Tank birthday, 47+ years

[Paul B]

PhilT. I just gave them all away when I moved here last year. I think I had one TFH from 1969 and a bunch of Marine Aquarist from 1971 on. They were fun to look at.

 

[Paul B]

We ran out of "Jumping Juice" that I make for my wife and she was in terrible pain last night so I have to make a big batch this morning. The stuff really works great and we find that out when we run out of it.

On another note, I have to take my boat like 15 miles in the rain to the jiboni who installed a shift cable on it last winter because he screwed it up and the gears keep grinding.
I don't know how people have someone else fix their cars, boats, airplanes, bicycles, refrigerators, electric toothbrushes etc. I don't think I have ever had anything fixed by anyone that I didn't have to fix it myself later.

The marina changed my shift cable on the boat because you had to remove the boat from the water and take off the outdrives and they won't allow me to do my own work here. If I did it, it would be working.

Besides that, my entire life I removed the outdrives myself and brought them home to service them, but I am old -er now and I can't lift the things any more without breaking or tearing something.
The Marina will probably take their time fixing it because they screwed it up and may not get to it until the end of the season when the outdrives have to come off anyway.

They have some weight to them and weigh more than a cell phone 7. They are also delicate and can't be dropped, especially on your foot. So now I can't use the boat. Woe is me.

Now I have to live like people without boats and I am not sure I know how to do that.

 

[ScottR]

I have been there a few times and it is my favorite aquarium, next to the one in Hawaii.
I think we also went by boat once.

We had our Daughters Sweet Sixteen party in the New York Aquarium (she is 40 now)
We rented a bus to bring her friends there. Very cool.

Tomorrow we are going to a party at our friends house on the water a little west of here. We will spend most of the day in the water but I will also be crabbing.
Nothing like spaghetti and crabs.

If you’re talking Waikiki aquarium, I grew up half a mile from there. Went way too many times to count. They got me interested in marine biology. I’d go surf, park my board, visit the aquarium, eat then surf past sunset. Feels like a lifetime ago. I miss those days.

 

[GBRsouth]

Now I have to live like people without boats and I am not sure I know how to do that.

Easy Paul! Just watch your bank balance go down, but more slowly! And the other difference is when you step off the marina pier, you fall in the water because there's no boat there!

 

[Chasmodes]

Sorry that I haven't been around in a while. I was about 10 pages behind and just caught up. Good stuff, as always Paul. I really liked the steel fireplace, nicely done! Also, the trunk restoration was really cool. I'm looking forward to seeing how your new steampunk lamp turns out.

Regarding your tank, do you still have the tailspot blenny? Maybe that is the brown fish at the bottom of your list? Did you figure out what the fish fry were that you were collecting?

Anyway, hope all is well!

 

[Paul B]

If you’re talking Waikiki aquarium, I grew up half a mile from there. Went way too many times to count.

OMG I am so Jealous. I love Hawaii. Not so much Oahu but the smaller Islands. Oahu was great the first time I went in the 70s. 2 years ago we went back to Hawaii but skipped The big Island and Oahu. Once you've seen them film Hawaii 50 thats it.
This time we stayed on Lanai, Kauai, Maui and Molokai.

My old girlfriend, who is in our crowd went to Maui about 50 years ago and she never came back. She ended up running Hertz, Budget or some car rental place there and is now retired and lives on top of a mountain there. We visited her, fantastic place.

We did some helocoptering there, but this may have been Kauai

https://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/2013-10-17055910_zpsf79290a1.jpg

https://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/2013-10-17054621_zps50ad42ab.jpg

 

[PanchoG]

OMG I am so Jealous. I love Hawaii. Not so much Oahu but the smaller Islands. Oahu was great the first time I went in the 70s. 2 years ago we went back to Hawaii but skipped The big Island and Oahu. Once you've seen them film Hawaii 50 thats it.
This time we stayed on Lanai, Kauai, Maui and Molokai.

My old girlfriend, who is in our crowd went to Maui about 50 years ago and she never came back. She ended up running Hertz, Budget or some car rental place there and is now retired and lives on top of a mountain there. We visited her, fantastic place.

We did some helocoptering there, but this may have been Kauai

https://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/2013-10-17055910_zpsf79290a1.jpg

https://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/2013-10-17054621_zps50ad42ab.jpg

Super good Paul !
Please keep sharing there are many guys like me trying to learn from your reefing methods.

