Thinking Outside the Box
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Paul B
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Thanks OllieNZ. We are doing fine. In a week I will get a new knee and in the future, hopefully a new head. 
Paul, always enjoy your humor and reflections on life and fish. I am tempted to find an old under gravel plate and set up a reverse flow tank....but I have all this Eheim and Tunze stuff that won't die and no one wants to buy it so that is how it goes. Just about to move my live rock to a new tank in my office. The rock has been in one tank or another since the 90's and no one wants it either even though it is from Walt Smith back when he sold real live rock out of Fiji. My first saltwater tank used Dolomite as the filter media in the drip trays...worked great. You might be onto something there as well. Just uncovered three Sanders ozone generators in my shop....no one wants them either!
Hope you and your wife have a great day!
Hope you and your wife have a great day!
Thanks OllieNZ. We are doing fine. In a week I will get a new knee and in the future, hopefully a new head.
I hope the tin knee installation goes well, my Nan had both hers done a few years ago and has been exceedingly happy with them as it's allowed her to resume her golf career with great success.
I'm not sure why you think you need a new head, apart from the lack of hair, if that's the case and you do get some new hair then save some of the supermodels for the rest of us
Elegance Coral
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Hello, Paul.
You know I have nothing but respect for you, but it wouldn't be right to have a thread like this without the input from the other side of the box. Doesn't look like anyone else will do it, so here goes........ LOL
The argument could be made that it isn't the modern hobbyists that's living in a box. Most people today manage their tanks based on decades of people thinking outside the box and coming up with new, different, more efficient, or "better" ways of doing things. Through thinking outside the box, equipment, and techniques, have changed and evolved over the years. You're still doing things like we did decades ago, so one could say that you're the one not thinking outside the box.
I've got well over 30 years at this. Not as long as you, but longer than most. I've seen many changes over the years. My first tank was ran very similar to the way you run yours. Started with air powered UG filter, then upgrades to maxijet powered UG, then reverse flow maxijet UG. I built my first skimmer, that was very similar to yours. It was 6' tall, and 4" in diameter. Used a little Giant pump with a waterbed fill and drain venturi. I used a Christmas tree stand to hold it up vertically, and an upside down pickle jar on top. We didn't have much of a choice but to build our own back then. Reef Octopus and Deltec didn't exist.
I kept fish and coral alive and well in this old system. Even had Goniopora stokesi and rock/flower anemones reproducing. Even had Elegance coral, ocellaris, and royal gramma spawning. Back then, I was young and VERY egotistical. I thought I knew it all. I had some success so I was thinking inside the box. My way "worked", and therefore it was the "best" and only way of doing things. Anyone that would do something differently was just foolish and didn't understand what they were doing. Then I was served a healthy portion of crow. I still remember it. I believed we needed to add a fish to cycle a tank. Then someone asked, "Why is the fish needed?" I thought long and hard about it. I became angry and frustrated, mainly at myself, because I didn't have a good answer to the question. That's when I realized that maybe I didn't have the understanding I thought I did. Maybe I should keep a more open mind and start thinking outside the box a little. That's when I really started to learn.
Today, my system has very little in common with that old system. Because I've thought outside the box. I've listened to other hobbyists and their experiences. I've read many articles written for our hobby, and I've read countless research papers. I've also done a ridiculous amount of research/experimenting on my own. I've even swam the reefs of the Florida Keys for decades and watched the slow and steady demise. Countless times in this hobby, I've had to face the fact that someone else had a "better" way of doing things, or that maybe I didn't quite understand things as well as I thought. This has led to a system that has changed and evolved over the years as my understanding changed and evolved. This is only possible by thinking outside the box. If I was still thinking inside the box, I'd still be running that old UG filter and 6' tall PVC skimmer.
