Tank birthday and I'm a Geezer

[Paul B]

Busy morning like many people had. After we came back from breakfast I decided to do a little maintenance. For some reason I got ambitious. I had to put air in my car tires and add some oil and wiper washer fluid. Normal things that we don't want to do in the winter, but it is fairly warm today.
Then I saw my tank and figured I was in a maintenance mood so I better do this today. One of my gorgonians touched a sponge and the sponge started to grow up one of the stems. So I now have a very long, skinny sponge connected to a purple gorg. An encrusting gorg drifted against another purple gorg and started to grow over that so I also have two types of gorgs growing together on the same stem. Two corals fell or were pushed down by the big hermit crabs and were turned over on the gravel. The hermit crabs didn't seem to care and were wiping their "feet" on it.
I have a powerhead laying behind the rocks blowing water over the top of the center of the reef. At least that is what it was supposed to do but it wasn't doing anything for a while. I really didn't want to remove it because the cord was running behind the structure and I had to move large rocks to get it out. I cleaned it and noticed that it stopped because, as always happened with these after many years, the hole in the center of the magnet gets worn and enlarges, usually in an egg shaped fashion. When that happens the magnet hits the sides of the hole and eventually wears through which isn't good if you don't like getting shocked.
You can of course buy a new rotor, but anyone can do that. I take a piece of shrink tubing and put it over the shaft which enlarges it. If the hole in the magnet is misshapen or not large enough, I drill it out. Now the thing will run another year or two when I can do it again. Most of my powerheads are "fixed" in that fashion.
I also noticed that my algae scrubber was growing lettuce so my porcelain crabs could open up a produce stand so I had to take that apart and clean it.
All normal maintenance like everyone does.

 

[Paul B]

As I was doing this maintenance I noticed all the sponges I have. I love sponges.

Each sponge filters 20,000 gallons (I made up that number because I forgot the actual number) of seawater a day and are great at removing car wash soap from your tank.

I feed every day along with other things, clams. Clams come with clam juice that clouds the water. I like the fact that it clouds the water because clam juice is actually microscope particles of clam. Along with, I imagine, clam spit. My water clears in a very short while due to the sponges, some of which are 10" across and 10 years old. Most of them I didn't even buy and have no idea where they came from. Many of them, especially the white ones only grow in the dark. If you move one of those white sponges into the light, they grow algae and croak.

I think we should have as many sponges in our tanks as we can fit. Fantastic creatures.

All this blue stuff is a sponge. I keep cutting off pieces and giving it away so it doesn't encroach on my bed because my wife frowns on that.

 

[Paul B]

We have this door in our bathroom that is for a closet/medicine cabinet/laundry shoot. The thing is 7' high and rounded. I designed this bathroom many years ago and I don't like straight walls, doors or women. So the door weighs about 150lbs, give or take 100lbs. The outside of it is white laminate.


A few months ago the cabinet hinges started to croak as the door is very heavy. It also has shelves built into it which I think my wife stores bowling balls or rocks on. The hinges gradually sagged to where it was hitting the bottom of the cabinet and wouldn't close all the way.


I found four hinges in my workshop that were the same design, from the same manufacturer but these were much larger and I figured I would install them. (I could build a Space Shuttle with the stuff in my workshop, a really small cheap Space Shuttle.)


I remove one of the center hinges and try to fit in the larger hinge which fits into the hole in the door, but the holes in the back end of course don't line up because these are larger but being smart, I had a drill with me. I drill the holes in the cabinet to match the hinge and install the thing.


Now I try to close the door, but being this hinge is much larger, the door won't close because it has a larger swing so I have change all the hinges. No problem (I built many cabinets so this is simple)


I get my drill, screw drivers, pliers, screws and anything else I may need because after I start this, I can't let go of the door because if at least two of the hinges are not on, the door will crash on the floor breaking off a large piece of it. And this door probably cost $1,000.00 today. (about the same as a two gallon Nano tank) It would be real hard to duplicate being it is round.


The bathroom floor of course is tile, 12" white, very slippery tiles. So I take a kitchen chair which has wooden legs and bring it into the bathroom. A ladder wouldn't fit in there so I need the chair to stand on.


