Tank birthday, 47+ years

[redeyejedi]

In a couple of weeks my reef will will have reached 40 years old.
Unfortunately I don't remember when I was 40 but I remember when I set it up. I was a skinny 22 year old just back from Viet Nam.
It is still running very well, still using the same reverse UG filter, same dolomite substrait but none of the fish are original. The oldest one, a fireclown is just over 16, all of the older fish died in an accident that was due to my carelessness.
The tank is mostly LPS, gorgonians, giant mushrooms and a few leathers.
There are only three SPS corals, two of which have been with me for a few years and are growing nicely.
I am not sure is any of the original NSW from the Long Island Sound is still in there or any of the original amphipods but maybe much later generations.
I still can't take a decent picture and the tank is not as blue as these pictures but it is what it is.

Wow congratulations.

 

[MIKE NY]

Although I don’t comment that much to your threads I do read them. I want to wish you, your wife and family the very best and good luck. Hopefully jopining you out east in a few years. Also congrats on the new Jeep. Great vehicles for all weather conditions and with all the creature comforts us old guys like. We have four of them in my family and of course I needed the Hemi.

 

[Paul B]

Hi Mike. I got that new Jeep not to far from you at East Hills Jeep on Northern Blvd.
Some day you got to come out to the Wild country here, we can talk fish and Jeeps.

 

[Paul B]

We are going out now for some medical nonsense and my wife is going to drive to get more practice.

This has not been a good day anyway. We got word that one of our friends Sons died this week. They are beside themselves and we don't know what he died from. He was about 42.

Then my wife just got off the phone with her friend who lives in Arizona for the last 40 years.
She and her husband retired then and moved to Sun City Arizona. They were unpacking and he dropped dead. Nothing apparently was wrong with him. (Obviously, there was)

She met another guy and was with him all this time, and he dropped dead last week.

Our best friends who live next door moved to Florida for the winter. Their two neighbors were driving into their community there and a motorcycle broadsided them and they all died in a ball of flame.
The motorcycle driver ended up in their car.

We couldn't
wait for 2020 to be over, but this year, for people we know anyway, isn't off to a great start so I hope it gets a lot better soon.
I am very optimistic about the future.

 

[Ranjib]

That’s awful to hear. We pray for everyone’s well being . Stay safe

 

[Paul B]

Thank you Ranjib
I got scheduled for the Covid shot because I am a Geezer.
Age sometimes has it's privileges, besides the experience thing.
Another benefit of aging is you don't have to spend money for haircuts and you don't remember who you don't like or why you don't like them.

Friends get better because you know them so long they are more than family as you went through so many ups and downs together.

As you know I have been married to my "starter" wife for 47 years. We were always very close but now as we aged together for so many years we are even closer and love each other even more than when we got married. We depend on each other and also as you know, she has MS so now I help her put on her shoes, clean, cook, make the beds etc. I love doing things for her.

She can still get around and now uses a walker but she falls and drops many things. If you are lucky enough to be married to your soul mate, every day is a pleasure even though age has it's pitfalls. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have someone like my wife to go through this journey with.

I do worry that I am 6 years older then her and if I croak, she may meet a young stud and forget all about me and become a biker Chick.

 

[atoll]

I don't know why every so often I stop getting emails telling me there has been posts on your this thread Paul. I assume there hasn't only to hunt it down and find there have been posts.
Anyway, sorry to hear about your bad news about your friends. However, happy to hear about your long loving relationship with your lovely wife and long may it continue.

 

[Paul B]

Atoll, I didn't even know there was a feature that E Mails you if there is something on a thread.
When someone posts on here I get a letter a week later from snail mail.

My wife is not good today and is having an episode of trigeminal neuralga (the suicide pain)
It happens mainly to MS patients but can affect other people as well.

If you don't have MS there is an operation that can work but doesn't always. There is a member on here who is a good friend of mine who has it,but doesn't have MS and the operation didn't work on her.

For MS patients there is just about nothing you can do which is why they call it the suicide pain. People just had to kill themselves as that was the only treatment and the pain is to much to live with.

It feels like someone is ripping your gums out of your face. When she gets this, every few months, she can't speak or swallow,not even water.