I never put anything through QT back in the day. I've lost lots of critters because of it too. Today I quarantine EVERYTHING before it goes into my systems. Not because I believe my fish or livestock have some immune deficiency, but because I understand that there are some diseases and parasites that even the healthiest of animals can't defend themselves against, in the confines of our tiny glass boxes. The last time I did not QT taught me this hard lesson. I had a clownfish system, with multiple healthy, well fed, spawning pairs. Some I had for well over a decade. I purchased a retired pair of breeder clowns from one of the biggest breeders in the country. (I won't call them out) They placed the fish in a bag, and they went from that bag to my system. I thought, surely they should be clean. They should have never even come into contact with a wild diseased fish. Within one week of placing those fish into my system, every one of my clowns were dead. They brought brooklynella into my system. I had fish die while they were trying to care for their eggs. It wasn't that they were weak, stressed, or had some immune deficiency. The relatively small water volume, and abundance of host fish, enabled the parasite to reproduce prolifically, overwhelming every fish in the system. There is no amount of probiotics, or live food, that would have saved those fish. QT may, or may not, have saved the fish I purchased, but it surely would have saved the rest of my fish.
Peace
EC
You know I have nothing but respect for you, but it wouldn't be right to have a thread like this without the input from the other side of the box. Doesn't look like anyone else will do it, so here goes........ LOL
The argument could be made that it isn't the modern hobbyists that's living in a box. Most people today manage their tanks based on decades of people thinking outside the box and coming up with new, different, more efficient, or "better" ways of doing things. Through thinking outside the box, equipment, and techniques, have changed and evolved over the years. You're still doing things like we did decades ago, so one could say that you're the one not thinking outside the box.
I've got well over 30 years at this. Not as long as you, but longer than most. I've seen many changes over the years. My first tank was ran very similar to the way you run yours. Started with air powered UG filter, then upgrades to maxijet powered UG, then reverse flow maxijet UG. I built my first skimmer, that was very similar to yours. It was 6' tall, and 4" in diameter. Used a little Giant pump with a waterbed fill and drain venturi. I used a Christmas tree stand to hold it up vertically, and an upside down pickle jar on top. We didn't have much of a choice but to build our own back then. Reef Octopus and Deltec didn't exist.
I kept fish and coral alive and well in this old system. Even had Goniopora stokesi and rock/flower anemones reproducing. Even had Elegance coral, ocellaris, and royal gramma spawning. Back then, I was young and VERY egotistical. I thought I knew it all. I had some success so I was thinking inside the box. My way "worked", and therefore it was the "best" and only way of doing things. Anyone that would do something differently was just foolish and didn't understand what they were doing. Then I was served a healthy portion of crow. I still remember it. I believed we needed to add a fish to cycle a tank. Then someone asked, "Why is the fish needed?" I thought long and hard about it. I became angry and frustrated, mainly at myself, because I didn't have a good answer to the question. That's when I realized that maybe I didn't have the understanding I thought I did. Maybe I should keep a more open mind and start thinking outside the box a little. That's when I really started to learn.
Today, my system has very little in common with that old system. Because I've thought outside the box. I've listened to other hobbyists and their experiences. I've read many articles written for our hobby, and I've read countless research papers. I've also done a ridiculous amount of research/experimenting on my own. I've even swam the reefs of the Florida Keys for decades and watched the slow and steady demise. Countless times in this hobby, I've had to face the fact that someone else had a "better" way of doing things, or that maybe I didn't quite understand things as well as I thought. This has led to a system that has changed and evolved over the years as my understanding changed and evolved. This is only possible by thinking outside the box. If I was still thinking inside the box, I'd still be running that old UG filter and 6' tall PVC skimmer.