I gently remove the top hinge while I am holding the weight of the door with my right arm. Now I take the new hinge and stick it in and drill the holes with my bad arm (I had a shoulder operation and it is not 100% yet but good enough for this simple job)


I have to hold the hinge, drill the holes, put in the screw and screw it in, all with my left hand, and this has to be done with the door almost closed, so I have to reach about 3' in to the dark closet while I am on the chair holding the weight of the door. I can barely reach it. No problem.


As I push the drill to make the hole, the chair slips backward on the tiles forcing me to grab the shelf. The shelf with all the hardware on it. Most of the hardware bounces into the laundry shoot at the bottom of the cabinet. Luckily, I was still holding the weight of the door and the bowling balls, or barbells so it didn't break.


But now, I can't close the door so it is hanging on the bottom hinges, I can't get down because the chair is to far back and even though I am jumping to edge it closer, it keeps moving backward. I have no screws to temporarily secure the door and I have to pee.


Luckily for me, I also brought a tool with me that would allow me to remedy this situation, my cell phone. So I call my neighbor. His wife is my fish sitter so they know how to get into my house. Ring......Ring.....Ring....Ring...."The person you have called is not available". (Of course not)


OK, so I call his wife. Ring...Ring...Ring...She is also not available. Like Duh


So I gradually start inching down as I use my fingers to "walk" up the door and hold it's weight. This is when I realized I should have removed the bowling balls from the shelves.


I am almost down and my fingers are aching from the weight when my phone rings. It's my neighbor. I tell him real fast, "get over here".


He finds his wife who knows how to get in my house and comes over just in time to give me this horrified look and take the weight off the door.


Now with someone holding the weight, it is a snap.

The large spring near the top hinge is to "help" take the weight of the rocks and other heavy things my wife feels is necessary to store on a cabinet door.

 

[Paul B]

My wife loves lobster and last night she taught a CCD class at the Catholic school so I made her a nice lobster dinner. On these forums most people call these a clean up crew, but here we call them dinner. I know how people feel about killing one of these for dinner but I didn't want to wait for him to die of old age, so I carefully brought him into my living room and put him on a chair. I put a piece of string next to him. Then I turned on Rap music and left the room. When I came back, he hung himself.

 

[Paul B]

I took my wife here for dinner last night Oheka Castle - Wikipedia
Our daughter gave that to us for my wife's birthday. It is the second largest private residence in the US. (my house is the third ) It was on 443 acres (I have a few less) and was one of the first fireproof buildings in NY, maybe the country.
The place has 127 rooms but most of them do not have reef tanks. There are 32 guest rooms and I assume Supermodels rent there. Megyn Kelly was married there but not to me. There have been 100 attempts for arsonists to burn the place down while it was empty for 4 years, but that is what "Fire Proof" means, you can't burn it down. We met the owner, very nice guy. He was shot in the head in 2014 in the parking lot but obviously survived and seems fine.
The place is a historical residence as I assume the owner would need a really long vacuum hose to vacuum 127 rooms so he has help. Maybe one of two of the Supermodels help him out.

 

[Paul B]

We got back from Disneyworld last night and today as I was feeding the tank I noticed something moving in my old bio pellet reactor. I built and installed this silly thing a few years ago as an experiment and figured it was a stupid idea because the pellets made the tank run so much worse so I threw them out. I keep the reactor there with nothing in it only because I am to lazy to remove it as it is plumbed in series with the skimmer. It is filled with brittle stars who seem happy so I leave it alone and forget about it. I see now that it is filled with shrimp. I have not had any shrimp in the tank in many months or maybe years except a pair of pistol shrimp that I figured were mating so it must be from them. I don't know how long they have been in the reactor and I am surprised they are in there because water flows through it and into the skimmer. I can't get them out because if I shut off the skimmer, the water drains out of the thing and back to the tank. They seem happy so I will leave them there and see what happens. I doubt they will reach adult size in there but like everything else, it is an experiment.

It is the thing on the right.

