Tank turned 49 this year

[DianaKay]

Very pretty picture Paul! Your tank chores don't sound like any fun to me.
Wouldn't just doing semi-large water changes over a couple of months work to bring your bad levels down & keep your corals happy? You might need to get another tank, maybe plumb the two together. Yep, more water volume.

 

[Paul B]

Diana, nothing about my tank is work. It is all fun to me. I love removing the rock to see what is growing under there. I don't just have a tank to look at, I can look at someone else's tank. I have a tank because I love working on it and if nothing goes wrong, I get bored. If I end up removing everything I want to first build some new, very long rock and suspend my reef on it. I love this stuff.
Large water changes would not work, I use a reverse UG filter and every decade or so I need to stir the gravel. That is why it has lasted so long, it requires a little maintenance as no system will last without maintenance. That is why DSBs don't last, you can't maintain them. I exceeded the capacity of my bacteria but a good stirring will fix that. I will also collect some mud to throw in there just for kicks.:whstlr:

 

[Paul B]

Today I went for a routine echo cardiogram and stress test. I have one every couple of years because my insurance pays for it and my Doctor has some Supermodels working for him so what the heck.
One of the Supermodels is going to take my blood pressure and I told her, don't bother because my blood pressure is better than perfect. She says, what makes you thing so? I said because I am in perfect shape, can't you tell? I can tell by her expression that she didn't think so. Anyway, she says, what do you think your pressure is? I said 117 over 75. She took it and said "Dam", it's better than that. It's 115 over 70. That's like what Batman's pressure is :lmao: (I said that last part, not her)

So I get on the treadmill and start walking as the Doctor is talking to me. He keeps his boat moored right near mine so I see him all the time. I spend ten minutes on the thing walking as fast as I can then you jump on the gurney and they do the echo and stress stuff. After a while the nurse runs out yelling for the Doctor so I figure I must be going into cardiac arrest, have Ebola or am in the middle of a stroke. The doctor comes in, who by the way is a cardiologist and is about 300lbs. and they are looking at the readout. The nurse says "I can't read it, is this normal?" So now I am sure I am croaking and I see my life flashing before me. Fish, Supermodels, brine shrimp hatcheries, more Supermodels, Diana's tank etc.
Then he tells her, she can't read it on that chart because even though I am 65 years old, I have the perfect heart for a 48 year old so I am off the chart.

 

[coralrama]

Most cardiologists are short and rotund, it's a strange phenomenon. Similarly, most psychiatrists are nuts.

 

[Paul B]

My wife has a physologist cousin who is a marriage counciler, she went through 3 husbands.

 

[StirCrayzy]

Ha. Cheers to good health !
You have a layout or write-up for the denitrifyer?

 

[Paul B]

Yes, someplace on here, but I don't know where. It is re designed now and I am growing bacteria in it.

 

[DianaKay]

YaY for the great "off the chart" check up!!
I have always wanted to do one of those treadmill stress tests, I have LOTS & LOTS of practice on the treadmill so I feel like I could do good The only cardiologist I know is Dr.Fine ....he always asks people: "how are you?" And most people just say "fine" and then he says, "No, I'm Fine!...how are you?"
I only fell for it once
I imagine all the drs you see have to have supermodels for scenery....I can just about hear you asking about that before you schedule an appointment Paul B :LOL:
Thanks for always making me laugh

 

[Paul B]

It is almost my wife's birthday so yesterday her closest friend took her out to Manhattan for a surprise. We don't live far from Manhattan and we both worked there. They first went to Madam Trusseau's wax museum (which is a place New Yorker's never go, like the Statue of Liberty because we don't think about it as it is a tourist attraction) In NY it is huge, 9 floors and as they were walking through she turned to see one of the wax figures, and it was her other close friend posing as a statue so that was a surprise. There was also a Radio City Rockett there commissioning her wax figure. Then they went outside and on to this bus. I worked in the city all my life and never heard of this so it must be new. It was a huge bus with windows covering one side, ceiling to floor and the other side is closed. The seats face the window and there are two cute girls on the bus who are also entertainers. As this bus went through the city there were people outside on the sidewalk that are part of the entertainment but you don't know it. There was a female street sweeper with the broom and when the bus went past, she started doing cartwheels and dancing on the street. Then a few blocks later there was someone else. 9 people all together were on the sidewalk among the crowds and they did their thing as the bus went by or stopped. Then they went to my Daughter's new home in the West Village and my Daughter took them all out to dinner. I am so happy that she had such a good time as she is having some trouble walking but she reallyhad a ball.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD0DnAiw7hQ&list=UUrNn0IfeAM-4FGgLobs70Eg&index=9&feature=plcp

 

[Paul B]

The tank seems to be doing what it has been doing for many years, it is just sitting there waiting for me to invent something to put in there that will either make something better, make it leak or do nothing. A few torch corals died, I don't know why but the rest of them look great. Maybe they got bored. Corals have wars and in wars some things lose. The fish are doing great and the older ones are talking about botox injections. I will soon remove some rocks and stir up the gravel. I am still thinking about how I am going to catch the pipefish before I do that because I always lost them when I do that. I think their tiny gills get clogged but that is just speculation. The main part of the reef is now about 1/2" from the front glass due to the pistol shrimp digging and moving gravel all over the place. The largest montipora also grew almost up to the glass so I need to do this before I can't clean the glass at all. I will have to break that monti to move it but it is what it is and I didn't tell it to grow there. There is absolutely no algae growing in the tank which disturbs me as that is not normal especially with nitrates near 40. I had the calcium tested and that is 450 which is fine and the Po4 is nonexistent which I also can't understand. No one wants tank problems but also the lack of problems can be disturbing when some problems are occasionally normal.
I never have to worry about the fish as they seem to live forever. I would like to get a couple of new fish but I would have to give some away to do that as I already have to many and they all grew to large which forces me to feed more and the nitrate is already a little to high.

