Tank birthday, 47+ years

[Paul B]

Thank you Sparta. :plane:

 

[Paul B]

Here are some sights at the tide pool where I collect and just hang out. You kind of need a boat to get here and there is never anyone here. I have been going here for most of my life and I anchor just off here every weekend to party which is where we were an hour ago.
Mud snails I could collect by the millions :becky:

I love to put rocks covered in barnacles in my tank as I feel they look so natural. I can also collect these all day.

These invasive Japanese shore crabs used to be all over the place with a few under virtually every rock but not to many this year which is a good thing.

 

[fishroomlady]

glad to see you out enjoying your favorite past time! besides tinkering of course :)

 

[Paul B]

I have so many past times that as I am doing this stuff, the times are passing right by me. I just love sloshing around in that tide pool. At high tide the water is 8' deep here. Today I caught a baby eel, but I let it go. I am waiting for the horseshoe crabs to spawn as they cover the mud with millions of them. Cute little suckers. My boat is one of the boats anchored behind the osprey nest. It looks very far but it is a wide angle lens so it is only a couple of hundred yards. :becky:



I get here in my dinghy

 

[fishroomlady]

looks awesome! I so wish I lived near a large body of water. I hope to some day buy a lake house.

 

[Paul B]

This body of water extends to France. :wave:

 

[fishroomlady]

:) that's a big one!

 

[gregcoyote]

Missouri's reefs suck. You're looking happy as a hog in cold mud. Standing in that tidal pool you have more sea life between your toes than most do in their tanks.

 

[Paul B]

Trust me, there is more life in that tide pool than all the tanks in the US put together. The barnacles and mussels alone probably number in the billions. On the other side of that "tunnel" I am standing in front of is a beautiful lake that drains into this tide pool at low tide. The water raises 8' at high tide. It is amazing as most of that water becomes almost fresh twice a day and there is so much life there. Fish fry are so numerous that they hide the bottom.
Greg when you are born near the sea and live your entire life there you really can't live away from it. It is a large part of my life and in the summer we would never think to go to a restaurant unless it is by boat. Every weekend is spent on the boats as our summers are so short. In the winter and fall we do the up state and mountain things but the summer is for the sea. I was stationed in Kentucky and Colorado for a while and although those places have plenty of beauty, I miss the sea. I don't think I have been to Missouri but I have been all over the US. New York has plenty of lakes and I do enjoy them but lakes just don't so it for me. I need the salt air and of course I am just in love with the creatures, (and Supermodels)
I hope to get my Grand Kids SCUBA diving when they are 12 as my Daughter started than.
I bring Greta here to shore whenever I can to show her the snails, crabs shrimp etc. She is to young to understand but she keeps telling me everything is awake because their eyes are open. She is pointing to an osprey feeding her chicks




The osprey is in a nest on top of this pole. My boat is one in the background. It is not far away but this camera only has a wide angle lens so it looks like miles.

 

[TJ's Reef]

Nice update Paul, been a while since I last stopped by this thread and seems only a bit ago it was your tank's 35th B-day or so... lol. Glad your wife is recovering well and you're enjoying the Summer at hand. I hear you on the undeniable attachment to the saltwater, have spent most of my life boating, fishing, gathering seafood and wandering around in tide pools in it as well. I had to go all the way to Kauai to collect anything that would survive the tropical temps of my Reeftank as our Puget Sound only gets to be around 48* in the Summer... Great for Salmon and Dungeness Crab but no bueno for Butterfly's or any other warm water creatures.

