Tank Thread Tank reached 38 years old...in 2009!

[Paul B]

If anyone lives in Brooklyn near the Barkley center, My Son N Law owns a new bar there called "Bar Meridan".

I went there once and it seems pretty cool.

 

[Paul B]

My copperband hasn't eaten on over a week but still looks perfect and hunts food all day even though she can't figure out how to bite it. Healthy fish can go for weeks or even months without eating. Copperbands can't go that long because they are not a really fat, lethargic fish.

Soon she will slow down and lose the sheen on her scales, her eyes will dull and she will become disoriented.

I would like to buy another small one, maybe with a similar size long nosed butterfly but my copperband doesn't play well with other butterflies so I will have to wait until she dies.

She is a large, striking fish and I will miss her but I think she lived a full life. I won't necropsy her because without a CAT-fish scan, I an quite sure I won't find anything wrong with her and it is very hard to study the brain on such a fish. I doubt I would be able to pick out a brain tumor or Parkensons either.

 

[Koyfam16]

I haven’t been on this thread for a while. Forgot how interesting the read can be.

I think you have another book in you.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Paul B]

I was thinking of writing another book but my first one is selling so fast that they are cutting down the rain forests at an astonishing rate just to make enough paper.

 

[Paul B]

I wrote this someplace else as someone said that Hippo Tangs live about 20 years in the sea:

This I am sure is true. All of our fish are lacking something in their diet in a tank, but a tang is missing far more than the correct food. Tangs including Hippo's live in schools. They always live in schools and you never see a lone tang in the sea. (I do often see yellow tangs by themselves in the sea, I am not sure why)

Like Rock singers, Taylor Swift, football players, The Rockettes of Radio City, and Supermodels they all need other "people" or fish around them or they are lost. A tang never finds it's own feeding grounds, it follows the mind set of the entire school which could be thousands of individuals. No one is sure how they do this because the leader always changes and anyone could lead the school.

Because tangs live so close to each other, they have a much more developed lateral line system that allows them to swim millimeters from each other without even a fin hitting their neighbor and allowing them to all turn at once, even at night.

They can also all dive into a coral head, even backwards,
without even a tail fin sticking out, they know they will fit and they never get scratched.
Their well developed lateral line, while being an advantage in the wide open sea is a disadvantage and even a curse to them in a tank.

Their lateral line, which is a line of fluid filled nerves along their side, allows the fish to "feel" it's surroundings even though it can't see them. Unfortunately they can also feel the glass of a tank and can't get away from it. They can "feel" the substrate and surface in a tank and know they are in 18" of water and adult tangs hang out in much deeper water where they are not prey to birds and us hobbiests.
(Although I am firmly against quarantine, I am more so with tangs for this reason)

Our pumps, I am sure also drives them crazy as that is not a normal ocean noise which they are not hearing like they were used to.

These un natural things are "IMO" why we lose tangs and they are so suseptable to HLLE, ich, velvet and everything else.
HLLE "always" starts on the head right where the lateral line connects to the brain. I feel it is overwhelmed as the noise and signals never stop so it starts to deteriorate.

(I don't go with the carbon fines theory of HLLE although it could hasten the progress)

I have kept maybe 3 hippo tangs past ten years and I think I euthanized them, not because of disease but because of HLLE.

HLLE is not a disease but a condition of the environment. That first Hippo was in a 40 gallon tank and the other two were in a hundred gallon tank. Those tanks are much to small for a far swimming "technically advanced" fish such as a tang which navigates with such sensitive "sonar".

My newer Hippo tang is in a 125 gallon tank which I feel is still to small and I only have one tang so I am fairly sure it will, after 8 or 9 years develop HLLE.

Fish in the sea do not get that and it doesn't kill the fish. But if you keep the fish long enough it can get to a point of having hardly no colored skin and the creature looks horrible although I am not sure if it affects their "feeling".

Also not all tangs in captivity get HLLE. I am not sure why but most people also don't keep them for 15 or 20 years. Even 10 years. Most people can't keep anything past 10 years which I am also not sure about.

 

[Paul B]

My tank is doing great and the few SPS that I thought would croak are growing "arms" all over the place.
My old copperband who I have not seen eat in a month is also fine and doesn't look like he lost any weight, kind of like me.

I am also surprised my janss pipefish is still living as I never thought that fish would make it but I have him maybe 4 years or so. I never remember these things. But I do know that in 14 months my tank will be running for 50 years.
I am kind of proud of that. I am also proud that I got to this age.

The only paired fish I have continuously spawn, thats fireclowns and watchman gobies. One of them is obviously a Watchgirl.

My Hippo tang is beautiful (because I never quarantined, medicated, dipped or sang to) She is a little fat but doesn't have a mark on her. I have also never fed her any greens, just clams, worms and LRS food like everything gets but I do have some algae growing although I have never seen her eat any of that. I wish she would.

I "think" I have two possum wrasses but they hide so good that I have never seen the two of them at the same time so I am not sure if I have one or two.

My new Starburst Anthius only comes out into the open if I shut the lights, don't play Rap music and put a bag over my face. If I get back to that LFS that has them I will get another one as they are kind of nice and not very common like those silly tangs that I find boring.

I also have a very large long spined urchin that I think I got as a tiny baby. I have no recollection of buying it but It must have been ten years ago. I think I got it in a place in Flushing and I have not been there in at least that long.

My female bluestripe pipefish is very well and I would like to get her a male but my much bigger Janss pipefish doesn't play well with male pipefish of any species and he killed my last one.
The Janss Pipefish is about 4 times larger than the bluestripes.

I also need a male for my female Mandarin. Her mate died probably of old age. I think they only live about 10 years but I lost his birth certificate so I don't know.

I really should write down when I get these fish.


For Christmas my Son N Law gave me a book about the Dawn of man and how we evolved over a few million years.
I actually love this kind of stuff especially the fact that we are the last of dozens of Hominids that were "almost" human.

I feel some people today still fit into that category but I won't go into that.

I find it amazing when these anthropologists find a relic like I was just reading about. They found a "piece" of a tooth
and a tiny piece of bone fragment from a femur.

From that they named the "Guy" with a Latin name. He was from Africa so maybe his name was Latin like Homer or Moses as opposed to Jim, Bill, Eddie or Bubba

They surmised he walked upright, probably with a Manly swagger, wore stylish clothes, ate buffalo wings and hot dogs.
Preferred red wine, was a decent dancer. Didn't like Rap music, preferring the classics and his Mother was a Sagittarius.

Then they had an artist rendering of the guy and he looked like Ringo Starr.
I am amazed they can get all of this from a tooth and bone fragment.

My wife has been a lot of pain lately and tomorrow is going to get fitted for a leg brace which is supposed to help her walk better. I hope so but unfortunately it will do nothing for the pain and fatigue.

Maybe some of the money I gave the MS society will hasten a treatment in our lifetime.

 

[Paul B]

I found this on Facebook which I never go on but accidentally fell on there. I wrote this 2 or 3 years ago and don't even remember it.


This morning my wife and I were discussing how we lived when we were much younger and how the world has changed. My Dad and her Dad had retail stores. My dad had a fish market and just like her dad and everyone with a food market there was piles of saw dust on the floor. The cutting boards were wood, the knife handles were wood and the fish, and meat came in wooden crates as plastic was not available then. I am talking about the fifties.
I used to play in the back yard of our fish market and shoot flies with a rubber band. We also had live carp and eels in old bath tubs.

At the end of the week my Dad would sweep the floor and throw out all the old, fish scale infested sawdust and put down clean sawdust. Every night he would clean, using soap and bleach the knives and cutting boards.

Today, you are not allowed to use saw dust, wooden handled knives or cutting boards probably because of lawyers. I am sure someone, some where got sick and saw dust was blamed just like coffee can't be hot any more.
But it was the saw dust, cutting boards and wooden knife handles as well as numerous other things that enhanced our immune systems.

I was always an out doors kid and cut myself many times. I would rinse it off in a puddle or pond and go about my business never thinking about it.

I had an uncle that worked at the docks in NYC, one of the roughest places on Earth at that time. He got stabbed in the belly twice when 3 guys tried to mug him. (the muggers didn't fare very well) My Uncle wrapped the wounds in the same rag he cleaned eels with and lived to be about 90 never seeing a doctor or dentist in his life.

When my Mom would get a cold as a kid, her Mother would make her sleep in the horse stables thinking the smell of horse poop would cure her. (my Mom was born in lower Manhattan in 1910) My Mother lived to be 99 years old, she died of old age and was never sick and never even took an aspirin. How many people today could say that?

The point of this is that today how many kids do you know with allergies? How many kids are allergic to peanuts? How many kids are home from school with colds?
How many people in their 60s or 70s can you name with allergies?

Probably very few. As a kid no one in my school had any allergies and we all ate peanuts. I always got an attendance award because I was never out sick. I think in the 40 years I worked as a construction worker in Manhattan I was out maybe 3 or 4 times from being sick and never for having a cold, allergy or anything else except maybe a broken bone or disk problem.

That is IMO because I was brought up in a natural environment surrounded by bacteria and never having access to that silly sterilizing hand spray that people today feel they have to take baths in.
I still almost never get a cold, flu or any silly infection.

The little kids in My Grand Daughter's school almost all have some sort of allergy. My Grand Daughter is allergic to everything and half the kids in her school are allergic to something. Peanuts are outlawed in many restaurants and schools.

Kids today, (Like fish) get all sorts of things and in some homes it is an adventure waking up to see if the kids have some sort of infection.
I feel this is a big problem in our fish tanks and the biggest cause of all the posts on disease threads.
This is also why I go to a muddy bay and collect mud to throw in my tank. If I didn't live by the sea, I would throw regular dirt in there as I did when I started my tank.

I also feel we have to start thinking of bacteria as a good thing instead of a bad thing.
Just my thoughts of course and not meant to be taken as fact. Just an observation that is obvious to anyone who is a lot older than most fish people.

 

[Paul B]

I really should go and collect some water as it has been a while and it will be in the 60s today which is weird for the middle of January.

As a kid we never saw this weather and in the winter the lakes would freeze and we would ice skate until April. Now we can plant tomatoes in February which isn't good for many things.

The pesty insects don't die nor do the infectious bacteria's and viruses. The birds forget to fly south and we get all sorts of tropical fish here (which isn't a bad thing)

Trees start to grow, then with a quick cold snap, they die.
The killer bees and fire ants which we can live without are moving north. We would rather you southerners keep them.

Near my friends house about 20 miles from here there are hundreds or thousands of tropical parrots that escaped from some pet thing 10 or 20 years ago and they have been breeding like crazy.
It's very cool but they are noisy and I have no idea what they eat in the winter as I have not seen one near a McDonalds.

When it snows now, which is very very rare, it melts the next morning when it gets to 50 degrees.
Ski resorts are teaching polities and macrame.
Sled manufacturers took up stamp collecting.

They used to have horse drawn sleigh rides around here, now the horses pull Toyota's.

I love warm weather but this is not right.

I will like to collect water but my knee re replacement is in a few weeks so in anticipation of that, my knee is trying to talk me out of doing it. But if I don't do it now, it will be many more months before I can carry any water.

Yesterday we were invited to a Valentines Day dance. I wanted to go until my wife reminded me that that is 3 days after my surgery and dancing would not be prudent at that time as my knee would probably fall out and roll across the dance floor. Thats true "Break Dancing"

 

[Paul B]

It's over 60 degrees here and I almost went swimming as I just came back from collecting water which is 40 degrees.

I am diatom filtering it now because it is full f seaweed. It was very windy and the pump didn't want to stay underwater in the surf so it kept coming back on to the beach.

I also couldn't back up to the water so I had to pump it into five gallon jugs and carry it back 100' to my Jeep.
Sometimes when I put all that weight in the Jeep I almost get stuck as the sand is very fine.

 

[Paul B]

Today I took my wife for her MRI and on the way home I always stop at an LFS near there.
The place is really going down hill and they never have anything anymore.

I go in there with a pocket full of money and can't buy anything because they have the same old common stuff.

I ended up with a bunch of emerald crabs just because I felt like I had to buy something even though I will never see emerald crabs in my tank. I bought 8 of them.