I can get my wife a shot into her face by a pain management doctor and that lasts a week or so, but today is Sunday so that ain't gonna happen. I will start calling tomorrow morning to see if I can get her an emergency appointment but that is really hard to do. These Doctors are booked up for months.

 

[Rybren]

So sorry to to hear that Dale is suffering so much Paul.

 

[atoll]

Atoll, I didn't even know there was a feature that E Mails you if there is something on a thread.
When someone posts on here I get a letter a week later from snail mail.

My wife is not good today and is having an episode of trigeminal neuralga (the suicide pain)
It happens mainly to MS patients but can affect other people as well.

If you don't have MS there is an operation that can work but doesn't always. There is a member on here who is a good friend of mine who has it,but doesn't have MS and the operation didn't work on her.

For MS patients there is just about nothing you can do which is why they call it the suicide pain. People just had to kill themselves as that was the only treatment and the pain is to much to live with.

It feels like someone is ripping your gums out of your face. When she gets this, every few months, she can't speak or swallow,not even water.

I can get my wife a shot into her face by a pain management doctor and that lasts a week or so, but today is Sunday so that ain't gonna happen. I will start calling tomorrow morning to see if I can get her an emergency appointment but that is really hard to do. These Doctors are booked up for months.

Good luck, I hope you secure an appointment for her.

 

[GBRsouth]

Best wishes for Dale to get through this quickly.

 

[Paul B]

Thanks guys. She is a little better now. It comes in waves and can disappear for a year or stay with her for a month.

 

[Rp8]

Thank you Ranjib
I got scheduled for the Covid shot because I am a Geezer.
Age sometimes has it's privileges, besides the experience thing.
Another benefit of aging is you don't have to spend money for haircuts and you don't remember who you don't like or why you don't like them.

Friends get better because you know them so long they are more than family as you went through so many ups and downs together.

As you know I have been married to my "starter" wife for 47 years. We were always very close but now as we aged together for so many years we are even closer and love each other even more than when we got married. We depend on each other and also as you know, she has MS so now I help her put on her shoes, clean, cook, make the beds etc. I love doing things for her.

She can still get around and now uses a walker but she falls and drops many things. If you are lucky enough to be married to your soul mate, every day is a pleasure even though age has it's pitfalls. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have someone like my wife to go through this journey with.

I do worry that I am 6 years older then her and if I croak, she may meet a young stud and forget all about me and become a biker Chick.

Its serendipitous you mention this and I just happen to see it. My wife and I was in walmart and noticed a very elderly couple walking holding hands. She said "that's gunna be us", and I replied "if we could be that lucky". We are passing 10 yrs this month, and I truly feel in my heart what u spoke of. Best wishes to you, and prayers for many more years. Good people are becoming fewer and fewer.

 

[Paul B]

Rp8. Thank you. I actually have a very good friend that I call "RP" He is from Armenia and his name is Arpiar. RP for short.

Like you said, when my wife and I first got married we would say the same thing when we saw old people holding hands. Little did we know, we would turn into them. It is a great feeling having a spouse like that. Much better than not having to quarantine and worry about silly parasites.

My only worry is about my wife, kids and Grand Kids. I no longer have to think about my job, Thank God. Don't have to think about making money, never worry about hair cuts.

I used to be a construction electrician foremen in Manhattan where we built big buildings all over the City, Sometimes I would have 150 men (and a few women) working for me and it was very stressful.

(Thats $18,000.00 payroll a day, including benefits)
Every day it was very expensive decisions and the unrealistic schedules added to the personalities of the workers, breaking up fights etc, was not something I miss. I was a very good foreman and my jobs always made money but it took a huge toll on my psyche

Of course Viet Nam was not exactly a picnic and I think it made me a much better and tougher person.

Remember I spent the entire year in the jungle, only coming out once for a day to go to Saigon to get a tooth pulled, Which was an hour helicopter trip. Then when that was the wrong tooth, I went back to get the next one pulled.

Those 2 dentist days were my only time out of the jungle. (Jungle means sleeping in the mud under the stars, no roof and getting sprayed with Agent Orange all the time not to mention the combat stuff)
If you don't go through life changing or close to life ending things, most things in your life will be tough.

