This morning I was looking at my tank and just thinking. Yes, that gives me a headache. I was closely checking things out, watching the pair of pistol shrimp make tunnels all over the place while keeping one antenna on their favorite watchman gobi. Then I noticed one of my small striped cardinals who is dying of old age and will disappear in a couple of days. There is also one thread fin cardinal left as those small cardinals don't have a very long lifespan. The one I have left was the runt of the bunch and is still doing OK, but he looks very lonely as the five of them would spawn all the time.
When they are about to die of old age, they slow down for a few weeks and don't eat very much. They also lose all fear and fish that normally hide, stay out in the open just like an old person, they get a little senile and I can see it in their eyes. Fish sometimes pick on them, but they don't seem to care and I think they know their time is almost gone. (or maybe I give them to much credit) But those smaller fish have a limited lifespan, maybe 4 or 5 years and they may be 2 or 3 when we buy them. If they are spawning until the end, they lived out their life and there is nothing we can do for them.
Yesterday the Mother of a woman we know died. This was the best friend of my 88 year old Mother N Law's "Mother". Yes her Mother and she lived to 106 and was cognizant, walking without a cane and making home made pasta until the end. So if you have a 5 year old little cardinal or a 25 year old clownfish, that is all that you can expect to get out of them.
As I look at my tank I think I know why my tank doesn't seem to have any problems. The animals just seem at home, checking out their surroundings, searching for food and maybe realizing that they are all just going to die of old age. Right in the front of my tank there is a fairly large torch coral that the pistol shrimp made fall down. It is up side down on the gravel and it has been like that for two days. I will get to it eventually and it will be no worse for wear, but some people go nuts over the smallest thing. On this forum there is a guy (or girl) who has a clownfish with a little sore on it. He is dipping him in freshwater, then formalin then some ich medication and he is going to put him in quarantine. The fish just needs to be left alone and he will be fine. We all want a magic pill and it doesn't exist. I feel we over medicate, over quarantine and over stress many of these creatures that would do fine if we just left them alone and fed them appropriately.
I used to get all crazy and drag out the copper or some fluorescent medication that never really did anything but made the tank a cool color. Now, like some of my fish who are dying of old age, nothing bothers me any more and soon I will also slow down, stop eating and fade away. Hopefully, not for a while as I am not quite finished yet because there are still so many things I want to do.
I did everything on my bucket list so it is time to just make a new list.
The first thing on my list, many years ago when I was a little kid was to one day SCUBA dive on the Great Barrier Reef. That actually was my first dive, who would have thought. I wanted to travel to exotic places to dive and I dove in all those places and a lot more. I never got to date Christie Brinkley but my wife also looks like a Supermodel so I kind of did that through osmosis.
One of my larger acropora corals is half dead but that is actually a good thing as it is the clown gobi that is killing it by spawning on it every week or so. Where ever it lays eggs, kills that part of the coral but everyone has acropora, how many people have constantly spawning clown gobies?
My copperband butterfly grew a little larger than I would have liked and he has never gotten along with the old fireclown. The copperband circumnavates the tank every few minutes and on every pass he confronts the fireclown who is always nesting. The clown swims out, the copperband raises his spines and the play goes on. One would think they would tire of this or the copperband would take a short cut through the rock to avoid each other, but I guess it gives them a purpose in life. I love it.