 

[Paul B]

So I got the boat back to the Marina this morning and they took it out of the water.


The first thing I noticed is that they didn't put any bolts in the two "Zinc's" on the power tilt pistons. This would not cause any problem like the one I am having but the zinc's are supposed to be bolted in or they don't do anything and they are expensive. To make a complicated story short, they are made of zinc (like Duh) and they are supposed to rot before parts of your boat rot. But if they are just hanging there, they are not doing anything so the Jiboni's would have had to take my boat out of the water to put the bolts in anyway.

The "mechanic" told me "sometimes they rot out".. I was born at night but not last night and I am not an accountant. I was an A rated GM Mechanic and I know stainless steel doesn't rot out in 2 months.

I said, that can't happen. Then he said, "sometimes they come loose". Yeah right, 4 stainless steel bolts coming not just loose, but completely falling off in 2 months.

I mean if you screw up and make a mistake at least make up something plausible or tell the truth that you messed up. I was a mechanic and I could have done that. Or I would at least make up something believable about Aliens or Bigfoot.



We didn't find anything obviously wrong with the shift cable but I had him change this shift arm anyway. I figured I came all this way, took the boat out of the water, removed the drives so I may as well waste some money.



I made it home without incident so I am not sure if it is fixed or not.

 

[Paul B]

PanchoG, If you follow my methods a lot of people will laugh at you. Of course in a few years they will be out of the hobby and working in a supermarket stacking eggplants.

 

[Brew12]

The "mechanic" told me "sometimes they rot out".. I was born at night but not last night and I am not an accountant. I was an A rated GM Mechanic and I know stainless steel doesn't rot out in 2 months.

Umm.. .maybe they tested your boat in an acid bath?

 

[ScottR]

OMG I am so Jealous. I love Hawaii. Not so much Oahu but the smaller Islands. Oahu was great the first time I went in the 70s. 2 years ago we went back to Hawaii but skipped The big Island and Oahu. Once you've seen them film Hawaii 50 thats it.
This time we stayed on Lanai, Kauai, Maui and Molokai.

My old girlfriend, who is in our crowd went to Maui about 50 years ago and she never came back. She ended up running Hertz, Budget or some car rental place there and is now retired and lives on top of a mountain there. We visited her, fantastic place.

We did some helocoptering there, but this may have been Kauai

https://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/2013-10-17055910_zpsf79290a1.jpg

https://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/2013-10-17054621_zps50ad42ab.jpg

I grew up on Oahu. It’s half city half mountain and a mountain of traffic. Every island in Hawaii is so individually different. Kauai feels like paradise. The big island feels like you’re not in Hawaii. Maui is trying to become Oahu. Lanai is just Lanai.. chill. Haven’t been back in 6 years. I miss the food there so much. Thanks for sharing pics. That’s cool.

 

[Paul B]

I miss a lot of things about Hawaii. On my Honeymoon in 1974 we were on Oahu, on the other side of the island where they filmed "Blue Hawaii" and "From Here to Eternity" and it was a beautiful rain forest. My wife and I spent the day on the beach and never saw another person. Today it looks like Condo city. It's such a shame that they ruined an entire paradise like that and put up a parking lot. To me, now Oahu is Manhattan with palm trees.

But Lanai and Molokai is not there yet and still sort of paradise.

 

[Paul B]

Regarding your tank, do you still have the tailspot blenny?

I still have that bleeny or whatever it is but those fry from the Sound disappeared. I think my Janss Pipefish finally found them and had lunch.

 

[Crabby48]

Do they only grind in forward or reverse?
If so it may need a little adjustment on the cable. Where the inner cable comes out of the outer at the shift plate bolted to the exhaust there Is a barrel. If the barrel not set it won’t allow it to go fully in gear either forward or reverse.

 

[Paul B]

Crabby, it's not the cable adjustment. Trust me on that. I adjusted it three times and the mechanic in my marina adjusted it, then the mechanic in the other marine who installed it adjusted it.

I know that brass barrel nut so well that we are probably related.
This only happens maybe after 4 trips.

It not only grinds (sometimes) when you put it into reverse. But you can't get it to stop grinding no matter where you position the throttle. You have to shut off the boat to get it to stop grinding.

