Tank birthday, 55+ years

[Subsea]

Wow Patrick, the journeys we take and the path God uses in our lives. I am sure that God did indeed use those experiences in your life as He doesn't waste anything we go through.

Dawn,
God took a week to make the sun, the moon and the starts, AND He is still working on me.

I am trying to rub off some of the rough edges and am considering setting up a marine tank in junior high marine science class as a mentoring project. Instead of public media & academia labeling carbon dioxide as a pollutant, I intend to use a calcium reactor and show that CO2 is a building block for all of earth. We are a carbon based planet, let’s raise the flag. For a graduation party, we should have a Red Ogo party.

 

[Subsea]

Wow Patrick, the journeys we take and the path God uses in our lives. I am sure that God did indeed use those experiences in your life as He doesn't waste anything we go through.

The Angola Prison warden at the time of the making the docudrama, The Farm, initiated reform to the extent that the Southern Baptist Conference accredited a pastoral seminary inside the fence and sent out ordained minister with life sentences to other penitentiaries.

Robert Dorrough was the first black police chief of Dallas, Texas. When he retired, he moved to Austin and founded the God of Hope, Prison Ministry. Robert Dorrough went to Angola, Louisiana to study the program and brought it back to Austin. He mentored under Warden Burl Cain and I mentor under the guidance of Robert Dorrough.

https://www.thegodofhope.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farm:_Angola,_USAThe Farm: Angola, USA is a 1998 award-winning documentary set in the notorious and largest American maximum-security prison, Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola. Loosely based on articles published in Life Sentences, drawn from the prison magazine, The Angolite, the film was directed and produced by Jonathan Stack and Liz Garbus. Wilbert Rideau, a life prisoner who had been editor of the magazine since 1975, also participated in direction and was credited on the film.

The film follows the lives of seven prison inmates, including Rideau, who tell their own stories of life, death, and survival in a world that few manage to leave. It was filmed during the early years of the long tenure of Warden Burl Cain (1995–2016), who is credited with reducing violence at the prison and establishing many programs to support rehabilitation of the men.

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.[1] It won the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury prize, and both the New York and the Los Angeles Film Critics awards for Best Documentary of ‘98. After airing on A&E, it won an Emmy Award.

Years later, Stack followed up with the documentary The Farm: 10 Down (2009), exploring the lives of the survivors of this group 10 years later. One man had been executed and one had died during the making of the first film. Ten years later, three men had gained freedom; two of the first six remained in prison.

 

[Paul B]

Is it in your hip socket or more sacroiliac joint pain?

The pain is in my hip but the Dr, told me is referred pain from my spine. But I will live. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

Me and my fish don't mind pain. It's traffic and waiting in line that drives me crazy so living in New York doesn't help. Thank God I moved way out east near the sea. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

Speaking of the sea, I have 15 gallons of NSW and I am heating it now with some fake water to do a water change, just because I can. :)

 

[Subsea]

The pain is in my hip but the Dr, told me is referred pain from my spine. But I will live. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

Me and my fish don't mind pain. It's traffic and waiting in line that drives me crazy so living in New York doesn't help. Thank God I moved way out east near the sea. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

Speaking of the sea, I have 15 gallons of NSW and I am heating it now with some fake water to do a water change, just because I can. :)

I will send you a 12VDC battery operated water pump. It’s part of DIY uninterrupted power supply with no switching devices:

Only a 12VDC battery charger and now I have a UPS system running air pump, water pump and led light strips.

 

[Paul B]

Patrick, thanks. But I have a bilge pump that I sometimes use when I collect water in the sea. I use a big 120 volt sump pump to change water. It will pump 40 gallons in about 2 minutes or less. :)

 

[Paul B]

I don't know where the time went. My Grand Daughter just went from this:



To this. (in the center)

 

[Minifoot77]

I don't know where the time went. My Grand Daughter just went from this:



To this. (in the center)

I know how you feel my daughter turns 18 next month

 

[Paul B]

Minifoot, my Daughter is 46. :anguished-face:

 

[Subsea]

Minifoot, my Daughter is 46. :anguished-face:

Paul,
You have good gynes in your house. Your daughter and granddaughter are beautiful.

 

[Paul B]

Thank You Patrick. They take after their Mom. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

2 weeks ago I was in an LFS and I was going to buy a female mandarin because mine disappeared a couple of months ago. Just now, I was feeding my fish, and there she was laughing at me and pregnant. She stays hidden under the rocks in the back just to annoy me. :cool:

 

[Paul B]

There is also a red fish back there that never comes to the front. I don't remember buying it and I think it was there for years.

