Tank birthday, 55+ years

[jsmkmavity]

Your pics and stories are always great Paul.

 

[Paul B]

Thank you Ksmkmavity. (It's hard to pronounce that)

I didn't think many people besides myself read my dribbling's.

 

[jsmkmavity]

Jason(first name)

 

[That Crusso Kid]

Thank you Ksmkmavity. (It's hard to pronounce that)

I didn't think many people besides myself read my dribbling's.

Your dribblings are better than your droolings.

 

[smitten with ocean life]

paul you just crack me up. finally caught up on this thread. im still giggling over your spirit experience

 

[BeanAnimal]

My morning walk was un-eventful, dull and raining so I didn't take a picture.

Wondering what is an eventful morning walk?

Sharknado?
Beach mugging?
Meteorite impact?

 

[underground_corals]

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.

very cool! im sure you had your up and downs with the tank, looks great and would be a dream of mine to have a tank that long! must not be a red sea lol!

 

[Paul B]

Bean. (No, you are not getting a copper fish) There have been many eventful beach walks. One was when I encountered this dead Sea Lion. That doesn't happen every day.



Then there was this time when I almost rescued a Supermodel:

• I almost rescued a Supermodel on the beach but I don't think she washed up there

It's pretty warm here today so I decide to get some exercise and take a walk to the beach behind my house. It's about 170 steps almost straight down and being it's kind of still winter, I have not been doing this much yet. In the summer I try to do it almost every day. So I figure I will go like half way down, take a little rest, and come back up. Every day I will do some more. So I go down about half way and I can see the beach.



I take a little break, sit down and look around.



I see this "Thing" on the sand that wasn't there the day before. I am part of this seal, whale, turtle rescue thing here on Long Island and I figure it is one of those creatures.

This beach is almost in-accessible except by helicopter or walking down all these steps.
I figure I need to get a little closer to see what it is.

I walk down a little farther knowing that at some point I will have to walk back up and I know there is no cell phone service on the beach.

I go down some more and realize it is a person. OMG. Someone must have had a heart attack, broke a leg, was overcome with velvet or is dying from boredom.



I really don't want to descend all the way down because I am not in shape to go back up.
I watch intensely for maybe five minutes to see if they move.

No movement, they must be hurt, in a coma or dead. OMG again.

If I don't get to them I will not be able to sleep thinking about what could be wrong with them.

So I head down still seeing no movement. I check my phone to see how my stocks are doing, I mean to see if I have, service.

I get to the sand and start walking. He or she is maybe 75 yards away, laying on the sand with their feet facing the water and their head facing the mountain.

If they are hurt, I will have to make it all the way up the stairs to call for help and they will have to dispatch a helicopter as there is no other way to get to this particular beach. Should I put rocks on the beach spelling out "SOS" like they do in the movies?

Light a fire?

My mind is racing. Will I have to do CPR, set a broken leg, perform Mouth to Mouth or just brush the marauding hermit crabs off of the body. I don't know but I am getting closer.

I still see no movement but it is windy and the seagulls are giving me a headache.

I get up to the person and notice it seems to be a female. She had kind of nice looking designer boots on and a down jacket with a hood fringed with fur.

Still no movement so I figure right away, she must be a run away Supermodel that is scared of the Corona Virus and wants to get away from the Paparazzi.

As I walk closer I am shuffling my feet making noise with the rocks to try to stir the person.

Nothing!!

I inch right up to her and yell, "HEY ARE YOU OK? ".

She quickly jerks her head up and says, "Yes, I am Fine, I must have fallen Asleep".

I wanted to say, "Are you like Sleeping Beauty and ate a poison apple that made you fall asleep on the rocks and sand of a deserted beach with your feet near the water or are you some sort of Mermaid that thinks you have ich?

I didn't ask and just said, "I am glad you are not dead because I can't carry you up all those stairs.

And I left. But tonight I will sleep knowing I almost saved a Supermodel and walked up more stairs than I wanted to.

And this one.

