Tank birthday, 47+ years

[Paul B]

The tank is doing well but I am a little concerned about the little female mandarin. She has been very pregnant to long and I think she is egg bound. That sometimes happens in fish when they become loaded with eggs and for some reason, she can't deliver them or the male is a nerd and is not in the mood to spawn. I could easily deliver the eggs for her but that would require taking everything out of the tank, and that aint gonna happen. She seems fine, eats well, smiles a lot and has a nice complection but is just to fat.
Time will tell.
One of my clown gobies is also pregnant and I know that is from all the white worms she eats. Whiteworms are smaller than blackworms and they feast on them, mostly because I don't give them Pizza. White worms are their favorite food and they are also the favorite food of the mandarins although they get lots of pods and new born brine shrimp.
I am not sure if the annoying pistol shrimp are spawning because they spend most of their time together in their cave which they keep moving and causing my rocks to fall. I really need a lot of time to re design the tank so they don't do that but that is a major undertaking and will cause much coral breakage. I can't keep the montipora together now as I keep breaking them and I have frags growing all over the place. My biggest expense is glue. :hmm2:

 

[Palting]

I heard getting a quick scare will make pregnant women go into labor. Maybe you should stick your face close to the mandarin? :)

Nice photo, BTW. I think you're getting as skilled at photography as in DIY, Paul.

 

[Eienna]

If you believe she is egg-bound (or even dangerously constipated) a few Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) baths can help. I don't recall the concentration and duration...you'd have to look it up.

 

[Paul B]

If you believe she is egg-bound (or even dangerously constipated) a few Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) baths can help. I don't recall the concentration and duration...you'd have to look it up.

I have been having trouble talking her into taking an Epsom Salt bath. To catch that fish I would have to dismantle a 6' long very old reef and it ain't happening. She is on her own like every other fish that goes in that tank.You want to try to catch a mandarin in here?

 

[Paul B]

I think this is her in this video on the bottom right. It could be the male as it is not to clear here.

 

[Eienna]

Oh... :(

 

[Paul B]

In the early days of this hobby we didn't make as much money as many of us do now, but salt water was brand new so everything was very expensive. Almost everything was made for freshwater and rusted badly in salt water.
In those days, the early 70s I was an apprentice electrician bringing home $52.00 a week. (That is not a misprint). The minimum wage was $1.25 an hour and that is what I made. So fish and equipment was hard to buy on that type of salary, especially if you were married like I was in 1974 and had to pay rent.
(I think I posted this story so If I did, don't read it again, just close your eyes and hum for 10 minutes or watch Dancing with the Stars)
But then, like now making money was easy, as long as you were a little smarter than the next guy. If I had to depend on my salary, I would have had to eat dog food, and I didn't have a dog. But there were ways to earn money. One way I made money was to buy a Willy's Jeep with a plow.
Willy's was the company that make Jeeps for the US Army.
I bough one for $700.00 from a school. They used it to plow the snow around the school. My wife was furious at me for spending all that money on this, "not real good looking" vehicle. It needed a lot of work so I had to do a full engine job with pistons, rings, valves etc. I did all that in a couple of days. Then one Monday everyone in New York woke up to 18" of snow that was not predicted. New York was covered and nothing was moving as in 1974, there were no 4 wheel drives unless you had a Jeep.
I was working in the Chrysler Building in Manhattan and subways were not running. I got in my Jeep and plowed the Grand Central Parkway the 18 miles to the Chrysler Building and I parked on the sidewalk in front of the Building. All of Long Island followed me in. I went inside to a phonebooth. Yes a phoonbooth and called my office. They told me I was nuts and to go home.
I then plowed the Grand Central parkway all the way home and started to find customers. I got home that night and my new wife thought I was just out having fun all day in the snow. She said, "How much did you make $15.00" I had my Army jacket on and the pockets were full of fives and tens. I pulled out about $1,400.00 (or $1,800.00) and threw it on the bed.
We both jumped in the pile of money and threw it all over the place. It doesn't sound like a lot of money, but at that time
That was about 14 weeks salary.
Then every time it snowed, I did very well until 4 wheel drives were common and everyone was plowing snow. I sold that Jeep for the same $700.00 I paid for it.