That's the mystery.

I think there is wear in the square hole that the lower end of the shift cable goes into in the outdrive allowing it to twist slightly causing it to disengage from the shift lever going into the outdrive.

If it still happens at the end of the season, and if I can keep my boat in my marina. I will re-design that shift lever to have a more positive grip on the cable. That's why I had him install a new one, so I could have the old one to re build. The Jiboni who invented this mechanism may have been on LSD or Geritol. ;Wideyed

 

[Paul B]

Doing a little maintenance with a diatom filter. Sucking out some Cyano and general tidying up. Using a reverse UG filter requires that I do this occasionally so nothing clogs. This is the beginning. In a minute or two, you can't see anything in the tank but the copperband loves it and looks forward to this.

 

[Crabby48]

Besides the shift lever make sure they screws the shift cable all the way in the bell housing. I’m sure you did but trying to think of the easier things they may have messed up. I hate other people touching my stuff.

Thanks for sharing the video of cleaning your tank.

 

[Paul B]

Easy Paul! Just watch your bank balance go down, but more slowly!

If I didn't have a boat, what would I do with all that "extra" money? I go into LFSs all the time with money and they got nothing. I can't buy an interesting fish no matter how much money I throw at them. They got tangs and angelfish and I find them very boring. Nothing unusual. Corals, forgetaboutit. They got tiny frags and at my age, I don't do tiny anything. I probably couldn't see them or my hermit crabs would carry them away.

To add any corals I would have to cut away a lot of blue green sponge that covers most of my tank. But it cuts easy with a razor blade.

We are supposed to take some trips, but again, at my age, I already went to everyplace I want to go. Except the Galapagos. I haven't been there but my wife hates lizzards.

I also didn't go to Easter Island but my birthday is on Christmas so that is a different holiday and I don't know if I can mix holidays like that.

If I decided to go hang gliding or bungee jumping my insurance company would disown me because I already broke or tore everything that is breakable . ;Wideyed

I still dive (very occasionally) but from spending so much time underwater, the fish find me boring as they all saw me already.

WE are having people over (again) for the weekend and I know there is a big pool party. Then we will go on my boat to waste some gas and hopefully not get stuck and have to come back on one engine. But that sometimes happens in boating. Boating is fun. Young people today IMO don't know how to have fun.

I tell that to my Daughter all the time. She is 40 and at her age we always had a big crowd and would get everyone together and either go to a river upstate to Kayak down the rapids and camp or go to a lake with our small canoe's or sailboats and sink each other. There would be maybe 20 of us.
We once went to the "Ice Caves" in the snow. They are only open in the summer and they have ice then. We brought ropes and lowered ourselves down into the caves with flashlights. Very cool.

My Daughter and her friends text each other as to what they will do and they do nothing but text each other. They text about how much fun it is to text.

Then they meet each other at someone's house, and sit there so they can text other people to ask them to join in on a group text.
Our Grand Daughter texted us yesterday to tell us she was looking at the window. And she lives in Manhattan so all she can see is the roofs of taxi cabs. I know her generation is going in the same direction as our Daughter. A generation that does nothing.

There's a whole world out there and a lot of it is free. In those days we couldn't rub two nickels together to make a dime but we always did things.
This was at a lake many years ago before they invented time.

 

[PanchoG]

Good pics Paul, yes generation to generation changes, you are right when you say we could do much more fun things that what we do today ;Cow. I am 43 and I can see my son who is 16 does completely different things to me.

Eastern Island is my dream destination too, I want to see the “Moai” I have only see a small original one while traveling in Chile many years ago. I hope to go someday. ;Woot

 

[Chasmodes]

So, in your tank maintenance video, are you using the filter return tube to stir up the water as your filter intake does the cleaning? I used to have a diatom filter years ago and it was great until it finally died. I may have to get another one. They are quite handy. I never used it the way that you just did. I simply stirred up everything with my hand, but it was easy way back when as I had a fish only tank with coral skeletons in the 70's and 80's, so I could remove almost everything for tank cleaning. That said, I like your technique better.

I still dive (very occasionally) but from spending so much time underwater, the fish find me boring as they all saw me already.

Only the tangs and angelfish think you are boring. I'm sure that the pipefish, bleenies, clingfish, copperbands, clownfish and anthias love having you visit them!