Tank turned 49 this year

[Paul B]

New Lamp




This one only took a couple of hours.

 

[MMFLA]

I have not updated the thread in a while and since it went through some large changes I figured I would show it.
The original thread (on RC) was getting too long

You will notice almost a total lack of corals except for a few gorgonians and the addition of more than 20 gobies.
The loss of corals was due to two accidents last year while I was away for a family emergency. My Mother (who is 97) was found unconcious and we had to stay with her 24/7 for two weeks in a Hospice. I also had a problem when my town added zinc orthophosphate to my water in a large dose exhausted my DI resins.
Anyway, thats another story.
I always wanted this tank to be filled with smaller unusual gobies that would breed and just be interesting. Over the years I have kept just about all the fish that are for sale and it was time to go for something else. The problem was that I kind of like hippo tangs, moorish Idols, and copperbands so I never had the room to do this. The only larger fish I have is one hippo, a pair of Bangai cardinals and an old fire clown.
With all these smaller gobies I still have to hatch brine shrimp every day and I still also feed live blackworms almost every day.
The cardinals are breeding as are a pair of gobies. Unfortunately they do it under a rock in a part of the tank where I can't see.
Everything seems fat and healthy, the nitrates are still about zero, I still only change 20% of the water about five times a year and everything else is the same except I retired and started a part time business in December.
I will have to shrink some more pictures to put them on here
Have a great day.
Paul

Hey that's something! Takes alot of devotion doesn't it. Great going! I thought my tank was up a long time, 16 years this time, it was emptied for about 2 or 3 days when we moved 9 years ago, 30 miles north. Just a mention, my Grandfather owned a Fish Market in Passaic, NJ. 50 yrs or so, went to Fulton fish market 3,4 times a week (New Jersey Fish Co.) Do u have photos of ur tank now. Maybe I need to look better. Mark

 

[Paul B]

Maybe my Dad saw your Dad at the Fulton Fish market. But he died in 1959.

This is the newest picture of my tank.


And that video above.

 

[Paul B]

My tank is doing great but I have about 2,372 aiptasia. I guess my copperband was eating them, who knew?


I have been tying to get a new copperband and they are normally very common but for the last couple of weeks I have not been able to get one.


3 LFSs promised me last week that they will have them today, so tomorrow I am going on a quest.

I am getting my taxes done tomorrow and that is about 40 miles west of here so I will try some stores there.


I hate it when I can't even get a common fish. If I find some I may get two of them.


I gave up trying to get the types of fish I really want as all stores only stock silly common fish like tangs and some wrasses.


I have one Mother of all aiptasia about 4" tall and If I can find a spare tank I would like to keep that one for study as I never seen one that big. Nice looking animal.

 

[Paul B]

I am very happy with my tank now. I have quite a lot of the fish I prefer to keep which are all smaller, odder and a little more difficult to get like the Janss Pipefish.

I am going to try to list the fish but I am not near the tank.


Copperband

Hippo Tang

2 Rainsford Gobies

2 Possum Wrasses

2 Sunburst Anthius

2 Fireclowns

Perchlet

Fang Tooth Blenny

2 stripped cardinals

Black cardinal?

Janss Pipefish

Bluestripe Pipefish

Mandarin

Scooter Dragonette

Purple Psudo

2- 6 line wrasses

Yellow wrasse

some kind of stripped wrasse

2 Gecko Gobies


Red something and 5 or 6 other fish that I can't remember.

 

[Paul B]

Now we live out east on Long Island and it is not very populated out here. No one is worried about Lyme Disease any more from ticks so I am sure the ticks feel bad.


I baked some muffins this morning and put coffee in a thermos and we took it down to the beach to have breakfast. We stayed in the car because it is 32 degrees and very windy. But it was nice to watch the waves crashing on the rocks while we ate.


Then we took a ride out east and discovered some roads that led to the sea and a park we never knew was here.

I also found a lagoon where I may be able to collect amphipods but I am not sure if a road goes there. I can go by boat but my boat is on the other side of the north fork of Long Island and I can't really get there from here but I can put my inflatable boat back there and find the place.


My fish eating some live white worms.

 

[Paul B]

This is a shot through the back of my tank after I scrapped it clean. It's a mass of sponges.




I also got two of these guys there, very hard to photograph.

 

[DaveK]

That's one of the really fun things about reef systems. You take a look inside your live rock caves and such and find all sorts of livestock you didn't even know you had. It's not unusual yo find all sorts of sponged, tube worms, and crabs.

If nothing else, it shows that you have a healthy tank.

 

[Paul B]

Now since I cleaned the back glass, I spend more time looking through the back then the front.

We got "take out" from a diner and went to a local beach and drove almost up to the crashing waves.
Then I took out my DIY hand sanitizer and cleaned my hands and steering wheel, radio, turn signal etc and opened the breakfast cartons and coffee.

We had a nice breakfast and found a dumpster to dump the cartons. Then I took another sanitizer and cleaned our hands, steering wheel etc and made sure we didn't touch our face.

While there we saw a young girl, about 20, walk in front of my car and sit on the rocks near us. It was raining and as she started to leave we noticed that she had on a Fordham shirt. Our Daughter graduated Fordham 20 years ago and just went back there for Law School.

