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Tank birthday and I'm a Geezer

Paul B

NJRC Member
My wife loves the thing and you can live in it. It has a small "wine" table that goes on the side. The soft colors change to get you all "Zened" up. And she can get in and out much easier because of MS she can't move her right leg. :biggrin:

I just need to finish all the trim but that is easy. :)
 

Paul B

NJRC Member
So I walked to the beach this morning and today is "Amphipod spawning day". This happens a couple of days a year and you have to be there at dead low tide on a calm day early in the morning so I only catch it every couple of years by accident.

IMG_5379.JPG

I didn't have anything to collect in so I found a Gatoraid bottle and started to turn over the slippery rocks.
The very first rock yielded hundreds of amphipods so I knew I was going to get very lucky.........Well amphipod lucky anyway.

Rocky beach.JPG

Amphipods.JPG


So I collected a few thousand amphipods along with a little sand for the bacteria. It all went in my tank and my fish will be smiling until Labor day.

Tomorrow morning I will go back at the same time with a bucket to see if I can get a few thousand more. :p
 

Paul B

NJRC Member
So this morning I again went hunting. Amphipod hunting. I was an hour late but the amphipods didn't seem to know what time it was and I still had 3 hours until high tide.

This time I went "armed" with a couple of buckets, one large one and a smaller one to scoop up the pods as they tried to sprint away. Most of the pods were much younger than I am and they thought they were faster, but I have wisdom on my side and managed to catch thousands of them and in many cases, their entire family including third cousins. :oops:

They are now in a container in my workshop calming down with a bubbler until I finish making myself and my wife some breakfast of home made bread that I baked yesterday and toasted this morning along with some farm eggs. We don't normally eat amphipods as they tend to get stuck in your teeth. It's also hard to hold them by their tail to stick them in your mouth.

I will put most of them in my tank after breakfast. I like to squirt them in the back or under my reverse under gravel filter so they don't get eaten as I want them to keep spawning and the fish get to occasionally hunt one as it tries to make an escape. I have some of them in there from a few years ago. Their offspring anyway.

I also will dump in the mud and seaweed I collected with them for the bacteria and maybe parasites. :rolleyes:

Of course if you are the type of person who quarantines, medicates and goes to church to get your fish last rites if they die of uronoma, you can't do this.

If just one of the thousands of amphipods has a disease like Corona Virus and he happens to sneeze in your tank, you would have to vaccinate all of them. You may think finding an amphipod vein to put the needle in is the hard part, but it is not. The hard part is not getting alcohol in their eyes when you swab them. They hate that and don't like the "Visine" you would have to put in their eye to relieve the pain. :)
 

Paul B

NJRC Member
Nothing new on my morning beach walk except it looks like someone was doing devil worshiping or trying unsuccessfully to build a raft.
Beach.jpg

They also must have thought the winds at the beach here would move this 10,000 lb rock so they propped it up. :rolleyes:



Propped rock.jpg
 

Paul B

NJRC Member
Last year I put 4 tires on this Jeep. I only buy American tires which isn't easy but they are out there and they say "Made in USA " on them.

I put on larger, wider tires so I could more easily goon the beach.

I first went to Firestone and asked them where their tires are made and they didn't know, so I said, Have a nice day.

Anyway I got a slow leak in one tire last week so I brought the car back to Midas where I got the tire because I (stupidly) bought the road hazard insurance with the tires.

The guy found a nail in the tire near the sidewall in a place he said couldn't be fixed. (I could fix it) :)
So he says: Oh good you bought the road hazard insurance so I figured I would get a tire for free.....YYYyaaaaaaaa.

Nope!

It seems the original tire (last year) sold for about $150.00 but now that tire sells for about $225.00 and the insurance only covers the original cost of the tire. :rolleyes:

(I am sure the people who sell this ridiculous insurance know this) So I figure, OK so I only have to pay $75.00 for the new tire which isn't to bad.

Nope!

I have to pay for mounting, balancing and probably the Mc Donalds hamburger and large Coke the guy was eating when I came in. Then I have to "Re-Insure" the new tire because it seems the "insurance" only covers one incident. :confused:

So the new "Free" tire will cost me about $125.00 which is the amount I originally paid for the tire.

It is my fault because I broke my cardinal rule of buying insurance. I never buy insurance because it is always a scam. If I didn't have the insurance I would have fixed the tire myself in 3 minutes for about 35 cents. And I already have the plugs so I wouldn't even have to spend the 35 cents.

Today they make a big deal out of everything and years ago these things were free or almost free as I plugged dozens of tires and never had a problem. But no one makes money when you fix things yourself. :cool:

Of course this is when I bought the car.

 

MadReefer

Staff member
NJRC Member
Moderator
My experience for at least 20 years they will not fix side wall punctures.

My wife's car needed brakes so brought it to Mavis. They told me all new rotors and pads, quoted me $1175. Car has electronic brake system. I debated and let them do it, bad decision. Two days later get car back brake and emergency brake light flashing; told me computer will reset in 2days. Well car sounded terrible and 2 days later I'm back. Then tell me it needs calibers, few dats later it needs wires and a spring which they paid for. Another week goes by and get the car dame problem. Now I call the dealer and take it in few day later, it wasn't safe to drive. They quote $1300 to get rear caliber, duagnostic, computer reset, etc. I then called Mafia customer service 4 days in a row before I got hold of area manager. They agreed to pay Mavis. Altogether no car for about 4weeks.
 
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myrjon

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
audio was fine .Paul always glad to hear your views.the daddy of saltwater.now i need to make a worm farm!
 

Paul B

NJRC Member
Diana supposedly according to Randy the chemist, it leaves something else in the water we don't want. I used it for many years with no problem but I am not a chemist so now I use iodine for reef tanks that is probably a bottle of Lugols Iodine but there is an angelfish on the cover and it's ten times the price. :biggrin:
 

redfishbluefish

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Diana supposedly according to Randy the chemist, it leaves something else in the water we don't want. I used it for many years with no problem but I am not a chemist so now I use iodine for reef tanks that is probably a bottle of Lugols Iodine but there is an angelfish on the cover and it's ten times the price. :biggrin:

I'm not sure if this is "Randy the Chemist's" reason, but Lugol's is an Iodine salt....containing potassium. Elemental iodine is not a salt....just reactive iodine in some stabilizing solution....likely glycerin. Glycerin would be metabolized as a carbon source.
 

diana a

Staff member
NJRC Member
Moderator
I also use Lugols iodine in a brown glass bottle.

Here is something funny....I just looked on BRS website for iodine and they have a bottle of Lugols iodine with pretty pink coral on it. :p
 

Paul B

NJRC Member
I spent Fathers Day in Manhattan, the place I hate the most in the world and if it wasn't for my Grand Kids I would rather have spent it in a rice paddy in Viet Nam.
I think the bottle with the pink coral is safe to use. :biggrin:

We also went to a wedding on a roof top in Manhattan. It was in the fifties, windy and everyone was freezing but the most dangerous thing was trying not to trip over the penguins. :oops:

When we got to the City of course my wife has to go to the bathroom so we go into Starbucks. I had to order a coffee so she could use the bathroom. Five bucks for a small regular coffee. I told the girl, "I only want one". :rolleyes:

I heard they are going out of business and I really won't care at all.
I worked in Manhattan for almost 50 years and the day I retired was the best day of my life except of course my wedding day and when my Grand Kids were born. :D

I can't believe anyone lives there on purpose.....Like Really!!!!!

Then to get back to the Jitney bus to go the 100 miles back to our house, we got into the wrong UBER. (my fault)

The UBER was supposed to be a black Buick with the license ending in 23C. A black Toyota stopped in front of us and opened the trunk. His licence ended in 3C so I just "assumed" it was for us.

The guy starts going the wrong way in Manhattan so we found out we got into the wrong car. Now we have 15 minutes to get to the bus and we got there just as the bus did.
 
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