 

[Paul B]

Tonight we are having dinner guests. Two of out very close friends, my wife went to high school together and I used to drive the both of them home from school.
Anyway 2 hours ago he called screaming that he has a flood, water all over his house and he can't use any water because it all comes out under his toilet bowl in his basement. Now I don't want them to cancel dinner because my wife and I were cooking all day and he is a Vegan which I don't understand because he is about 300lbs. He must eat a lot of grapes or he grazes in his yard all night. I told him it is cheap to cook for him because I did all my shopping in a sod farm.
I race over to his house and jump into the flood in his basement where he has enough food stored for WW3. I never saw so much canned food in my life.
So I assess the situation and see for one thing that his toilet bowl has no bolts holding it down. OK, water still should not come out from there unless you flush "that" bowl. So I know the Main trap is clogged and any water used in the house will come out the lowest place. (I was a plumber in another life) I need to open the trap.
The trap is under a DIY cabinet that some Jiboni built before he bought the house 20 years ago. Then another "architect" built a wall in front of this 8' long cabinet so it can't be removed without sawing it in 3 parts. Of course it if filled with every type of canned food there is. Beans, pickles, olives, onions, tuna fish. I could eat for two years just with what was on the top shelf.
So we make a line and hand out all the food so we can move the cabinet to the opposite wall about 10" away. Luckily I am only 11" wide so after we moved the cabinet, I snaked myself back there. It was hard because the water main is also back there and I had to crawl under it.
Now I am back there wedged in thinking how am I going to get out as I am not exactly 20 years old any more. As I am thinking, something lands on my head. Then I feel something else land on my arm, then something jumps in my eye. It is pitch dark because they are still looking for a drop light. Things are jumping all over me, on my head, my eyes etc. Then I feel something crawling up my leg, AAAAAAAAAAAAGggggggggghhhh
They are all over me. My friend comes with the light and yells, ARE THERE ANY CRICKETS BACK THERE?.. Oh yeah, you got crickets. I am surprised you have any food left because you have a cricket Zoo back here.
Then I see sticky cricket traps loaded with crickets. There were so many crickets on those traps that they were giving each other mouth to mouth resuscitation. I am swatting them off of me as they were annoying especially females who I think were coming on to me if you know what I mean.
So I look for the 3" plugs that cover the trap but of course they are covered in dirt and crickets that died of old age or rickets, (get it, rickets) This is a true story by the way.
I dig out the dirt and pry out the cap, water comes flooding out. This is not RO/DI water either.
I ask for a shop vac. Of course he doesn't have one. Now who doesn't own a shop vac! So he runs to his neighbors to get one while I am getting swarmed by these little devils and I can barely take a breath because I am on my knees wedged in between the dead cricket covered cement wall and this old cabinet with the water main sticking me in the ear.
He finally runs in with the shop vac. He puts it on the top of the cabinet and turns it on. I suck out all the "stuff" in the trap after we empty this 15 gallon shop vac three times and now the pipe is clear.
I crawl back out with a little help and they are on their way here.
I doused myself with Clorox and took two showers.

 

[Mark_C]

The crickets were probably friends of the lobster.

 

[Paul B]

Some of them were twins of the lobster, especially the ones with the antlers.
Now I am going back there to help him lift the rug to throw out and build new shelves to put the supermarket that he has stored there.

 

[Paul B]