Morning walk.



This morning about 6:00am it was still kind of dark and very foggy. I mean pea soup foggy but me not being a Snowflake decided to take my morning walk. I usually walk about three miles almost every morning just because my knees feel like they have broken glass in them and walking seems to make them feel a little better, until I stop of course. Then they feel worse but pain is good because it lets you know you are still on the right side of the grass.

I had one knee replaced but It feels worse so I keep asking my Doctor if he can find my old knee and put it back in.

So after I walked about 100 yards and passed over this dead snake I started down this long country road. The road is a mile and a half long and forest on both sides.

The fog was getting thicker and it was getting quiter. Not that it was noisy before but I could hear birds and the occasional wood chuck argueing with a rabbit.

Now the fog completely engulfed me and I could almost hear the voice of Rod Seirling. (Google him)

I couldn't see anything and now it was dead quiet. I could barely see my own feet but I could smell something that kept me going. It was the unmistakable smell of wet horse and I know there is a rescue horse ranch on this road. But something was "off".

As I walked, I thought I could hear, very faintly, the theme music from the "Twilight Zone".

I felt like I was walking through a time warp and wasn't sure what day it was. Heck, I couldn't even tell what year it was and I worried that when I emerged from this noxious atmosphere that I would be swept back in time to the 1940s and didn't know if I would come face to face with HITLER or Susan Sarandan, who smokes by the way.

The smell of wet horse got stronger and through the fog,I could see horses. They weren't pulling plows or sporting Swastickas which I figured was a good sign.

I could now see a glimpse of the sky half expecting to see a couple of Bi-planes sporting vintage machine guns but thankfully they didn't appear.

I made it to my turn around point and started heading home with the knowledge that all was well and I was still in my own time zone.

That was until I entered my house and my wife was churning butter wearing a corset and a hoop skirt.


I also think of these things on my walks:

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.



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, maybe linguine and clams as she was an excellent cook.


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


And this:

People in history that had something to do with how we keep aquariums.

Aquarium keeping goes back to the ancient Egyptions. They had problems because the water from the Nile wasn't nearly salty enough and was full of left over rocks from carving out pyrimids. Those rocks were carved with copper chisels and their was tiny pieces of copper left in the rock causing all sorts of water quality problems. They also had issues because whenever a fish died, they would try to mumify the poor creature but the mummification process took many weeks and in a few hours the dead fish would stink attracting those hairless cats that they kept as pets.

As time went by there were many people involved in fish keeping so we can call them pioneers. One that comes to mind was Copernicus. In the 1400s he proposed that the Earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around. That in itself had nothing to do with fish, but while he was coming up with this unconventional theory he made a lot of people angry.

Especially people of the clergy who showed their dissatisfaction by throwing clams at his house. Some of the clams broke his Anderson windows and landed in his sumpless reef tank. To his astonishment, his fish started eating the clams and that is how we came to know how to keep Copperband Butterflies.

A similar Pioneer was Galileo. As everyone knows Galileo is famous for inventing the telescope but what many don't know is he also invented the refractometer. Galileo went to the university in Piza. His laboratory was in the Leaning Tower of Piza which made fish keeping "Interesting". His AtO kept making his tank overflow but that has nothing to do with how he invented the refractometer.

Galileo was never a happy kid and was always fuming at his Mother because she gave him a first name that sounded just like his last name. Galileo Galilei. Everyone made fun of him and one day as he was looking through his telescope someone stormed in and yelled "Hey Galileo, Galilei, Galaxy, Gibralta whatever your name is, your Mother is calling you"?

He got so mad he threw his telescope into his reef tank. His Mother heard the commotion and came in just in time to take the instrument out of the water and she looked through it backwards and said. Hey Galley (thats what she called him for short) your salinity looks a little low!