 

[Neon Reef]

Great story. Really puts things into perspective. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Paul B]

That gray panel under the door of the Jeep was from a radiator cover in the Chrysler cover. I had to fix some rot. The floor was a 1/4" thick piece of diamond plate and the gas tank I took from a boat and put it behind the seat.In the back was 200lbs of elevator weights.

 

[Paul B]

Oh no, my skimmer is not making bubbles. I cleaned the venture but it was fine. I think the pump that feeds the venture may be clogged. I don't know why, I cleaned it in probably 1995 or so. It has been running since then but I think I bought it in the 80s. I know I was a lot younger because it is buried under the tank in a place that is going to be hard to squeeze myself into tomorrow. I can feel it running but I don't think it is putting out anything. Maybe the impeller croaked. You just can't buy dependable stuff anymore. :noidea:

 

[Paul B]

I fixed the pump, it was clogged with those stupid bio pellets. Now it runs better than ever. The bearings are a little worn and the shaft is rusty, but being in salt water for 20 or so years will do that. I also had to repair the lights over my algae trough. There are 3 different types of LEDs in that home made fixture. All 3 croaked while I was in Hawaii. The "waterproof" LEDs are not as water proof as advertised. I had to rip it all apart and solder new wires across the rotten parts. I need to design a new light as this one is not to bright. Kind of reminds me of a girl I used to date, But brightness was not her best asset. She had a great personality, why? what were you thinking?
I noticed I lost a few heads on one large torch coral. It fell over and some of it was buried. No big deal, I will get over it, actually I already have.
My little female mandarin must have either laid her eggs or lost them. Maybe she missed me, but she spawns all the time and soon she will again be filled with eggs. She is a cutie.
Now I also have two separate ATOs on this tank as there are air bubble problems. It works well but will probably cause a flood. All good new designs initially cause a flood, I have learned that the hard way. But some tweeking will fix anything.
I also think I removed to much rock from my tank and some parts seem a little bare. I gave away the rock so I will have to build some new pieces. I love it when I am forced to do stuff like that :eyebrows:

 

[Paul B]

I just changed some water in my tank and I know most people say that when they change water their fish are so happy that they sit around the heater and sing Koom-bai-Ah but my fish look at me as if they want to say, "What the heck are you doing? You just changed water like 2 months ago, go away and read a book or something and stop bothering us"

 

[Greenstreet.1]

I just changed some water in my tank and I know most people say that when they change water their fish are so happy that they sit around the heater and sing Koom-bai-Ah but my fish look at me as if they want to say, "What the heck are you doing? You just changed water like 2 months ago, go away and read a book or something and stop bothering us"

Lol


The Lord is good.

 

[Paul B]

Yes he is, as a matter of fact I am now reading "killing Jesus". You may not recognize me as I am re inventing myself. I am going for an entirely new look. I am growing a Mohawk. As you can see, I am shaving the sides of my head and letting the hair in the middle grow as long as it wants to.
Yes, I know, radical.

 

[Blue Reefer]

@Paul B congratulations! I always follow your thread on MASA always very informative.

 

[Greenstreet.1]

Yes he is, as a matter of fact I am now reading "killing Jesus". You may not recognize me as I am re inventing myself. I am going for an entirely new look. I am growing a Mohawk. As you can see, I am shaving the sides of my head and letting the hair in the middle grow as long as it wants to.
Yes, I know, radical.

Lol I will be do that all day now lol thank you.
Wishing you many more


The Lord is good.