I hear people on here talking about a fish as if we were curing cancer, Teraforming Mars for colonization by Liberals or exfoliating your face. ( I don't even know what that is but I know it's a thing)

I like my fish, I don't love them. I loved the flounder I had for dinner last night and the macadamia encrusted grouper I had the night before and the calamari before that.

Behind my house and down 176 steps is the ocean. Many times when the tide goes out I can find hundreds of little fish caught in a tide pool behind a sand dune and they die. It makes the seagulls gush with happiness.

It's part of life, if you want to be a fish, you have to expect that. I am sure many of the ones that get back to the sea get eaten by the cousins of that Grouper I had for dinner. I never think about the demise of those fish.

Last week my female ruby red dragonette jumped out. A few days ago the male jumped out. (I guess he was like me and couldn't live without his main squeeze) yesterday I was working near my tank and found another stiff. I don't even know what fish it was.

It's not a big deal. In the sea he probably would have gotten eaten by a tuna.
I would rather the fish stayed in my tank and I try to cover all the holes, but it's a fish and it was his choice to jump. I didn't push him and he may have been a fish that was happily in my tank for 10 years.

I have so many fish that hide all the time and most of them are pairs so I can't be sure what fish it was.
I can't even name all my fish for that reason.

Fish tanks are easy, we make it complicated. Life is much more important and if we live long enough, as we age we will get much more serious things to be concerned with.

Now at my age many phone calls are not about going on the boat, where are we going to dinner, how many friends are coming to the lake to have canoe fights etc.
Now phone calls are more about which lifelong friend is sick. Whose parent died, so and so has cancer, etc.
My happiest times now are spending time with my wife, hoping she feels good and thinking up things to do for her. Her birthday is tomorrow.



"Teaching" my Grand Son's class about sea life. You can see they are really paying attention.

 

[Paul B]

I really should get this thread back about my fish or they may exile me to Bayonne New Jersey.

My fish are all great except for the 2 ruby red dragonettes that jumped out. I have to take my wife to a Dr. today and there is a LFS like 200 yards away. They sell LRS food and I am running low so I will get some of that and also see if they have anything worth buying like 2 ruby red dragonettes.

I am not crazy about this LFS as they are very overpriced and kind of snooty. I hate snooty.
Maybe I can find some nice fish covered in parasites that they don't want.

Those make the best purchases.
My two worm cultures are not really going well. I actually have to many worms but I ran out of cat food and can't get the same food that they loved. I bought two different kinds of cat food but they won't eat it so I am back to whole wheat bread and yogurt. The cat food pellets are really nice because the worms clump up on a pellet and it is very easy to collect them. Except for them spitting up hair balls it is a great way to collect the worms.

I also need more potting soil for them and in the middle of the winter, they don't sell potting soil every place. I guess I could get it at Home Depot.

My fireclowns, 6 line wrasses, randalls gobies and I think hawkfish keep spawning.

Yesterday I cleaned the back glass just to give me something to do while I am waiting for inspiration on one of my steam punk devices and the back glass has a lot of growth on it so I needed to break out the diatom because that stuff blows all over the tank. While I was at it, I stirred up the gravel and power washed under and behind the rocks where I could reach, which isn't much.

Today I may clean the top of my skimmer because I can't even see in the thing as it is full of stuff growing.

Doing some push ups

 

[fishybizzness]

Best advice I have ever been given was when Paul b said and I quote " I don't live with my fish, they live with me"! I had never thought about it that way before. My outlook on issues with my aquarium changed ever since I heard that point of view! I think if we all had that outlook, the hobby would be so much easier and less stressful. I have enough to worry about in life to let my hobby stress me!

 

[Paul B]

If it stresses me out, I know where the dumpster is.

 

[Joe Rice]

I bought two different kinds of cat food but they won't eat it so I am back to whole wheat bread and yogurt.

My white worms love Purina One cat food (tender selects blend with real chicken) but won't touch the Iams brand cat food we once got.

 

[Paul B]

Time to buy Purina One Cat food with chicken, Thanks.

 

[Paul B]

I was doing some maintenance on my tank yesterday and I noticed the skimmer was overflowing all over the place. I am no genius but I figured something was wrong, or worse,,,Dead.

I looked in the tank and this "guy" was spawning all over the place.

Thats just disgusting. ;Yuck