We rolled down the window and commented on her shirt and told her our Daughter goes there.
She was very polite and nice and said her brother goes to Fordham and she was going to The Annapolis Naval Academy.
I said that was fantastic. Then she said she got into "West Point Military academy " which blew me away as that is the best school in the country, maybe the world. I was so impressed by this young Lady. I love to see someone like that, someone who will make a difference in the world. Someone with respect, social graces and brains. She saw my Viet Nam Veteran hat and thanked me for my service. Fantastic girl and I hope I see her again as I would love to talk to her more.

We took a nice ride and found neighborhoods and places with in a mile or two from our home that we didn't even know existed.

We looked at all the homes, most of which are impeccably neat and landscaped beautifully. Of course we also notice the homes that we would give a summons to if we were the Landscape Police But we find very few of those.

I also notice all the people here that display an American Flag, as I always do and it makes me happy to see so many Patriotic families especially in times like these. Some people even put up Christmas lights to raise spirits.

I think Americans at least, will come out of this better, stronger and nicer and maybe with all this money going into medical research they will come up with cures for the diseases that will still be here when the virus leaves. Things like cancer, heart disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkensons and others. We should not forget about those people who have afflictions besides this.

But right now, rightfully so we have to focus on the disease at hand. Here in New York we are not doing to good, but I am sure this will pass and hopefully we won't lose many more, or any more great people

That was actually the beach where I collect water. The girl was sitting on those rocks.

 

[Paul B]

I took a couple of pictures of the back of my tank.. Yes, I am really bored today, and it's raining.

 

[DaveK]

If you got the power cords out of the way the back would look almost as interesting as the front. There is something to be said for tank setups that can be viewed from all sides. Then again it can be very hard to hid all the equipment then.

 

[Paul B]

Remember, I don't have a sump so everything is back there but you don't see any of it from the front. That powerhead that you can see in the back there feeds the 5' DIY skimmer and from there the water goes over the algae scrubber and finally to the Reverse Undergravel filter.
I also don't normally clean the back so you usually can't see through it. Now of course I have a lot of time.

I use this to clean my glass and it gets in behind the rocks as there isn't much room there but none of the rocks actually touch the back glass.

 

[Blue Space]

hmmm.... why does that look so familiar? Oh yeah!!

 

[Paul B]

I know about that one but mine has a longer reach. They probably took that concept from mine which I made many moons ago.

 

[Blue Space]

You could have cornered the market!

It's not to late. I know you're always tinkering with one thing or another...

 

[Paul B]

No thanks, I already have two patents. Thats enough.

 

[Paul B]

Last night I wanted to clean the front glass of my tank because if I don't clean it in 3 days, it looks like sheet metal so I clean it every day.

I lifted the front panel and stuck the glass cleaning magnet inside.


The tank overflowed a little. I figured maybe I dropped it in to fast and it splashed.

The top rim of my tank is just at my eye level so I can't really see the top of the water.


I started to move the magnet cleaner and a lot of water spilled out.


OOOOOOhhhhNNNNNNoooo.


So I stick my hand over the rim and notice the water is right up to the top rim. AAAAAhhhhhhhhh


I immediately shut off the inflow to the tank from this 7 gallon bucket I have hanging from the ceiling behind the tank that automatically fills from my RO/DI using gravity which goes to a float valve on the top of the tank.


I get a hose and siphon out 10 gallons of water so now the water level is about an inch down and in no danger of overflowing.


Then I look for the problem and find it right away.


Lately, with not much to do I have been cleaning the back of the tank using a magnet scraper.

I have a 6' plastic on the back of the tank that leans against the lights because I lose a lot of fish to jumping. Especially when I listen to my Janis Joplin music.


I must have moved the plastic to much and it was pushing down on the float about an inch so the float valve wouldn't shut off.


I tested the salinity and it was about 0.14 so I could have kept kissing gouramies or goldfish.


I immediately took some dry asw and after mixing it with a little water, poured it into the manifold that feeds the Reverse undergravel filter.


I am not one of those people that worry about raising the salinity more than one percent in 24 hours.


So I did that a few times over about an hour and now the salinity is probably closer to 0.018.


I have not seen the tank yet today but instead of letting the ATO fill the tank in the next week, I will add back the water that I siphoned out and eventually it will get back to normal.


These little occurrences are needed to keep the interest up because if nothing ever happened, we would call this "stamp Collecting"


You could see that white plastic piece here over the back top of the tank.

 

[Paul B]

All seems good and everything looks great today and on an added note, I think my Rainsford gobies are starting to spawn.



They normally stay on different ends of the tank, but looking through the back glass they appeared to be doing the Macarana. But it could have been the Hustle or Tango. I am not sure because Janis Joplin music doesn't lend itself to those dance moves.

 

[DaveK]

There are just so many things that can go wrong on a reef system. I hate to think of the times I've vad some sort of problem and figured "I'm going to set this up so the problem can not happen again". Thne I make the changes and often I do solve that problem, usually after a few tries. Then something else gets me. The only thing I can say is that after a long period of time, these issues happen less and less often.

 

[Blue Space]

Nice save, Paul. Cheers!