 

[Paul B]

Teddy just found out he is to young to start a reef tank

 

[StirCrayzy]

Bah, looks like he just found out how much they cost if you aren't creative.

 

[Paul B]

My boat is away for the winter but I have the two outdrives in my garage so in the spring I have to do yearly maintenance on them like paint them with antifouling paint, replace the zinc's and change the oil. I can't wait to get out and do some collecting in the summer as that is one of my favorite things to do. That and to watch the Supermodels they sometimes have at my marina when they want to introduce a new boat model.

My tank is doing very well, I just lost a small hammer coral but that is a good thing because it was shaded by an acropora that seems to be growing very fast. I don't know why. I couldn't get my fat fingers under it to move the hammer but it is what it is. I have plenty more hammers. The monti's are doing the same thing and I will have to break them soon as they are almost touching the front glass. Breaking them is not a problem as they seem to be the fastest growing coral and they even shade their own cousins and kill them. But again, that is a good thing. Sometimes I break off the shaded pieces and stick them someplace else but usually I just let nature take it's course.
I still have the pipefish, mandarins, ruby red dragonette, possum wrasse, pair of pistol shrimp and every thing else. A bananafish jumped out, actually both of them jumped out so I won't be getting more of them even though they are extreamly cool. I also don't know how many shrimp gobies I have as there is so many places to hide, I only see glimpses of some of them occasionally. I may go to my favorite LFS today because I want a mate for the ruby red dragonette and possum wrasse. I don't like to see lonely fish.
My water is always clear but for some reason today it seems exceptionally clear. I am not sure why but it disappeared, not even sediment. Maybe the large blue sponge sucked it all up? Who knows.
I have not seen my new clingfish eat anything yet, not even live newborn brine or live worms. What he does do is position himself right in front of a hermit crab like a javelin, he is very still an inch away, then he propels himself right at the crabs face. The crab is not amused and quickly pulls his shell down in front of his face and the clingfish crashes into his shell and bounces off. You would think that after a couple of hours of this, he would get a bloody nose (if he had a nose) or at least tire of it. But it is his thing so I assume he eats hermit crab faces.

You really can't get good picture of those ruby red guys as they don't like camera's, but he is in the back here



OH, here he is


This stuff just grows wild


This is just a common red one

 

[DaveK]

Teddy just found out he is to young to start a reef tank

{... image removed ...}

Well, maybe he is too young to have his own reef tank, but I think he looks old enough to put to work helping you maintain yory reef tank. (grin)

My younger nephew really loved seeing my aquariums when he was young, and when he got a bit older than Teddy, he loved to help out. When he was about 14, I was telling him how I was glad he was down, and that he could come over tomorrow and help me do a lot of work on the tanks. I was just teasing him, but he told me that he really wanted to, even after I told him I was just teasing and I didn't expect him to. He wanted to do this so bad, I picked him up the next day, and we did do a lot of work on the tanks.

 

[Paul B]

Greta helps already

 

[Paul B]

So this guy, a clingfish decided to jump into my surface skimmer which leads to an empty bio pellet chamber that I have just for the coolness factor and it is filled with brittle stars then it goes to the protein skimmer then to the algae trough and last but not least, the reverse UG filter. So he was stuck in the bio pellet chamber chamber which I designed so it could not be opened. So I had to take the entire thing apart while squirting water into it to keep the stupid fish alive. Now I have to re-design the surface skimmer to be clingfish proof even though in 15 or 20 years no other fish had decided to take this trip. I got him out and he seems fine but he doesn't care one bit how much work I had to do to take all this stuff apart.



Surface skimmer with floating top so it just skims the surface





Bio pellet chamber where fish was stuck.

 

[nanoreefing4fun]

Great pics Paul - cool you saved him !

in that last pic... isn't that a brass fitting? Do you worry about the copper in the brass? I am sure you have considered this... just new to me... is it okay for your corals & inverts?

When I google "brass" I read this... Brass is an alloy made of copper and zinc; the proportions of zinc and copper can be
varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties.

 

[Paul B]

There is no brass in my tank. That valve is plastic

 

[nanoreefing4fun]

I guess I should have known that on your tank just looks like brass... well maybe it will save someone else that may seen it & thought it was okay to use - Cheer Paul ! I have never seen plastic in that color

 

[cracker]

Paul , I love Your DIY work, It is inspirational! What are the purpose of the canisters? Please forgive my levity here but I envision them spinning around like the governors on an old steam engine.