I would never leave one of my friends in a predicament like that and my friends know that which is why they know they can call me at any hour for any problem. That's why I have friends from grammar school and I would do anything for them.
Another friend called me once when her husband was soldering some plumbing pipes in a small closet and he fainted from the fumes or lack of oxygen. It was in the middle of the night so I had to go there and fix the pipe because they couldn't turn on the water.
But the best one was when we were going to a wedding. WE were supposed to pick up our friends on the way. He was finishing his basement. Just before we left, he calls me screaming (I get that a lot) saying he broke his water main coming into his basement. You can't shut that off because the valve is out by the street buried somewhere in his grass a couple of feet down. By the time you find it, you will have to get out a canoe to get through your basement.
So I run to my friends plumbing supply and get a slip fit fitting and bring my wedding clothes to his house. Our wife's go to the wedding. My friend is no dope so he found a broom handle, shaved it down and banged it into the broken pipe stopping the water, but only after 50 gallons or so of water flooded his newly finished basement.
I have the slip fitting ready, we open all the faucets and we put on our SCUBA goggles and snorkels. No really. I know as soon as we remove that broom stick, water will shoot out so fast, we won't be able to see. So we are ready and he tries to take out the broom stick. It won't move. It swelled up in the pipe. Now we have to cut the pipe. Before we do, we prepare another broom stick in case this doesn't work. Now we are wearing large plastic garbage bags with our heads sticking out, SCUBA masks and snorkels and start cutting the pipe. Water is gushing out in all directions as we cut, the water is hitting the walls, our faces and everywhere in 8' sweeps. Good thing we had the masks or we wouldn't be able to see. Now I am feverishly trying to connect the two cut ends of the pipe together but it is hard due to the deluge so we are working by feel.
We finally get the two ends of the pipe in this fitting and clamp it down.
The water stops and is now coming out the faucets. We carefully shut those off one by one and there are no leaks.
That was 25 years ago and that pipe has not leaked yet.
After the wedding I went home and immediately put a bracket on my water main so it can't be moved.

 

[Paul B]

Why you need a feeder for certain types of fish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsGrL9nxJPs

 

[Paul B]

I was just jerking around with my water cooled LED lighting system and noticed that my empty reactor is still filled with baby shrimp. They grew a little and I am surprised they are still in there because the water goes into the bottom and out through the top so if they are day dreaming, they will be carried into the skimmer where they will have a nice sauna due to my ozonizor then, if they live through that, into my tank.
I also think my male bangai cardinal is near the end of his life. I know I said that last year but he is way past his normal life span and although looks like the picture of health, he is dying of old age and barely eats. Their lifespan in the sea is only 3 years and I have him longer than that. I thought I would have lost him months ago but he is still hanging in there.
When a fish dies of old age they act somewhat like we do. He slowed down and just hangs around his usual haunts starring at me thinking over his life, what he accomplished and what legacy he will leave behind. He lost most interest in food and I think he is too lazy to eat. We do the same thing as we age and I saw my own Mother, Mother N Law and last week ,my best friends Mom do the same thing just before they died.
Their body lost the capacity to digest food so even if I wanted to stupidly force feed him, it would do no good. Fish that are dying of old age also show no disease symptoms. Eventually he will start to go blind then other fish may pick on him. At that point, if I can grab him, I will euthanize him. No I won't hit him over the head with a hammer or lay him in the street until a school bus runs him over. Instead I will put him in salt water in the freezer where he will slow down until his heart stops. Cold blooded creatures all slow down when chilled. Turtles, lizzards, snakes, bears and Paris Hilton all slow down. (Yes I know bears are not cold blooded and I knew you would correct me.)

No need to feel bad for the fish as he lived a full and happy life. He also spawned many times. Even though he looks perfect, I give him another week. I could be wrong but that is my guess.



I am not sure if Mermaids are cold blooded. Maybe only the lower half of them

 

[Paul B]

I think that bangai cardinal is making a fool out of me as he is eating well and looks better than he ever did. He is well past his supposed lifespan so maybe he is taking suppliments.
My copperband also had this dark mark on his side and now it is almost gone. This is how he looked a few months ago.


Then a few weeks ago it faded.


Now it faded even more which leads me to believe he drew that black mark on his side with magic marker.

 

[Paul B]

I just finished a new one which I really like. The glass is two liquor bottles cut in half and the necks also cut off. I am not crazy about those bottles so am drinking heavily to get two more, nice looking bottles. I hope my liver holds out.
The part where the antique radio switch is in is a quart paint can. I cut out about 3" of the middle and squashed the ends together and the base is oak. There is an 11" 40 watt bulb in there.

 

[Paul B]

I just thought of this and figured it may be interesting. When we were first married my tank was a 40 gallon which was considered pretty big then. I had the tank before we were married so naturally the tank came along with me when my wife and I got our first apartment. That apartment was on the first floor of an attached home and it was the smallest apartment I have ever seen. But we couldn't rub two nickels together to make a dime so it sufficed for a few years. We had one tiny closet in the entire apartment and that was under a stair case. The "living room, dining room and kitchen" was really one small room. The other room was the bedroom. In the part of the apartment we called the dining room, which was really just the tiny entrance into the place we had the fish tank. The tank took up almost a quarter of the hall way/dining area, which had no table, we just called it that to make it sound like we had a dining room. We really had two stools at the kitchen counter as that was all that would fit.
When our Daughter was born, we put her in the same whicker bassinet that I was in when I was born. Luckily it was on wheels because we had to wheel her back and forth to be able to walk past the bassinet and the fish tank.
I am surprised my new wife put up with that for so long and still does.
One day just two days after we moved in I came home from work to find my wife hysterical crying. I said, whats wrong. She said the stove (which was brand new and she never used it yet) blew up right after she closed the oven door to check on some Chinese food she was warming up for dinner. She wanted me to call the stove manufacturer and tell them they almost killed her. There was Chinese food all over the newly painted apartment and the fish tank. Luckily the fish didn't mind the salty food. I inspected the oven and it looked like a pot belly stove. The insulation was coming out and the sides were bent out. The bottom of the oven was also bent down.
In those days you had to turn on the gas to the oven, then light it with a match. Now they are all electric start. I pulled out the stove and started to take it apart to see if I could find the cause of the explosion.
My wife was just yelling about the manufacturer.
Then I found the problem. As I said this was a tiny apartment, (and a tiny stove) My wife was just 18 and we had just came back from our Honeymoon two days prior to this. We also had no money to replace the stove.
I found an exploded can of "PAM" spray in the oven. The stuff you spray in a pan so stuff don't stick. I can tell you that PAM doesn't keep Chinese food from sticking to walls or fish tanks.
She would store stuff in the oven for lack of any other place to put it and that can must have rolled in the back where she didn't see it.
I had to take every part out of that stove, insulation, rivets, everything and straighten it out. I got it looking almost like new and it worked for the next five years until we moved.
This is her then

 

[Paul B]

Today after breakfast at a diner my wife and I went to the gym. Our regular gym is closed this week because they are doing a water change in the pool. I think they got algae, cyano or flatworms, I really don't know but the town lets us go to another gym if ours is closed.

This other gym is beautiful. It is also gigantic with maybe fifty new machines. A huge room for basketball where you can probably have 4 games going on at once and a very big aerobics studio. Outside they have electric plugs in the parking lot if you have an electric car (which no one has) and all the shrubbery uses almost no water like cactus so the water drains down through the rocks to be collected to use in the bathrooms. Besides myself and my wife, there were two other people there. We have gone there a few times and never saw more than two or three people there. Anyway, after exercising I went into the bathroom.

A sign over the urinals and toilet bowls reads "Gray recycled water Do Not Drink."

I am so glad they posted those signs because I was thirsty and just about to stick my head in there for a drink. I mean, is it me! Do they really need those signs? It's like that little bag they put in with electronics that read "Do Not Eat". Like how hungry are you anyway!

 

[redfishbluefish]

One word.....Lawyers!


Oh, and I'll add a couple more words.....stupid people.


Have you purchased a ladder recently....it's covered in labels of every possibility of misuse....because of lawyers and stupid people. And that's why that 20 dollar ladder cost you 140 bucks.

 

[Paul B]

Even if I wanted to sue the gym, I wouldn't drink water from a urinal. I would rather the lawyer did
Especially those lawyers on that commercial that say "If you have ever been injured anywhere, doing anything you can sue someone and make big bucks for doing nothing.
If you fall on the ice on my sidewalk, that is because you are clumsy and it is wintertime, get over it or fall on a lawyer.

 

[Paul B]

Queen anthius eating clams, worms and Mysis. Lousy video and colors are washed out so I will also add a better video just eating baby brine shrimp.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxQaV01x_M8&feature=youtu.be


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frNlgC3GN3c

 

[JRWOHLER]

Some lawyer got a swirly as a kid and ended up swallowing some water that is the reason.