Cheers, Todd

 

[Paul B]

Todd I have not been to WA but I was in northern California a few times and for sure the water is cold. The water here now is about 70 or so. Nice and relaxing when it is in the 90s above the water so we spend the entire summer laying in the water eating shrimp and drinking wine from floating tables. It's a living.
That Japanese shore crab I pictured above is an invasive species as are many creatures that make up our wildlife. We sometimes forget that rats and pigeons are also invasive species. Why can't we get invasive species like copperband butterflies, French Angels, ruby red dragonettes or Swedish Supermodels? No, we get rats and pigeons. Moorish Idols are the most common fish in Hawaii and Tahiti, why doesn't a couple of them get caught in bilge water to be dumped here? We got horseshoe crabs, sea robins and eels. All of them are dark brown, even the rats and pigeons are brown. Why are invasive species all brown or dark gray? Why didn't they make rats fluorescent purple? Then we would make pets out of them.
Why is there no market for pigeons? Can't we make down jackets out of them and forget about geese although I don't have a lot of love for them either as they are also all over the place. I guess we don't really need that much goose down. :becky:

 

[gregcoyote]

I'm really only 3' from saltwater usually. Why I started the reef. I knew with my business and property I wasn't living sea side anytime soon. We can smell the salt breeze when we read your post.

 

[Paul B]

Can you smell it better now?:becky:












My life does kind of revolve around the sea

 

[Chris Aldrich]

Hope you had a great 4th weekend on the water, Paul. That looks like a fun tide pool to play around in.

Glad to see your wife is doing well!

 

[Paul B]

Thanks, I had a great time, spent most of it on my boat

 

[Paul B]

I just came back from Aquarium Village, my favorite store (your welcome Andy) and got a couple of pipefish because I just love pipefish. They started eating new born brine shrimp in their shipping bag as pipefish normally do. I was in the store just as they got a shipment because that is when I like to pick my fish and am always amazed at the number of fish that come in that I am sure almost no one knows how to take care of. Not just fish, but nudibranchs also. I must admit that years ago I also bought things like nudibranches and tried to feed them all sorts of things like hamburger helper, happy meals, Kentucky fried Chicken etc. and I always figured I was going to be able to keep these things because I was so smart and innovative. Well I am not as smart or innovative as I thought I was or I would still have some of those colorful nudibranchs. Each one of those suckers eat a specific, live food and none of them are Happy Meals. Nudibranch's are all carnivores. Slugs, which look the same, almost are a different animal, sort of like the difference between Paris Hilton and Angelina Jolie, they are both people but worlds different. Slugs are vegetarians. That makes they somewhat easier to kep than nudi's but some of them only eat a specific green, like bryopsis which only lettuce slugs (elysia crispata) "eat". And they don't even eat it, they suck out the juices kind of like Bella Lagossi as Count Dracula. And to make it even more confusing, lettuce slugs only suck out the juice of bryopsis when they are young, then they live on light. Weird creatures. I wish I could live on light as my bald head would make a great solar panel.
Nudibranch's all have external gills that look like feathers, maybe they are made of feathers who am Ito judge?

I wrote an article about lettuce slugs in my youth. Maybe 10 or 15 years ago, I forget.. The Sea Slug Forum - Elysia crispata

 

[Paul B]

My fish all seem to be doing very well except for the two bananafish. It is weird but they both have eye problems. One had pop eye in the left eye and one has it in the right eye. Fish can get along just fine with one eye and I could easily cure it if I could catch them, but that isn't going to happen. Their eye problems seemed to remedy itself but then they developed huge bubbles over their affected eye. Again, easily remedied if I could catch them but they refuse to come in for treatment. I am not sure what initially causes pop eye as it is a condition of either gas or fluid behind the eye. I usually cure it with a hypodermic needle in a few seconds. I am not sure why these bubbles keep inflating in these two fish but I guess they are not real good at navigating in between coral branches in tight quarters. I think they are both males as they fight all the time and one chases the other through the tank. Now with each one only having one eye, they keep injuring the same eye and it is causing these bubbles which can't heal because they keep injuring it. I just find it interesting as it is one fish behavior that I find odd. They will keep fighting and getting injured until one finally dies. It is just another reason I find this so awe inspiring. That and the girls, as this hobby is a chick magnet.

 

[fishroomlady]

those fish are very cool looking!

 

[Paul B]

They are cool, but they are getting a little large.

 

[gregcoyote]

Are your ears burning? We are talking about you on Albert Thiel's thread on nano reef on Facebook.