 

[Subsea]

There is also a red fish back there that never comes to the front. I don't remember buying it and I think it was there for years.

You remind me of myself.

 

[Paul B]

I saw you and you have a lot more hair than I do.

 

[Paul B]

I donated $500.00 from my reef book to MS in my wife's name. I always post the receipts from my books to prove that all the money from my books go to charity and not for Copperband butterflies or linguine and clams.

My two books made $700.00 so I will donate $500.00 to MS in my wife's name and $200.00 to Tunnels To Towers for disabled Veterans. I can't tell from Amazon's website how much came from the reef book and how much came from my Vietnam book. When I get the receipt from Tunnels to Towers I will post the receipt.

 

[Paul B]

The Produce farm that has been growing in my tank for a couple of weeks is finally dying, but not fast enough. When this long hair algae dies, you have to suck it out, so I have to use my DIY diatom filter. I will use it about every two days until it's gone. This may take a month but I feel algae is a good thing and will clean or process the water better than anything else, of course I don't need it covering my corals or the pictures of my Grand Kids on my wall.

It has been running an hour here but before this, the glass on the tank looked like sheet metal from all the algae and detritus I stirred up.

I will let this run another 3 or 4 hours and keep stirring it up during the process. If it were not for diatom filters, I would not be in this hobby as I find them indispensable especially if you are using a reverse undergravel filter. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

 

[Paul B]

This morning I went to a big box store (I don't want to say which one) and I bought a few things for an invention I am working on. I spent about $60.00 and I had a gift card from Christmas and I also get 10% off for being a Veteran. I went to the check out to pay and the cashier made a mistake and didn't know how to correct it.

He called over another cashier and they both had problems helping me check out so they sent me over to Customer Service with my receipt and gift card. She worked about 5 or 10 minutes to help me check out and finally succeeded.

I always speak to the older ladies and tell them how nice they look or how nice their hair looks (she was probably my age or younger) and I had my Vietnam Veteran hat on. She said thank you for your service but your Veteran discount is only 10% so I am taking $40.00 off your bill.

I still got it. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

 

[JoJosReef]

Thanks to all the information you provided on the forum, I started a white worm culture yesterday. Temps can get upwards of 100 in the warehouse in the summer when they kill the A/C on the weekends, so went with the wine cooler approach instead of wife's shoebox. Looking forward to some fat(ter) and happy fish.

Thanks for all the help you've provided!

 

[Paul B]

Be careful, most of your fish may live forever and you get tired of them. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

 

[Paul B]

My tank has been in an algae growing cycle for a couple of weeks now. The stuff is very long, like 2" in some places. This is a cycle, and it also happens in the sea, and I know that from my almost 400 dives more than half of them in New York water which is very dark.

The stuff would grow for a few months, then disappear. It doesn't bother me because I know it's natural and I won't use any chemicals. Occasionally using New York NSW will cause that.

Today it started dying which I knew it would, so I have to suck it out daily with my DIY diatom filter. On the outflow of the filter I have a long rigid tube, and I heated and squashed the end, so it is like a power washer.

I use that to blow the dying algae off the rocks because if I let it rot in there, it will just keep growing. All this algae I am removing is a good thing and will leave the water in much better shape than when it started.

Of course, when it is all dead, I will dose some iron and iodine which will be depleted.
It's all part of this fascinating hobby.

Most people would throw in the towel at this point. But I like the towel and know what to do to clean the towel.

Here you can see where I stirred it up and am sucking out the dying algae.

 

[Paul B]

I just don't have time to build much or do tank maintenance any more as I am too busy now.

Yesterday I was doing something and my wife called me, she fell and she can't move her right leg at all so she can't get up from the floor. Not even close. I have to position her foot in a place where I think will help her then try to lift her, which I can't. I drag her to something that will help get her up. She isn't heavy, I just broke so many bones and have some muscles that are torn off where they are supposed to go that I am not the He Man Stud I used to be. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

I got her up. A few minutes later she called me to get her a band aid because she cut herself with a knife opening something and she couldn't get a band aid out of the package because her finger was bleeding to much.

I cleaned it up and put a band aid on it. A while later I hear a big crash and she dropped a big casserole dish with food in it so I had to clean that up. A while later she called again for another band aid because she cut herself again. That is about the way my days go now. :confused: