Tank birthday and I'm a Geezer

[Paul B]

My good friend paulie collected this in Barnicut bay Jersey and sent it to me.
(He is a very nice, generous guy)
It is some codium seaweed with some limpets attached
.
At first I thought they were chitons, but they are limpets. Very common here on the east coast of the US and probably all over the world in intertidal zones or very shallow water. They are like very slow moving snails but they look like half of a clam or scallop shell.
They are nocturnal and slowly graze on algae.

This piece has 3 or 4 limpets on it but they may crawl someplace at night. Very cool.
The codium seaweed is also very common in the Atlantic right near shore. It lives a few months in a tank. The problem with it is crabs, and snails bite off pieces near the bottom and the thing floats. I never saw fish eat it. and I collect it all the time as it looks very cool. I wish it lived longer in a tank.
This is it in my tank

 

[Paulie 069]

My good friend paulie collected this in Barnicut bay Jersey and sent it to me.
(He is a very nice, generous guy)
It is some codium seaweed with some limpets attached
.
At first I thought they were chitons, but they are limpets. Very common here on the east coast of the US and probably all over the world in intertidal zones or very shallow water. They are like very slow moving snails but they look like half of a clam or scallop shell.
They are nocturnal and slowly graze on algae.

This piece has 3 or 4 limpets on it but they may crawl someplace at night. Very cool.
The codium seaweed is also very common in the Atlantic right near shore. It lives a few months in a tank. The problem with it is crabs, and snails bite off pieces near the bottom and the thing floats. I never saw fish eat it. and I collect it all the time as it looks very cool. I wish it lived longer in a tank.
This is it in my tank


View attachment 30059

It looks so cool in your tank,, anybody else would have QT it for half year,, but you figured it out that it’s all Mother Nature makings and are ment to be together, not in a QT bucket or whatever

 

[Paul B]

They won't live half a year in a tropical tank so quarantining is a moot point.

I also think quarantining is the worst thing us Geezers invented. But we invented that before we knew any better. Eventually you learn how to keep this stuff healthy naturally.

 

[Paulie 069]

They won't live half a year in a tropical tank so quarantining is a moot point.

I also think quarantining is the worst thing us Geezers invented. But we invented that before we knew any better. Eventually you learn how to keep this stuff healthy naturally.

I’m a firm believer that Mother Nature will take care of things as long as you do your part to help her

 

[Paul B]

Some day I need to do some work on my tank. I need to move the entire middle section back a few inches because some of the corals are to close to the glass and my magnet cleaner hits it.

I did this once before and I don't look forward to it. I have to wear thick gloves so my fireclowns don't take my arm off and I have to break a lot of growing stuff and tear a bunch of sponge and that stuff is tough as wood. I will probably also break some montipora and other SPS.
There are two large, like 6 or 7" anemones back there that won't be happy and my powerhead is also back there that feeds the skimmer/reverse undergravel filter and algae scrubber.

The middle section from about where the copperband is to about the gorgonian on the right side is needs to go back a couple of inches.
This is an older picture and the corals are not that big here.

 

[Paulie 069]

Some day I need to do some work on my tank. I need to move the entire middle section back a few inches because some of the corals are to close to the glass and my magnet cleaner hits it.

I did this once before and I don't look forward to it. I have to wear thick gloves so my fireclowns don't take my arm off and I have to break a lot of growing stuff and tear a bunch of sponge and that stuff is tough as wood. I will probably also break some montipora and other SPS.
There are two large, like 6 or 7" anemones back there that won't be happy and my powerhead is also back there that feeds the skimmer/reverse undergravel filter and algae scrubber.

The middle section from about where the copperband is to about the gorgonian on the right side is needs to go back a couple of inches.
This is an older picture and the corals are not that big here.

Good luck brother I’m sure you’ll be fine

 

[Paul B]

Growing up in the fiftees. This should be in the Lounge.

I decided to write this because this morning we face timed our Grand Daughter who has just about anything you can imagine and is bored out of her head.

Because of Covid they had to leave their apartment in the West Village in Manhattan and go to their other home on a mountain in Vermont where they have a small pool, pool table, ping pong table, Pin Ball machine, trampoline, ATVs, (along with hundreds of acres of woods with trails) snowmobiles, A swimming pond, rope swing etc.


Anyway:
I never thought we were poor, I grew up in Queens New York but I was born in Brooklyn near Coney Island.
In those days we didn't get allowances, had no computers, cell phones, tablets or just about anything else. We also played outside no matter what the weather was like because "if" you had a TV, it was tiny and of course black and white. There was one or two shows on like The Ed Sullivan show which was a variety show where they would get "talented" people that would sing, dance or balance dishes on their nose.

There was sort of "Color" TV but that was a curved piece of glass that you would hang in front of the black and white TV. It was tinted blue near the top and green near the bottom so if you were watching a scene which was in a grassy field, it looked really cool, but any other scene just looked ridiculous.
We didn't have one of those but if you did, I would imagine you would keep watching "The Sound of Music" which had a lot of singing out in the grass.
I do remember seeing Elvis Presley on there in his first public appearance. That was the extent of our indoor entertainment and remember, there was no air conditioning.

My "Fish Tank" was the bottom of a wine barrel or an enameled basin which I kept turtles, tadpoles, minnows, and newts that I would catch in streams.
There were no fish stores but there were toy stores and fish would be sold there and called "Toy Fish". They had guppies, molly's, swordtails and little else. Occasionally they would have a crawfish. Eventually dry food was sold by Wardley and were dried flies and ants. .

One day I heard my Mother scream, I ran there and saw here standing holding a broom. My crawfish got out and was walking across the kitchen floor. She thought it was a mouse and squashed it.

My Dad had a fish small fish market in Jackson Heights and my Mom didn't drive. She would wait with me for the bus and then tell the bus driver to let me off in front of my Dad's fish market which was about a 45 minute bus ride. I would go by myself and sit behind the driver when I was probably 5 or 6 years old and the driver would stop the bus in front of the store (which was not even on a bus stop) and watch me go in. (Today, they would put your Mother in jail) Remember cell phones were decades away.

The fish and meat stores in those days had a thick layer of sawdust on the floor and at night they would sweep it up and put on new sawdust. It would collect the fish scales and guts.
(Today, because of lawyers, you can't do that)

I would pile up the sawdust and make a fort. Then I would take live blue claw crabs and live lobsters and put them down and ty to make them fight. Lobsters can't really walk out of water but crabs run fast. I had a toy metal cannon and I would shoot tooth picks at the poor crabs.



(there was no plastic and toys were metal)
I would also lay some dead sardines in there for effect.
I had other toys in the fish store like rubber bands and I would shoot flies. I would feed the flies to my newts and turtles. Sometimes my Dad would give me a piece of wood, a hammer and nails and I would spend hours banging in the nails and pulling them out.

Occasionally I would ask my dad for a nickel. He would always give it to me but I had to work for it like maybe shine his shoes which entailed about 30 minutes of removing large fish scales, then shining them. After he inspected them I would take that nickel to the toy store on the corner next to the firehouse and buy some gum or caps that I used to "shoot off' with a rock.

I walked to school which was only about 5 blocks away and when my shoes would get holes in them, I would get linoleum (which was flooring) from abandoned buildings and houses and put pieces of that in my shoes. When it wore out, I would get another piece.
(My Daughter doesn't believe we did that, but it was common practice)

Someone gave me a baby chicken and in a few weeks it grew to full size. Once, the thing followed me to school and the Principal had to call my Mother to come and pick it up.

Another thing I remember about grammar school. The teacher once called my Mother to school and told her I couldn't read and they were going to leave me back. I was a prolific reader and my Mother knew it so she took me and the Encyclopedia (big history text book like Google but you couldn't update it) to school.
The teacher and Principal were there and my Mother told me to open the book to any page and read it. I opened the book and started to read about President Eisenhower, (who was the President at the time)

The teacher asked my why I wouldn't read in school. I said those kids books were silly.
After that, they made me a reading tutor for kids who couldn't read.

Linoleum was a great find because we also used it in our "Zip" guns which was a piece of wood with nail in one end and a clothes pin in the other end. You stretched a rubber band from the nail to the clothespin and put a piece of linoleum in the rubber band. When you pushed on the clothes pin to open it, the linoleum would fly maybe 50'.

We had a large group of friends and once we dug an underground fort in an empty lot. It was probably 5' deep and topped with logs, then trees grew on it.
It filled with rain water and we forgot about it for many years. We remembered it when they were building a Supermarket there and a bulldozer backed over it and fell in. They had to get a crane to get it out.

We always had money because we were street smart. Main Street was about two or three miles away and we would take bubble gum, a sting and fishing sinker. You lower the weight through the subway grates down about 12' to pick up coins.
Those grates were to supply air to the trains below and they were usually on bus stops. The bus fare was 15 cents so people used to drop money there.
You could make a couple of bucks in an hour and the movies were only 75cents.
After we would collect all the change we would pick up empty bottles at horseshoe courts and take them back to the stores for the two cents.

I will finish this later.

 

[Paulie 069]

Growing up in the fiftees. This should be in the Lounge.

I decided to write this because this morning we face timed our Grand Daughter who has just about anything you can imagine and is bored out of her head.

Because of Covid they had to leave their apartment in the West Village in Manhattan and go to their other home on a mountain in Vermont where they have a small pool, pool table, ping pong table, Pin Ball machine, trampoline, ATVs, (along with hundreds of acres of woods with trails) snowmobiles, A swimming pond, rope swing etc.


Anyway:
I never thought we were poor, I grew up in Queens New York but I was born in Brooklyn near Coney Island.
In those days we didn't get allowances, had no computers, cell phones, tablets or just about anything else. We also played outside no matter what the weather was like because "if" you had a TV, it was tiny and of course black and white. There was one or two shows on like The Ed Sullivan show which was a variety show where they would get "talented" people that would sing, dance or balance dishes on their nose.

There was sort of "Color" TV but that was a curved piece of glass that you would hang in front of the black and white TV. It was tinted blue near the top and green near the bottom so if you were watching a scene which was in a grassy field, it looked really cool, but any other scene just looked ridiculous.
We didn't have one of those but if you did, I would imagine you would keep watching "The Sound of Music" which had a lot of singing out in the grass.
I do remember seeing Elvis Presley on there in his first public appearance. That was the extent of our indoor entertainment and remember, there was no air conditioning.

My "Fish Tank" was the bottom of a wine barrel or an enameled basin which I kept turtles, tadpoles, minnows, and newts that I would catch in streams.
There were no fish stores but there were toy stores and fish would be sold there and called "Toy Fish". They had guppies, molly's, swordtails and little else. Occasionally they would have a crawfish. Eventually dry food was sold by Wardley and were dried flies and ants. .

One day I heard my Mother scream, I ran there and saw here standing holding a broom. My crawfish got out and was walking across the kitchen floor. She thought it was a mouse and squashed it.

My Dad had a fish small fish market in Jackson Heights and my Mom didn't drive. She would wait with me for the bus and then tell the bus driver to let me off in front of my Dad's fish market which was about a 45 minute bus ride. I would go by myself and sit behind the driver when I was probably 5 or 6 years old and the driver would stop the bus in front of the store (which was not even on a bus stop) and watch me go in. (Today, they would put your Mother in jail) Remember cell phones were decades away.

The fish and meat stores in those days had a thick layer of sawdust on the floor and at night they would sweep it up and put on new sawdust. It would collect the fish scales and guts.
(Today, because of lawyers, you can't do that)

I would pile up the sawdust and make a fort. Then I would take live blue claw crabs and live lobsters and put them down and ty to make them fight. Lobsters can't really walk out of water but crabs run fast. I had a toy metal cannon and I would shoot tooth picks at the poor crabs.



(there was no plastic and toys were metal)
I would also lay some dead sardines in there for effect.
I had other toys in the fish store like rubber bands and I would shoot flies. I would feed the flies to my newts and turtles. Sometimes my Dad would give me a piece of wood, a hammer and nails and I would spend hours banging in the nails and pulling them out.

Occasionally I would ask my dad for a nickel. He would always give it to me but I had to work for it like maybe shine his shoes which entailed about 30 minutes of removing large fish scales, then shining them. After he inspected them I would take that nickel to the toy store on the corner next to the firehouse and buy some gum or caps that I used to "shoot off' with a rock.

I walked to school which was only about 5 blocks away and when my shoes would get holes in them, I would get linoleum (which was flooring) from abandoned buildings and houses and put pieces of that in my shoes. When it wore out, I would get another piece.
(My Daughter doesn't believe we did that, but it was common practice)

Someone gave me a baby chicken and in a few weeks it grew to full size. Once, the thing followed me to school and the Principal had to call my Mother to come and pick it up.

Another thing I remember about grammar school. The teacher once called my Mother to school and told her I couldn't read and they were going to leave me back. I was a prolific reader and my Mother knew it so she took me and the Encyclopedia (big history text book like Google but you couldn't update it) to school.
The teacher and Principal were there and my Mother told me to open the book to any page and read it. I opened the book and started to read about President Eisenhower, (who was the President at the time)

The teacher asked my why I wouldn't read in school. I said those kids books were silly.
After that, they made me a reading tutor for kids who couldn't read.

Linoleum was a great find because we also used it in our "Zip" guns which was a piece of wood with nail in one end and a clothes pin in the other end. You stretched a rubber band from the nail to the clothespin and put a piece of linoleum in the rubber band. When you pushed on the clothes pin to open it, the linoleum would fly maybe 50'.

We had a large group of friends and once we dug an underground fort in an empty lot. It was probably 5' deep and topped with logs, then trees grew on it.
It filled with rain water and we forgot about it for many years. We remembered it when they were building a Supermarket there and a bulldozer backed over it and fell in. They had to get a crane to get it out.

We always had money because we were street smart. Main Street was about two or three miles away and we would take bubble gum, a sting and fishing sinker. You lower the weight through the subway grates down about 12' to pick up coins.
Those grates were to supply air to the trains below and they were usually on bus stops. The bus fare was 15 cents so people used to drop money there.
You could make a couple of bucks in an hour and the movies were only 75cents.
After we would collect all the change we would pick up empty bottles at horseshoe courts and take them back to the stores for the two cents.

I will finish this later.

Love the egg chair granddaughter is in

 

[Paul B]

On the day of my confirmation I was all dressed up in a new suit, tie and new shoes. Me and my friend went to the park and rented a small rowboat. Our "friends" called us over near the side of the lake because they wanted to tell us something. We rowed near them and they started throwing cherry bombs at us.

One went under the boat and made a huge hole. We sunk.

The water there was only a few feet deep and we had to walk through the mud to the cement side of the lake and climb out.
We were full of mud and my new shoes were ruined.
I couldn't make up a good excuse for ruining my new suit and shoes so my Mother beat the Crap out of me.

Of course we also lost our deposit on the boat and I doubt I ever had a new pair of shoes until I got married.

I did however have a bicycle. No one bought me one so I went to what we called the "dumps" which is now a park and I found a bike frame, tires, chain etc. I had to keep putting tape on the tires to keep them together but it worked just fine. (My Dad died when I was 10 and my Mother worked in Manhattan in a sweat shop)
I always used to say, "anyone can have a new bicycle, but I built it". I still have that attitude today.

Thats also how I got my cars. Bits and pieces and I basically built them. This thing was a Simca. Yeah, I know, I never heard of them either. I think we got it for $8.00. We re built it and sold it for $75.00.



Thats me on top with the hair. Then I bought a Chevy Impala for $8.00. Thats what the junk yard gave you for a car. I had to put a carburetor rebuild kit in it and sold it for I think $250.00.

 

[Paulie 069]

On the day of my confirmation I was all dressed up in a new suit, tie and new shoes. Me and my friend went to the park and rented a small rowboat. Our "friends" called us over near the side of the lake because they wanted to tell us something. We rowed near them and they started throwing cherry bombs at us.

One went under the boat and made a huge hole. We sunk.

The water there was only a few feet deep and we had to walk through the mud to the cement side of the lake and climb out.
We were full of mud and my new shoes were ruined.
I couldn't make up a good excuse for ruining my new suit and shoes so my Mother beat the Crap out of me.

Of course we also lost our deposit on the boat and I doubt I ever had a new pair of shoes until I got married.

I did however have a bicycle. No one bought me one so I went to what we called the "dumps" which is now a park and I found a bike frame, tires, chain etc. I had to keep putting tape on the tires to keep them together but it worked just fine. (My Dad died when I was 10 and my Mother worked in Manhattan in a sweat shop)
I always used to say, "anyone can have a new bicycle, but I built it". I still have that attitude today.

Thats also how I got my cars. Bits and pieces and I basically built them. This thing was a Simca. Yeah, I know, I never heard of them either. I think we got it for $8.00. We re built it and sold it for $75.00.



Thats me on top with the hair. Then I bought a Chevy Impala for $8.00. Thats what the junk yard gave you for a car. I had to put a carburetor rebuild kit in it and sold it for I think $250.00.

Old school wheeling and dealing Paul I like it, fn kids today have no idea what growing up broke just a bunch of snowbirds put in bubble wrap nowadays

 

[diana a]

Old school.....wish more kids these days are brought up not to be spoiled

 

[Paulie 069]

Old school.....wish more kids these days are brought up not to be spoiled

Preach

 

[Paul B]

Kids today, including my own can't buy a clue. My Grand Daughter last year was on vacation with my Daughter and her husband in Mystique. It was something like $50,000.00 a week and had Jeeps, boats, pools, oceans, everything you can imagine.
Greta just sat there on the floor looking at her tablet saying "Worst Vacation Ever".

I remember when I was maybe 5 years old, my Dad gave me a piece of wood and some nails and hammer and I banged in the nails and pulled them out all day. I thought I died and went to Heaven.
On the fourth of July I would get a pot and spoon so I could go out and bang on the thing to make noise. Again, I was thrilled.

Our "vacations" meant we were going to Bayville beach. My Dad would go to his fish market and get a 6' piece of ice which he tied on the front bumper of our 1947 pontiac.
We had to stop a few times to tighten the strings as the ice would melt. At the "beach" he would chop up the ice and put it in our "cooler" which was an aluminum box that was insulated with horse hair. I think the ice would have stayed frozen longer if we just tied the ice to the horse.

Bayville beach was maybe 20 minutes from our house and there was absolutely nothing there except logs on the beach so you didn't drive into the Long Island Sound.
The beach was all rocks and you had to walk with shoes on. There were no bathrooms or even rooms there. No food, no nothing but rocks and water.

I was in my glory picking up rocks catching eels and crabs.
That 20 minute ride was the farthest I ever went with my family.. I don't think my dad ever left New York.

 

[Paulie 069]

Kids today, including my own can't buy a clue. My Grand Daughter last year was on vacation with my Daughter and her husband in Mystique. It was something like $50,000.00 a week and had Jeeps, boats, pools, oceans, everything you can imagine.
Greta just sat there on the floor looking at her tablet saying "Worst Vacation Ever".

I remember when I was maybe 5 years old, my Dad gave me a piece of wood and some nails and hammer and I banged in the nails and pulled them out all day. I thought I died and went to Heaven.
On the fourth of July I would get a pot and spoon so I could go out and bang on the thing to make noise. Again, I was thrilled.

Our "vacations" meant we were going to Bayville beach. My Dad would go to his fish market and get a 6' piece of ice which he tied on the front bumper of our 1947 pontiac.
We had to stop a few times to tighten the strings as the ice would melt. At the "beach" he would chop up the ice and put it in our "cooler" which was an aluminum box that was insulated with horse hair. I think the ice would have stayed frozen longer if we just tied the ice to the horse.

Bayville beach was maybe 20 minutes from our house and there was absolutely nothing there except logs on the beach so you didn't drive into the Long Island Sound.
The beach was all rocks and you had to walk with shoes on. There were no bathrooms or even rooms there. No food, no nothing but rocks and water.

I was in my glory picking up rocks catching eels and crabs.
That 20 minute ride was the farthest I ever went with my family.. I don't think my dad ever left New York.

My vacations were more or less the same thing half hour 40 minutes away from home that’s about it and all that was was a different Beach than where we lived A no frills vacation And I loved everyone of them

 

[diana a]

I live in CA. Beach was too far. We played stoop ball, baseball using a broom handle, dodge ball (do you know they don't allow this game in school anymore) and board games outside on someone's porch. Stayed outside until the street lights came on.

 

[Paulie 069]

I live in CA. Beach was too far. We played stoop ball, baseball using a broom handle, dodge ball (do you know they don't allow this game in school anymore) and board games outside on someone's porch. Stayed outside until the street lights came on.

We called it STICK ball when I was a kid because the bat was thin like a stick( we also used broom stick)

 

[diana a]

Yes! You are correct...stick ball

 

[Paul B]

Diana, today if it doesn't have a USB port on it a kid wouldn't have the slightest Idea what to do with it.` I grew up playing stick ball. My Mom would get so mad because I used to cut the broom handle off for the stick then try to hide the broom part. I don't think they even sold those "bats" so you had to get a broom.

For the balls, we would find them. They were in storm drains or roof tops. My grammar school was three or four stories tall and had grates on the windows I guess so we didn't break the windows playing ball..

I would climb those grates with one hand on the grate and the other on the downspout to get on that roof, like 50' high and throw down dozens of balls.

Then we would take a piece of sheetrock and draw on the wall or street the square you threw the ball at.
We also made sling shots and bow and arrows from trees.

I don't think my Grand Kids know what a tree is or have ever climbed one.
We never bought anything.

Most of our toys we found in lots or built.

Of course no one had a helmet and if you needed a band aid, you found some tape.

 

[Paul B]

We had a lot of empty lots where I lived so we made rafts to float around on. Of course we always sunk and were full of mud.
We would shoot rats with the sling shots or go fishing in a lake with a string and a hook that we found.
There were worms all over the place for bait and we would keep the fish in wine barrel bottoms we found.

Like Diana we played all those street and board games and tried to walk home before it got to dark because my Mother would be standing on the corner waiting for me banging her shoe in her hand, and she knew how to use it.

 

[Paul B]

Diana they don't allow Dodge ball in school any more because almost everyone now is a Snowflake or knows a a Lawyer who is a Snowflake. They don't allow drinking from a hose either probably because some lawyer owns the bottled water company. I think they fill those bottles from a hose anyway. Probably from one of those collapsing Home Depot hoses, the ones with the warnings that read, "Don't drink from this hose because in California it was found to cause cancer and athletes foot.
But if you are in France or Bayonne New Jersey, you will be fine.

It's a good thing I am already married because it would be hard finding a girl with my front tooth missing.

Girls were a big part of my life as I was always a Lady's Man.