 

[Paul B]

The tank doesn't look as good as it did before I built and added the stupid bio pellet reactor and as soon as the pellets get a little smaller I will remove the thing and re make it into something else, maybe a toaster, coffee pot or vacuum cleaner. It worked, the nitrates went from about 40 to about 10, but I want to get them back to about 20 or 30 as that is when everything looked the best. My favorite coral, my organ pipe looks like I left Paris Hilton to take care of it. It used to be my largest coral, not I have more hairs on my head than that thing has polyp's. I know many people strive to keep nitrates down, but many people also think a cleaner shrimp will cure ich or garlic is the best thing since sliced bread. I am not the God of corals so don't go by what I say. (maybe they should just feed garlic to their cleaner shrimp and forget about everything else)
My SPS corals seem to be doing OK except one where my clown gobies keep spawning. After the eggs hatch, that part of the coral dies and quickly becomes a patch of algae.
The clown gobies don't seem to care one way or the other but I am happy they keep killing that acropora and don't start on another one. The 4 other pieces I have are doing fine so I think it is from the clown gobies.
Although the corals may have a problem with whatever the bio pellet reactor is doing to the water, the fish seem to love it as everyone of my fish are spawning except of course my copperband butterfly. I was going to say that one is also spawning but I didn't think I could get away with it.
My pair of pistol shrimp are still happy to dig tunnels all over the tank and overturn rocks. My possum wrasse is still happy to stay hidden although he does come out to say hello when I feed the tank.
My batch of whiteworms have a new issue now. Before I went to Hawaii I would feed them some Cheerios and in a couple of hours, I would collect the worms swarming all over the Cheerios. Now they don't eat Cheerios any more or anything else that I can tell but they all got much larger and now are larger than the blackworms and I have more of them than Justin Beeber has groupies. I am doing some experiments on how to collect them but my workshop is to crowded for me to work rignt now.
I was in Vermont last week for a few days and I bought, for $3.00 a tree that was sliced in a sawmill to about an inch thick. The piece I have is very rough on the sides because the bark is still on it. I built a shelf out of it about 8' long for my living room and just now poured that liquid glass on it and I am waiting for it to cure so I can't go in my shop and make any dust. The worms are happy about that.

 

[Paul B]

I am very happy to get this picture of this clown gobi fry just before being born. I scraped an egg off the acropora and put it under my vintage microscope.
As I probably mentioned, virtually all of my fish, except the copperband is spawning. To me, that is a sign of ultimate fish health and they can't get any healthier. It takes an enormous amount of energy for a fish to spawn as the roe could be a third of the weight of the adult fish. My clown gobies spawned three times in the last two weeks and even though the last batch of eggs didn't even hatch yet, she looks like she will again spawn tonight. Of course she is destroying the acropora she is spawning on as where the eggs attach, the coral dies and algae grows there, then they move over and lay more eggs. They don't seem to care how much that coral costs. Luckily, acropora grows fast. I would rather have spawning fish, that a good coral as I have a bunch of those acropora.
I have been feeding more white worms lately which could have allowed these fish top spawn more freely but I still feed also feed blackworms every day. Worms now make up probably 3/4s of their diet.
All of my fish eat them including the spawning mandarins.
There is a change in my tank since I came back from Hawaii but I can't figure it out. It is a cycle and I know it will change. Some heads on some of my torch corals died, but I think they fell over while I was away. My skimmer also puts out an awful lot of thick brown effluent and I have to clean the top of the skimmer almost every day, usually I can go a month.
If I get time next week I will go down to the ocean and collect 15 gallons of water and mud. I didn't add much this year but I feel the tank is to clean. I like a little growth of algae or anything on the rocks. If they are very clean, there is a problem. Life doesn't live on clean rocks.

 

[that novice guy]

i cant believe i haven't seen this thread before, i couldn't imagine having a tank for that long and im glad your still in the hobby, we all benefit from your 40 years of commit to the hobby. thanks for sharing

 

[Paul B]

Thank you Novice guy. The most important part, is living long enough. :faint: