Cat's Healing Gift

[dobejazz]

Can I dance along while you all walk? Great Journey Cat thank you so much for sharing

[lcstorc]

I'll have to hobble along on my crutches for a while but will anxiously watch for updates.

[caitrina]

The next few sets of pictures are the things that we had bought. As I sit here and look at all the things I think how lucky we were to not have experienced mass losses. It is unbelievable the corals we had that we should not have and how we would usually find out and luckily be able to pass it on to someone else before it would die.

You can see our cleaner shrimp, Shrimpie, which gave us quite a laugh the first time he molted. I had been sitting in my chair perched in front of the tank watching him wander around when I saw another set of antennas behind the rock. I called Jack over show him the new shrimp I found that must have come in on a rock. We both stood there peering through the rock and Jack put a pinch of food in the tank to try to coax him out. Well, everything came out except our new found inhabitant. After another attempt Jack reaches in and touches his antennas. There was with no response so he reaches back in and picks the thing up while I am sitting there saying, honey, he can’t breathe. :duh: Oh yeah, shrimp molt!



Another picture is our scooter blenny, Benny. He is difficult to see in this picture, but if you look at the mushrooms (in the center) and look up and to the left a bit you will see him perched there planning his next route. I loved this fish. We both thought it was the coolest fish in the world. 90% of the time I was watching Benny. I loved watching him hop from rock to rock, swim to the top and just kind of drift down. The rock in the right back corner of the tank was one of his favorite places, Jack called this rock the sea tree and Benny would often climb to the top and hop his way back down. When you would hear one of us say “wheeee” you knew Benny was jumping from the tree. Benny was a pod eater and was eventually one of our losses.



The little mushrooms were also a first and are still among the tank inhabitants today. I didn’t care too much for the rics and mushrooms at first, but as time went by they became one of my favorites and am always on the look out for unusual colored rics.

[GeeWizzItsMe]

Awww, I saw some really fun scooter blennies at the LFS, you really must have liked that one! They are cute!

[lcstorc]

When did you find time for an update? I thought I kept you way to busy. Hope setting the tank up went well. It was great getting together again and as always I love this chronicle.
BTW I had a very similar experience with a scooter, One of our first fish back when we knew almost nothing about the hobby and we were extremely sad when after about a year he finally died. I still have friends of the kids that come by and want to see him. They are just such cool fish.
Let the journey continue.

[kathywithbirds]

Awesome pics, Caitrina! I read you got Lynn's aquapod. I'm jealous, I like those!!

[Techno-Vicki]

One of my first fish was a scooter blenny. He was sooooo cute. Keep walking girl.

[lcstorc]

I think she is tired today. We both had a busy day yesterday and she had to go home and set up a tank after she left here.
There was a piece of gorgeous LR at the lfs so she had to set up the tank to put it in.

[caitrina]

tired, but I am here looking for, uploading pics and copying and pasting and taking a lot of breaks as I go , but I am still walking along...and yeah that rock is nice. It is actually kind of big for the pod, wish I had the 90 and thought about taking half my rock work out of the 65 and putting small rock from in there to the pod, but I don't want to cause a cycle in the 65, so I may actually have to cut the thing in half and place them pointing up instead of going across. It is gorgeous and I hate to cut it...grrr...anyway on to my walk, by the way would someone kindly give me a smidgent of Karma and get me off that 666 on the end of my karma meter.....

[caitrina]

As you go through some of these pictures you will see things I didn’t mention, like in one of the pictures there are some button polyps…I still have those and have fragged them a time or two.

In this full tank shot you can see the “sea tree:” in the back right corner and in the front left corner there is a ornament that looks like an actual yard growing toadstool, here is another mistake we had made. That piece is actually a big broken shell we had found at the beach. It was a rainy dreary day and we decided we would go out to the beach to see if we could find some empty shells for our hermies. We didn’t find any shells for the hermits, but we saw this shell being tossed around in the surf that looked interesting. I was determined to get it and Jack snapped this picture of me chasing the thing. Ignore the baggy clothes and the swollen hand, and right arm. At this point of the physical healing process I was able to use only my left arm and hand, the right one stayed in the position you see here and really was not useable. The baggy clothes are because I wasn’t able to dress myself normally and bagginess made it easier. Anyway I finally managed to get the shell and found it to be a broken worn piece of a conch, but sitting it up it looked just like a toadstool, so home it went with us and after rinsing it in the Atlantic I plopped it right into the tank. It is still there and up until a week ago when I had the avalanche in the tank remained in that place. Benny and a few other fish used to lie under it like it was a shade tree. Now the toadstool rock is serving as a hole blocker on the other side of the tank so my lettuce leather won’t fall into the rocks.





Throughout the week we were adding a few more things. We didn’t add many fish, in fact most of the fish came after Jack died. This is Jack’s toadstool leather and sat next to the toadstool shell. I had this toadstool for a year and then I don’t know what happened, but it shrunk and shriveled up to almost nothing and then died leaving me with a little baby that is doing the same thing. It is alive, but I can not attach it to anything, when I do it gets ticked off and gets smaller, so I just leave it alone.