I never put anything through QT back in the day. I've lost lots of critters because of it too. Today I quarantine EVERYTHING before it goes into my systems. Not because I believe my fish or livestock have some immune deficiency, but because I understand that there are some diseases and parasites that even the healthiest of animals can't defend themselves against, in the confines of our tiny glass boxes. The last time I did not QT taught me this hard lesson. I had a clownfish system, with multiple healthy, well fed, spawning pairs. Some I had for well over a decade. I purchased a retired pair of breeder clowns from one of the biggest breeders in the country. (I won't call them out) They placed the fish in a bag, and they went from that bag to my system. I thought, surely they should be clean. They should have never even come into contact with a wild diseased fish. Within one week of placing those fish into my system, every one of my clowns were dead. They brought brooklynella into my system. I had fish die while they were trying to care for their eggs. It wasn't that they were weak, stressed, or had some immune deficiency. The relatively small water volume, and abundance of host fish, enabled the parasite to reproduce prolifically, overwhelming every fish in the system. There is no amount of probiotics, or live food, that would have saved those fish. QT may, or may not, have saved the fish I purchased, but it surely would have saved the rest of my fish.
Peace
EC
Elegance Coral
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EC, I think you think very far outside the box as your experience reveals. You have a thriving tank because you didn't follow the normal ways to do things. Of course quarantining or not quaranting will not prevent every disease, thinking that way would be foolish.
In this thread about the box I was referring to the people stuffed all the way into the dark recesses of the box. The people who change water if they get nusience algae or use cleaner shrimp to cure ich.
Treating fish they buy just to be "safe" and shutting off lights to kill algae yet keep their corals alive. Stressing if a screw falls into the water etc.
Those things have been debunked many times but they are always re hashed when someone has a problem.
I feel, and you probably do also, that this hobby is very easy but we make it hard. IMO we make our fish sick, not the dealer, collector or wholesaler. If that were the case, my fish would also get sick, but they don't. I am not that smart or fastidious but like you, I am a compulsive reader. I used to read everything until I started writing myself because as you get more knowledge you start to question what some authors are talking about.
Virtually everything I ever sent to a publisher was published as fact. But I have no qualifications, no degrees, no letters after my name. I am just a guy with a fish tank. But also IMO people with too much college lose their common sense and instead of going by their eyes, they rely on someone elses research. I don't believe too much on that and use their research as a starting point and then figure it out myself. Sometimes they were right and I was not, sometimes not so much.
I killed more fish than Starkist Tuna but it's experience that allows us to be good at this, not so much lab work.
I feel fish are very robust and don't need to be coddled, dipped, treated, quarantined or de wormed. Why is it that I have never had a fish with internal worms that were a problem?
It's not me, it's the fish that are keeping themselves healthy if we just let them do what they have been doing for millions of years with no help from us. I find that the less we mess with them,the better they are.
They just need the correct bacteria and parasites. If your fish were introduced to Brook before you got them, I feel they would be immune.
In this thread about the box I was referring to the people stuffed all the way into the dark recesses of the box. The people who change water if they get nusience algae or use cleaner shrimp to cure ich.
Treating fish they buy just to be "safe" and shutting off lights to kill algae yet keep their corals alive. Stressing if a screw falls into the water etc.
Those things have been debunked many times but they are always re hashed when someone has a problem.
I feel, and you probably do also, that this hobby is very easy but we make it hard. IMO we make our fish sick, not the dealer, collector or wholesaler. If that were the case, my fish would also get sick, but they don't. I am not that smart or fastidious but like you, I am a compulsive reader. I used to read everything until I started writing myself because as you get more knowledge you start to question what some authors are talking about.
Virtually everything I ever sent to a publisher was published as fact. But I have no qualifications, no degrees, no letters after my name. I am just a guy with a fish tank. But also IMO people with too much college lose their common sense and instead of going by their eyes, they rely on someone elses research. I don't believe too much on that and use their research as a starting point and then figure it out myself. Sometimes they were right and I was not, sometimes not so much.
I killed more fish than Starkist Tuna but it's experience that allows us to be good at this, not so much lab work.
I feel fish are very robust and don't need to be coddled, dipped, treated, quarantined or de wormed. Why is it that I have never had a fish with internal worms that were a problem?
It's not me, it's the fish that are keeping themselves healthy if we just let them do what they have been doing for millions of years with no help from us. I find that the less we mess with them,the better they are.
They just need the correct bacteria and parasites. If your fish were introduced to Brook before you got them, I feel they would be immune.
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