I want a dragon faced pipefish, another possum wrasse, another Janss pipefish, a male mandarin, a male bluestripe pipefish and another sunburst anthius.
I don't need no yellow tangs, blue devils, wrasses or other common fish.

I ended up with crabs.

I can't even get a stinkin gorgonian. Nothing. How do these places stay in business with no livestock?

 

[Paul B]

One of my 30 year old powerheads croaked last night so my skimmer and algae scrubber was dry. No water was going into the reverse UG filter either.

I took the thing apart and repaired it with some shrink tubing which is the repair they need every 30 years.

I think this was made in Germany and I really don't want to buy a pump from China so I am hoping to get a few more decades out of it. If I can find another piece of stainless steel for the shaft, I will change it.
I think I have 5 or 6 of those old pumps, most of them still running but you need to watch the old ones as they sometimes stop.

They are not doing anything important so nothing will happen. You really don't need a skimmer, under gravel filter or algae scrubber running 100% of the time.

 

[Paul B]

I just came back from my knee Doctor. Kevorkian.
My knee surgery is postponed for at least 6 months so now we can go to a Valentines party.
That is not the reason we cancelled it though.

It seems that even though the last surgery didn't work, a new one may make it worse due to neuroma.
I already had 5 surgeries on that knee before they changed it so I think I will give it a rest for a while and see what happens.

The recovery is the same as my last surgery, like a year and he isn't giving me any good feelings if it will make it better or possibly worse.
Christie Brinkley hasn't invited me to any dances so I can be in some pain for a while. I don't mind as long as no more of my hair falls out.

On my way home I hit a LFS. This one always has great,unusual stuff even though it is the filthiest place I have been since Viet Nam.
Those are the kinds of places I like to go because they have stuff hiding under the mulm that they didn't even know they had and they are very cheap.
I bought 4 fish and they are already swimming around doing the Macarana.
(You know the place Andy)

 

[Paul B]

Yesterday on the way home from taking my wife to a Dr. on the side of the road I see this huge sign
"Aquarium". So of course I swerved, almost killing us by turning over my Jeep to get to this store which I didn't know existed.

It is 50 minutes from my house and not hard to get to. I can't believe that I never knew it was there.

I went in and there was this very nice Asian Girl there starring at a couple of yellow tortoises .
I love turtles and used to keep them even before I kept fish when Eisenhower was President.

He was the Commanding General for the US during World War Two, which for you kids was a big disagreement between this German guy with a silly mustache and the rest of the world. They were so mad at each other that they kept sending Mean Emoji's at each other, but those Emoji's tended to blow up.

Japan, where Sushi comes from also didn't like us much.

Anyway, The girl was very nice and we discussed tortoises. (I will make any excuse to talk to females anyway)

I told her on an Island we went to last year "Mustique" they are all over the place. Here is one of them.



Of course here in New York we have these Eastern Box Turtles.

I saved this guy by helping him across the street here.



I know there was a point to this story.

Oh yeah. This store, which I forgot the name, was pretty good. Nothing looked sick, tanks were clean, no dead fish, nice variety, decent prices, it has it all and I can't wait for my wife to go back to that Dr. so I can go back.
I almost bought a small tassled filefish, but they grow a little bigger than I want.

I bought a Rainsford gobi to try to pair it with my old one,but they seem to be ignoring each other.

I can't get a picture of either one of those because they live on the side of the tank picking stuff out of the algae on the glass and I can't get there with a camera.

 

[LongIslandAndy]

Did the small poma angelfish that you picked up make it, mine died that night

 

[Paul B]

I am not sure, I haven't seen him in a few days so he may have disappeared. I have to look with a flashlight in the caves.

I picked up another Rainsford gobi at a store near exit 53 on sunrise Hwy. Nice store, I don't know the name, the sign just read Aquarium we were near Lord and Taylor in Bayshore and I saw it on the way home. You probably know the place.

 

[ErikT]

Yesterday on the way home from taking my wife to a Dr. on the side of the road I see this huge sign
"Aquarium". So of course I swerved, almost killing us by turning over my Jeep to get to this store which I didn't know existed.

It is 50 minutes from my house and not hard to get to. I can't believe that I never knew it was there.

I went in and there was this very nice Asian Girl there starring at a couple of yellow tortoises .
I love turtles and used to keep them even before I kept fish when Eisenhower was President.

He was the Commanding General for the US during World War Two, which for you kids was a big disagreement between this German guy with a silly mustache and the rest of the world. They were so mad at each other that they kept sending Mean Emoji's at each other, but those Emoji's tended to blow up.

Japan, where Sushi comes from also didn't like us much.

Anyway, The girl was very nice and we discussed tortoises. (I will make any excuse to talk to females anyway)

I told her on an Island we went to last year "Mustique" they are all over the place. Here is one of them.



Of course here in New York we have these Eastern Box Turtles.

I saved this guy by helping him across the street here.



I know there was a point to this story.

Oh yeah. This store, which I forgot the name, was pretty good. Nothing looked sick, tanks were clean, no dead fish, nice variety, decent prices, it has it all and I can't wait for my wife to go back to that Dr. so I can go back.
I almost bought a small tassled filefish, but they grow a little bigger than I want.

I bought a Rainsford gobi to try to pair it with my old one,but they seem to be ignoring each other.

I can't get a picture of either one of those because they live on the side of the tank picking stuff out of the algae on the glass and I can't get there with a camera.

You also forgot to mention another silly guy who was living East of the German guy and tried to outdo the German guys mustache with his own brand of thick mustache. German guy got so envious that he attacked the thick mustache guy to the East beating up other small guys who were in his way.

 

[Paul B]

OOOOOHhhhhhhhhNNNNOOooooooo. I was sneaking around my tank, looking for something to clean, re-build, re-design or just hide from my wife and my biggest fear materialized.

Well, not my biggest fear as that would be if Christie Brinkley, Angelina Jolie and one of the Victoria Secret Supermodels all came to my house to help me clean my tank and I was at the foot doctor getting a toe check up.

But my other biggest fear would be losing my Female Blue stripe pipefish, Patti.

I looked on the floor, and OMG, there she was, all dry, dusty and stiff. NNNNOooooo, not Patti. I raised her from a tiny little pipe and she was almost at the end of her normal lifespan anyway. Oh Why did little Patti jump out

I didn't want to flush her, I figured I would give her a proper burial so I found a little box and went to pick up her stiff body.

I bent down and she looked like a crooked piece of wire as I gently picked her up.

I looked at her little pointy face into her beady little eyes and noticed.....

Those aren't eyes and that isn't a face. As a matter of face, that isn't even a fish. It's a blue piece of crooked electrical wire left over from wiring the tank.

I turned around to look at the tank, and there was Patti, smiling as usual. If she had eyelids she would be batting her eyelashes at me.

I really need to wear my reading glasses when I work around the tank.

Here she is pregnant, cute little Mother, isn't she.

 

[gobywon]

She is a gorgeous piece of biodiversity. You've done great job providing her with her needed food and environment. I doubt that most of them that are sold live for more than a short while. You would think, from the general advise that is given with fish of this class, that they need to be with only other similar slow moving type fish ect., that your tank with many different types of fish and other assorted critters and crabs would not work out. Hmmm seems that a lot of expert advise might just be an opinion repeated over and over and accepted as gospel. Maybe

 

[Paul B]

I normally keep them in pairs and they spawn constantly but like most pipefish only live like 4 years or so.

 

[Paul B]

Finally, after a few failed attempts, I succeeded in getting this 3D resin printer to do what I want. The first issue was with my computer which didn't have enough RAM so I installed another card, doubling the capacity of my 10+ year old computer.

My second problem was trying to determine how to position the supports on the model.
With a Resin printer the resin is liquid and while it is "printing" the model is still soft so you have to design in supports to hold it as it is forming. You can see them on that gray piece which was a disaster. The gear was a test and I didn't even design the teeth correctly but it taught me a few things.


The last two pieces are perfect and will be used on top and bottom of a glass tube which will hold an LED "Firelight" for one of my Steam Punk pieces. They will be artificially "rusted" for the piece.