[caitrina]

Surprisingly some of you have stuck around and read all of this jabbering so I have a riddle for you… “I am thinking of something orange and small, what is it?” If you saw the good ol’ movie Finding Nemo as many times as I did you will recognize that as one of Dory’s lines to Marlin and you will know what I am leading to…yepper, of course we had to have the clown fish, however everyone else in the world has Nemo, well I have Marlin although everyone calls him Nemo…grrrr…Ladies and Gentleman here is Marlin……Marlin was added on the 25th and is to this day the clown fish you see in my pictures on the gallery. There is also Coral, Nemo’s mom. I don’t have a Nemo. You might, but I don’t! I figured someone in this world should have Marlin and Coral so why shouldn’t it be me? I love my clowns and they have provided me many hours of entertainment. I loved watching them when we were acclimating the new clown to the tank. It was so adorable the way they took care of each other, shielded the other, even through the bag there was a lot of communication going on. Animals can teach us humans many things. Without further ado ….MARLIN!



The next picture is my long tentacle plate coral which is one of those things I should not have had. This is him after we got him and he was thinking about coming out. If you look to the right of him and up on the rocks a little you will see a little green feather duster. This feather duster actually lived in that snail shell and he was given to me by the employee at the LFS store, probably thinking it would die anyway. I still have that duster and the shell although he is no longer attached to it. He is also a lot bigger than that now. A whole lot bigger.



In this picture the tentacles are out and flowing in the current looking like a happy lil’ coral.



In this full tank shot you can see the toadstool shell in the front left corner better, as well as the toadstool leather, also the sea tree in the back right corner. Most of our inhabitants are visible in the corner. While you look at this picture, note the legs on the light… notice anything strange? Well, as much as I hate to say this and tell the whole world, do you know I just recently, as recent as a week ago, figured out that the legs do not sit directly on the glass? Laugh with me…Jack would be cracking up about this and in fact when I came home I fixed the legs and I started snickering as I had one of those silent conversations with him about the lights. What’s worse is it took over a year to see this AND the light that is on the tank now is not the original light, so that means it was done incorrectly by me also!!!

[Dentoid]

I was about to post here when I got a PM. Anyway, I'm back. I noticed the legs on the light in a previous post. I didn't say anything because I thought you and Jack knew what you were doing! I'm diggin' your progression.

[caitrina]

Time to meet, Clamenstein, the clam. Clammie was Jack’s and was acquired at a newly opened LFS. When we got there and began looking at everything almost everything we discussed with the guy he said was dying. We kind of looked at each other from the corner of our eyes and knew we were thinking the same thing…we aren’t buying anything here. That is until we went around the corner and there sat this beautiful clam. We discussed it and both were unsure about getting it, but Jack really wanted the clam. I can still see him standing there torn between getting the thing and not getting it. It certainly was beautiful, one of the prettiest clams I had ever seen. Well, he got it and we brought “Clammy” home, put him in the tank, and shrimpie of course had to investigate and clean, clean, clean. Clammy wasn’t looking too good after getting him home and his response wasn’t the greatest, but the next day he seemed to be better. I don’t think I ever got a picture of him open and if I did it may have been deleted, but he was blue, green and purple and had a few specks that looked pink. He was open most of the time, but we had decided that he just wasn’t looking all that great. After questioning the one kid at the LFS store who used to steer us in the right direction we found out we didn’t have the proper lighting that we thought we had so Clamenstein was going to go to a new home. Here is Clammie in the corner by the leather and the mushroom shell.



In this picture you can see Marlin and Coral. There is also Blanche (don’t ask), but after Marlin and Coral paired up we gave Blanche to Jack’s nephew so they wouldn’t fight her or have any jealousy issues. *sigh*



As you can see Clammie is still here with us which was before we had gotten down to the LFS store that we found was always honest with us. (Thanks Jason, if you ever read this)



On May 30th, Jack was going to take Clammie to the LFS that day, we woke up and poor Clammie was dead. He took Clammie out of the tank and Jack had left to go help some of our friends. Later that day he called me and said he was waiting for the ambulance. I went to where he was, followed the ambulance and then later the airlift unit. Sitting in the hospital the entire night and the next day I never once forgot about our tank, his gift to me and knowing I couldn’t leave his side I made sure that someone went to the house and put in the “snake oil” turned the lights on and off and fed everyone. On May 31st at 3:15, I sat with my best friend while he passed onto a place of no tears and suffering, leaving me with one of the greatest gifts anyone has ever given to me, something that lives on each day of my life, and gives me hope and faith and has brought many wonderful people into my life, my RS friends!

With the ending of this portion of the thread these pictures although not related to the tank are in a way related to the thread. In the first picture this was on a trip and thus relates to our adventure together, the second picture of course was our wedding and relates to the beginning of something new
So …In Loving Memory of My Husband for the gifts he gave to me I present to you a little bit of one of the happiest times of my life that brought me to the saltwater world..

[GeeWizzItsMe]

His haircut in the second picture rocks BTW...

[Dentoid]