Way before this in the year 79 we had Pliny the Elder. Pliny actually gave us the internet along with Wikipedia. In the year 79 AD that was a big deal because we didn't even have USB plugs so he had to use solar electric to charge his wooden slide rule. We have Voltaire to thank for USB plugs along with "stray voltage". He never liked to use his full name "Nom De Plume Voltaire" because it sounded like a Sissy Girly Man name but as we all know he discovered voltage which is named after him.

Of course we can't have stray voltage without amps. Amps were discovered by Ampere or André-Marie Ampère. He never gained much notorioty because stray voltage doesn't really have any amps to speak of and we never say "our fish died because of stray amps". It's always volts.

We also can't have Volts or Amps without the other guy, Ohms. None of us know who Ohm is named for but it was actually Georg Ohm. No, Really!. Thats the guys name. I think he also had something do do with GFCI's and was a distant cousin of Susan Sarandon, who had something to do with Saran Wrap.

Unfortunately, Ohm was sometimes confused with Olds. Ransom E. Olds was an auto pioneer and we have to thank him for inventing storage places where white flour, ASW and two part calcium additives can be stored along with Oldsmobile parts.

Last but not least we have the Wright Brothers. They owned a bicycle shop which was very profitable, but they got bored, so they invented an airplane. You may not know what they have to do with reef tanks and the truth is, not much.

But during their first historic flight, Orville wanted to see what would happen if he taped a pink-tipped anemone to the left wing of their aircraft. He carefully removed the animal from his thermos bottle, dried it off and applied Gorilla tape.

Orville steadied the wings as the motor of the historic craft roared into action. He let go and Wilbur flew an astonishing 120 feet.

As soon as the craft landed, Orville, who was running alongside came up to the wing to see how the anemone fared. (he didn't care much about the plane or his brother) But to his horror, when Wilbur landed he immediately stepped on the brake propelling the anemone into and through the propeller causing the creature to turn into a very wet snot that engulphed poor Wilbur which in turn gave him the inspiration to invent that little handle on your steering wheel that sprays water onto your windshield to clean away squashed bugs.

I could go on, but I would risk boring you to death which would hopefully make you forget about me giving you a copper fish.

 

[Paul B]

I forgot this one. This one was a little eventful.

 

[BeanAnimal]

You left out a very important difference.

Jesus would give me the copper fish, and would want you to do the same.

 

[Paul B]

Jesus would give me the copper fish, and would want you to do the same.

Maybe you should ask him for one.

 

[jsmkmavity]

Jesus would have made it out of pure gold!

 

[jsmkmavity]

Paul forgot to tell about the time he rescued a coast guard helicopter pilot who crashed near Paul's beach while trying to get away with the beer he stole out of Pauls jeep! The pilot managed to drink 3 of them before Paul could "rescue" him.

 

[Paul B]

I just sold my Lionel Trains. They were 77 years old. My parents got them for me when I was born. The entire set in 1948 sold for about $100.00, and I just got $100.00 for them. A great deal, if I must say so myself.

 

[Minifoot77]

I just sold my Lionel Trains. They were 77 years old. My parents got them for me when I was born. The entire set in 1948 sold for about $100.00, and I just got $100.00 for them. A great deal, if I must say so myself.

Hope you missed a decimal place

 

[Paul B]

Hope you missed a decimal place

Nope, thats it. I would have liked to give them away, but I don't know anyone who cares about model trains and kids just want to look at a stupid tablet.

 

[Freenow54]

My morning walk was un-eventful, dull and raining so I didn't take a picture.

If you want to see what it looked like, just look at this picture from last year, but before you do, smear "Vaseline" on your screen and spray sea water from your reef on it.

Thats what it looked like today.

Beauty

 

[Freenow54]

Now Paul don't stir up Randy

 

[Paul B]

paul you just crack me up. finally caught up on this thread. im still giggling over your spirit experience

Smitten, that was a true story. (kind of). But I also flew on Frontier Airlines while I was in the army and that was a better story.
It's in my Vietnam book and I don't think I have it anywhere else that I could post here. But I will look.

 

[Paul B]

Now Paul don't stir up Randy

He thinks I'm nuts already. But so do a lot of people.