chef. She was the head pastry chef at the restaurant at the top of the WTC, but she was on vacation on 9/11.

I also briefly dated one of the leads for Shakespeare in the Park and Broadway background actress, but that's a less interesting story.

 

[Cthulukelele]

This is the receipt from the National MS Society. I always post the receipts from them when I donate to prove that 100% of my book profits go to them in my Wife's name. I don't want anyone to think I am buying Copperband butterflies with it.

As someone who works with quite a few similar organizations at my job (mostly the CF Foundation) that money does a lot of real good as it allows researchers to look into higher risk higher reward questions that wouldn't get government funding, so thank you!

 

[Paul B]

Cthulukelele, we do what we can. We also organized a few MS bike rides and other fund raiser events for MS research

 

[dieselkeeper]

Dieselkeeper, I have cheap Chinese LEDs Many years ago the tank was mostly SPS, but I am over that.

I also just about never test or dose and SPS require a little more care than the simple things I am not keeping.

Also my yellow clown gobies spawned all over my acropora and kept killing it.

You can see her eggs over her here and they spawn constantly and kill an inch of the coral every time they do.

I'm getting close to retirement and looking to make my tank a little less work and simple. I always wanted a fish only tank but couldn't with corals. Probably gonna sell off corals I can't have with angels and butterflies. Always look forward to tank pictures.

 

[Lowell Lemon]

I'm getting close to retirement and looking to make my tank a little less work and simple. I always wanted a fish only tank but couldn't with corals. Probably gonna sell off corals I can't have with angels and butterflies. Always look forward to tank pictures.

Saw someone here on R2R who added butterflies and angles to their SPS tank knowing they would eat some corals as food. Given the right balance and choice the coral growth might keep pace with the nibbling. Might be a way to keep some of the harder to keep fish due to diet. Just another crazy idea. You can just forget I typed anything....carry on.

 

[Paul B]

My LPS corals require nothing from me. They are just there. :grimacing-face:

 

[Paul B]

Nman, I am doing well, especially for a 75 year old Geezer. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

I still walk an hour as fast as I can every morning and eat as healthy as possible. In the last 2 or 3 years I lost 30 lbs and am exactly the same weight I was when I got married 50 years ago when I was 24 so my wife is very happy about that. :rolling-on-the-floor-laughing:

This is me a few weeks ago.



This was 5 years ago when I was taking my reef apart to put in vats to move here. I was kind of chubby and 30 pounds heavier.



Of course in Viet Nam, when I was 20 and it was 100 degrees all the time and I spent 16 hours a day filling sand bags and yelling "DUCK" a lot, I was a lot skinnier. I don't know what I weighed then but I am sure it wasn't much.
I could have worked for Jenny Craig as a Spokes Model. :cool:

 

[Paul B]

I am having trouble collecting enough white worms from my 2 cultures because they froze in my garage. It gets cold here on Long Island and I forgot about them. I have been trying to get them to reproduce faster but they are not in the mood so it is slow going but I still have some.

These are a big part of my No quarantine or medicate system because they supply live gut bacteria so I may have to start a new worm culture with the limited supply of worms I still have.

These guys especially are hard to feed but will eat all the live worms I give them. They just had a large lunch of them so should be good for a few days.

 

[Cthulukelele]

I am having trouble collecting enough white worms from my 2 cultures because they froze in my garage. It gets cold here on Long Island and I forgot about them. I have been trying to get them to reproduce faster but they are not in the mood so it is slow going but I still have some.

These are a big part of my No quarantine or medicate system because they supply live gut bacteria so I may have to start a new worm culture with the limited supply of worms I still have.

These guys especially are hard to feed but will eat all the live worms I give them. They just had a large lunch of them so should be good for a few days.

Apparently one of the best things to put a white worm culture in is a wine cooler. They stay cool but not cold and are airtight

 

[Paul B]

I have them in a cooler. But my garage got a lot cooler than the worms want to be so they looked like skinny pop cycles. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes: