Tank birthday, 55+ years

[Hal3134]

Paul, a belated happy birthday, and thanks for posting so much of your tank and your life here. Your thread is the main reason that I log in here so often.

 

[Paul B]

Thank you Hal. That is very nice of you. My thread is also the main reason I log in on here. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

 

[Idech]

Just here to mention this thread has reached precisely 500 pages as of now. Impressive !

 

[littlefishy]

Happy 500 pages, and Merry 2025. My nano tanks are run as naturally as possibly (nsw, critters dredged from seaweed clumps, etc) bcs of threads like this.

 

[ScottJ]

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. Being we are Italian we had the table set for 24 people and had all seafood, no meat. We didn't count but we normally have about 20 different seafoods.

I like it when everyone celebrates my birthday. :)

My wife made linguine with crabs. I caught some of the crabs but not all of them. There was 2 dozen crabs in there which I cleaned.

My fish ate some of them. :D

And, of course we went to Christmas Mass in Nyack by our Daughters home.

Looks fantastic, Paul! Happy Christmas-Birthday-New Year!

 

[Imrahilwjz]

Looks fantastic, Paul! Happy Christmas-Birthday-New Year!

What he said!

 

[LordsReef]

That’s really cool, 40 years is remarkable! Congrats! Amazing!

 

[Paul B]

Just here to mention this thread has reached precisely 500 pages as of now. Impressive !

Well it started here in 2011.

That’s really cool, 40 years is remarkable! Congrats! Amazing!

I think it's 54 now

My nano tanks are run as naturally as possibly (nsw, critters dredged from seaweed clumps, etc) bcs of threads like this.

Don't let to many people know or they will tar and feather you. Thats if the price of feathers comes down. :cool:

The vast majority of salt water hobbiests think tanks should be sterile and you should keep your fish squeeky clean and never feed anything live or dirty because we all know the sea is sterile. :anguished-face:

 

[Victoria M]

HaPpY BiRtHdAy PAUL! XO

 

[Paul B]

Thank you Victoria. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

 

[Paul B]

I don't know when I posted this:

This morning like most mornings I took a walk to watch the sunrise and ponder the universe.
I really like to ponder and early in the morning there is no one out. I mean out of the almost 300 houses here in this development, I never see anyone at that time of the morning.

I am not sure why because that is the time that virtually everything happens. Of course those things are too small and insignificant for anyone to think about so I guess my mind is also small and insignificant. But I like to look at these small, common parts of life that affect us all and we rarely notice.

At the beginning of my walk I noticed something walking across the street far ahead of me.
It’s gait reminded me of an old girlfriend. As I got closer I noticed it was a large bird, but I was still to far away to make it out.

Thoughts raced through my mind to try to figure out what it was. An Emu? No, New York is a ways from Australia, maybe a turkey. We have a lot of turkeys here but this one walked different. A chicken? No, to big.

It was a "pheasant". I have never seen a pheasant here unless it was under glass, since I was a little kid. They used to be common in Queens NY and I used to chase them quite often. Over the years they, like most wildlife, were replaced by pigeons, rats, squirrels and Snowflakes.

(It was actually a peacock and I googled them and found out that peacocks are really like pheasants on steroids.)

I walked right up to him and noticed it had a few tail feathers ruffled so I assumed he got into a fight with his main squeeze. :D

I walked past him. This area is farms and wineries and to my left is a golf course and the only wildlife there are greens tenders but to my right is a defunct farm. That farm has not been in business as far as I lived here so it is basically a large area of weeds.



I thought about weeds and how we call them pests. We call a lot of things pests and we don’t like them, but if we look close, the weeds are much prettier and more interesting than grass.

If we don’t cut the grass it gets long, stringy and leans all different directions. Then it grows these crooked seeds which become heavy so the entire plant falls over. Quite ugly. :rolleyes:

Most of the weeds are rigid and upright, standing tall. I would imagine an entire field of bright dandelions with nothing growing in between them would be kind of nice looking.

Here we have many kinds of farms and one kind is a sunflower farm. To me, those things look like giant dandelions.
But they sell sunflowers and they kill dandelions.

It's the same with parasites. We all hate parasites and also know them as pests that we want to kill. (Humans are always trying to kill something)

We want to kill them because they are tiny and we can’t see their faces. If we could see them and they looked like our Shih Tzu or Yorkipoo and if we could hear them scream when we exposed them to copper or prizapro we may not want to kill them.

Maybe if they were larger and cuter, sort of like Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt we may try to keep the parasites and grow achilles tangs to feed them.

We also hate bacteria which is weird because we are mostly made of bacteria. Some of us are more bacteria than others.
Bacteria, along with viruses and funguses also kill parasites. Poor parasites, they just want to live a quiet life and occasionally suck the blood out of our Copperband butterfly.



Speaking about funguses, during my walk I passed many trees. At the base of one tree was this huge mushroom. There is really no such thing as one mushroom and oddly enough They are one of the largest living things on the planet. Besides some Sumo wrestlers and a girl I once dated. :unsure:

The part of the mushroom we see is just the tip of a giant organism that extends for many miles under the ground. They send out these tendrils that grow in all directions looking for food and they even communicate through this entire web. Sort of like our world wide web but they probably don’t text things like lol, OMG. or ROTFLMAO.

They probably send messages more like ONAMSIATPOM ( “Oh Nooooo. A Miniature Schnauzer is about to pee on me. “)

I continued past the mushroom and smelled something vile. It was the possum I saw two days before that was run over by a car, although it could have been an SUV or minivan.

Someone must have thrown it back into the woods as it was getting sort of "ripe". Flies were all over it as were maggots. Flies and maggots are another example of pests that we humans hate.
If it were not for flies and their offspring maggots, we would be living in mountains of dead things. Think of that for a while. :unsure:

Speaking of flies, near the end of this road is a rescue horse ranch and I know when I am getting close by the smell of wet horse which is unmistakable. Almost as good as rotting possum but not quite as sweet. ;Yuck

As I watched the horses I noticed they kept “swishing” their tails back and forth. I think they have long tails for the sole reason of chasing flies because I don’t think it helps them swim.

I don’t know who designed horses but if I was going to make an appendage to shoo away flies, I think I would make the thing to shoo flies away from it’s "head" instead of it’s rear end where they probably won’t notice the flies anyway. Maybe give the animal three foot long eyelashes or nose hairs. :confused:

I started to walk back and I noticed a bit of fur just where the asphalt meets the grass. It was a dead fox that I also noticed the day before. This animal has been dead much longer than that possum and was mostly skeleton. I stopped and looked more closely now that most of the smell was gone. I could clearly see it’s spine and I noticed it had a little osteoporosis and maybe a touch of Gout.

I didn’t stay there long because I wanted to make breakfast for my beautiful wife who I assumed was still sleeping and certainly not dreaming of rotting possums, horses tails or my old girlfriends.

I looked up from my ground gazing and noticed a large deer in the middle of the road about fifty yards ahead of me. She stared at me and I stared back. As she was looking intently at me I was thinking how cool it would be if I could read her mind. Was she thinking of “me” as a parasite?

Was she planning how she could eliminate me as this was after all her street and I was a common pest?
I don't know.

The purpose of this post is the same as most of my posts. It has absolutely no purpose at all.

 

[Paul B]

Tonight, New Years Eve, millions of crazy people will descend on Times Square.

They are all tourists because us New Yorkers know better.

5 Hours in the rain and cold with no bathrooms and you can't even see much from the street. :astonished-face:

Happy New Year. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

 

[Fudsey]

Almost 10000 posts in this thread as well ! ! oh so close #9993

 

[Victoria M]

Sometimes I think about the same random weird stuff, Paul. I just dont write it down online. lololol. It is our weirdness that makes us amazing.

 

[Imrahilwjz]

Happy New Year Paul!

 

[Paul B]

Happy New Year everyone. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

 

[Rybren]

Happy New Year to you and Dale (and to everyone else)

 

[Paul B]

What if Jesus had a reef tank?
Jesus and I have a couple of things in common. We both have the same birthday and like fish, but I can’t make miracles. I think Jesus must have been a cool guy, and I would probably get along with him, although he did have much more hair than I do, was perhaps better looking, and had a more likable personality.

We did "speak" quite often when I was in Vietnam and he helped me through it.



If Jesus had a reef tank, I think it would have been fantastic and pretty easy for him.



Like most of us, he probably started with fresh water because even though the “Sea of Galilee” is called a sea, it is fresh water. However, it contains many different types of fish. Unfortunately, they are all kind of bland-looking.



Jesus would have no problems collecting fish because he could just bend down and grab whatever swam by while he was walking on the water.



I also think that, like most of us, he would eventually want a reef tank. But where would he get salt water from?



It was actually easy. Remember, in the Old Testament, God Smited everyone because they were all sinners, and many of them cycled their tanks using live fish.



But if you recall, all the good people were running away from Sodom and Gomorrah as God was destroying the bad people on Earth with fire and brimstone. Lot's wife turned around because she forgot to turn off the light on her frag tank so God turned her into a pillar of salt. I think it was “Instant Ocean”.



Jesus could have scraped off a little salt, maybe from her kneecap, and used it in his reef.



So now he had salt water but he lived in a desert so where would he get rocks from?



Brimstone, of course. I don't know what brimstone is, but I bet it would make a really nice seascape.



At first, his tank would go through the ugly stage and get overrun with algae and diatoms. In time, his fish may get infected with things like ich, urenema, or that Brooklyn disease because he didn’t have a quarantine tank. He could try a few drops of Muhr and frankincense but I’m not sure if that would work as well as Prizapro.



For Jesus, this would be no problem because he could just turn the water in his reef into Holy Water, thereby curing his fish from whatever they had. Even if that didn’t work 100% and a fish died, he could just resurrect it.



I’m not sure how he would test the salinity, but I assume he could clean the glass with that swaddling cloth he was wrapped in when he was born.



His Father, Joseph, was a carpenter, so he could make a dynamite stand. While Jesus was away preaching, his Apostles could have cared for his tank. They most likely wouldn’t mind because while they were there, Jesus' Mother Mary would make them a dynamite meal, as she was an excellent cook.



I think that’s exactly how Jesus would have created his reef tank.

 

[Lowell Lemon]

What if Jesus had a reef tank?
Jesus and I have a couple of things in common. We both have the same birthday and like fish, but I can’t make miracles. I think Jesus must have been a cool guy, and I would probably get along with him, although he did have much more hair than I do, was perhaps better looking, and had a more likable personality.

We did "speak" quite often when I was in Vietnam and he helped me through it.



If Jesus had a reef tank, I think it would have been fantastic and pretty easy for him.



Like most of us, he probably started with fresh water because even though the “Sea of Galilee” is called a sea, it is fresh water. However, it contains many different types of fish. Unfortunately, they are all kind of bland-looking.



Jesus would have no problems collecting fish because he could just bend down and grab whatever swam by while he was walking on the water.



I also think that, like most of us, he would eventually want a reef tank. But where would he get salt water from?



It was actually easy. Remember, in the Old Testament, God Smited everyone because they were all sinners, and many of them cycled their tanks using live fish.



But if you recall, all the good people were running away from Sodom and Gomorrah as God was destroying the bad people on Earth with fire and brimstone. Lot's wife turned around because she forgot to turn off the light on her frag tank so God turned her into a pillar of salt. I think it was “Instant Ocean”.



Jesus could have scraped off a little salt, maybe from her kneecap, and used it in his reef.



So now he had salt water but he lived in a desert so where would he get rocks from?



Brimstone, of course. I don't know what brimstone is, but I bet it would make a really nice seascape.



At first, his tank would go through the ugly stage and get overrun with algae and diatoms. In time, his fish may get infected with things like ich, urenema, or that Brooklyn disease because he didn’t have a quarantine tank. He could try a few drops of Muhr and frankincense but I’m not sure if that would work as well as Prizapro.



For Jesus, this would be no problem because he could just turn the water in his reef into Holy Water, thereby curing his fish from whatever they had. Even if that didn’t work 100% and a fish died, he could just resurrect it.



I’m not sure how he would test the salinity, but I assume he could clean the glass with that swaddling cloth he was wrapped in when he was born.



His Father, Joseph, was a carpenter, so he could make a dynamite stand. While Jesus was away preaching, his Apostles could have cared for his tank. They most likely wouldn’t mind because while they were there, Jesus' Mother Mary would make them a dynamite meal, as she was an excellent cook.



I think that’s exactly how Jesus would have created his reef tank.

He created the earth and the oceans...who needs a tank?

 

[tbrown]

He created the earth and the oceans...who needs a tank?

I was gonna say Him and His Dad built the best Reef tanks already.