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

[Paul B]

This morning about 6:00am it was still kind of dark and very foggy. I mean pea soup foggy but me not being a Snowflake decided to take my morning walk. I usually walk about three miles almost every morning just because my knees feel like they have broken glass in them and walking seems to make them feel a little better, until I stop of course. Then they feel worse but pain is good because it lets you know you are still on the right side of the grass.
I had one knee replaced but It feels worse so I keep asking my Doctor if he can find my old knee and put it back in. ?
So after I walked about 100 yards and passed over this dead snake I started down this long country road. The road is a mile and a half long and forest on both sides.

The fog was getting thicker and it was getting quieter. Not that it was noisy before but I could hear birds and the occasional wood chuck arguing with a rabbit.
Now the fog completely engulfed me and I could almost hear the voice of Rod Seirling. (Google him)
I couldn't see anything and now it was dead quiet. I could barely see my own feet but I could smell something that kept me going. It was the unmistakable smell of wet horse and I know there is a rescue horse ranch on this road. But something was "off".

As I walked I thought I could hear, very faintly the theme music from the "Twilight Zone".
I felt like I was walking through a time warp and wasn't sure what day it was. Heck, I couldn't even tell what year it was and I worried that when I emerged from this noxious atmosphere that I would be swept back in time to the 1940s and didn't know if I would come face to face with HITLER or Susan Sarandan, who smokes by the way.

The smell of wet horse got stronger and through the fog,I could see horses. They weren't pulling plows or sporting Swastikas which I figured was a good sign.
I could now see a glimpse of the sky half expecting to see a couple of Bi-planes sporting vintage machine guns but thankfully they didn't appear.
I made it to my turn around point and started heading home with the knowledge that all was well and I was still in my own time zone.
That was until I entered my house and my wife was churning butter wearing a corset and a hoop skirt

 

[Paul B]

This week my book reached another $500.00 in royalties so I can send another $500.00 check to Multiple Sclerosis research in my wife's name.
Thank you.

 

[Paul B]

This morning like most mornings I got out of bed at 5:15, got dressed to go out for a walk and immediately got a flashback from Nam because there is a monsoon outside. In Nam I had no choice and had to live in it but here I have a nice warm house so I decided not to walk today.

I decided to bake muffins like I often do for a few reasons. I like them, my wife likes them and I can't go out so what else an I going to do at 4:15?

As I am waiting for them to bake I was thinking of all the times I do walk in the morning and all the deer I see so early. These things are all over the place. I wish purple tangs were so common.

Most people here think of the deer as a big problem because they don't look both ways when they cross streets and don't make good hood ornaments.

I am quite sure the deer think of us as pests but I am guessing as although I can read the mind of a copperband butterfly, deer minds confuse me and I don't get much incite from what they are thinking. Looking into the black eyes of a deer is like looking into the eyes of a flounder. Not much going on.

They did put "Deer Crossing" signs all over the place but many times the deer ignore those signs and cross the streets in other places.

Over the years there have been plans on how to limit the numbers of deer but with 4 or 5 million people with opinions, nothing gets done. It's like fish forums, everyone has an opinion and the outcome is almost always to change the water.

At one time the government hired hunters to cull the population. Of course that is only a temporary solution and people cried out about the cruelty.
I myself don't shoot deer or even deer ticks and also don't like that idea. I don't eat deer meat but I do eat hamburgers which are humanly grown in a supermarket

Even if they killed 100 deer, there are tens of thousands of them and more of them get hit by cars than that every month.

There was a plan to feed the deer birth control pills. They would drop bales of food by helicopter laced with birth control pills.
That didn't work because the way a deers hoofs are built, they have a hard time getting the pills out of those little round plastic containers they come in and the deer never knew what day it was so even if they could pry the pills out, the dosage was off.

Also the bucks, or male deer were eating them and it started to make them grow long eyelashes and many people would complain that when they were watching Oprah, the deer would look at the TV through their window instead of running after females like bucks are supposed to do.



There is an Island here called Shelter Island and a lot of wealthy people lived there. Many of them got rich from whaling. (They killed all the whales then started to kill other things but that is for another useless thread.) Anyway they wanted to grow gardens and they couldn't because the deer would eat everything, so the residents came up with a plan.

The Island isn't that big so they hired these people to come to the Island with huge fishing nets. They got a few hundred people and started walking the nets through the Island trying to force the deer all to one side where they would have a barge waiting. The idea was to herd the deer onto the barge and let them go on the mainland. (Originally they were going to shoot them but the people started protesting. They figured it was much more humane to pry the poor animals from the grill of a 1929 Oldsmobile )

At first it looked like it was working and almost all the deer were in the nets going on to the barge. Thats when the Island occupants learned that deer could jump six feet and swim like Johnny Weissmuller (Tarzan)

There were Deer swimming all around the Island and the Coast Guard had to be called to chase the deer out of the water because now they were a hazard to navigation. Inadvertently, all the deer ended up back on the Island and now, after swimming all day they were hungry so the little vegetation that was still on the Island was quickly devoured by the deer.

Now the Island residents were up here.

 

[Paul B]

I just got back from the Bone Doctor. I went for cortizone shots in both knees because my knees are sucky. Commercial construction in Manhattan for 40 years messes up your knees because everything is 1,000lbs, even lunch.

So I get there and roll up my two pants legs, I actually wore sweats for this and the Dr, assistant said why did I roll up both legs. I said, both knees don't work and both feel like I have tiny sea urchins playing polo in there.

She said, she can't do anything with the left knee which is a titanium one because there is no more arthritis in there, just inflamed tendons and she can't fix those.
Another knee replacement, like the original knee doc wants to do would only make it worse so I am stuck.

I asked if she could fix the right knee and she said, any small amount of meniscus left in there is shreaded and it is bone on bone so I am just pinching the nerves when I move. Nothing can be done except a new knee.

I told her the other one didn't work out to well and I can't be laid up because my wife has MS and I even have to put her shoes on. She can't live without me for a day, much less a year.

So she told me I am in between a hard place and a rock covered in long spined sea urchins so a new knee is the only option.

I can take over the counter pain meds like Tylenol or Dr Pepper.
She gave me the cortizone shot and I can take them every three months until I croak, so that was good news.

 

[Paul B]

Yesterday I was able to donate another $500.00 to the MS society from proceeds from my book. That makes $1,500.00 so far. When they send me a receipt I will post it so people don't think I am spending that money on new high heels for Supermodels.

I earmark the checks for research only so it doesn't go to pencil sharpeners, paper clips etc. in their office.
I hope it actually does some good.

 

[Timbo]

Nice job Paul. The only way we beat things like MS and other debilitating illnesses/diseases/infections/VIRUSES etc is through research.

 

[Paul B]

Pioneers of the aquarium hobby that we don't hear about

Aquarium keeping goes back to the ancient Egyptians. They had problems because the water from the Nile wasn't nearly salty enough and was full of left over rocks from carving out pyramids. Those rocks were carved with copper chisels and their was tiny pieces of copper left in the rock causing all sorts of water quality problems. They also had issues because whenever a fish died, they would try to mummify the poor creature but the mummification process took many weeks and in a few hours the dead fish would stink attracting those hairless cats that they kept as pets.

As time went by there were many people involved in fish keeping so we can call them pioneers. One that comes to mind was Copernicus. In the 1400s he proposed that the Earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around. That in itself had nothing to do with fish, but while he was coming up with this unconventional theory he made a lot of people angry.
Especially people of the clergy who showed their dissatisfaction by throwing clams at his house. Some of the clams broke his Anderson windows and landed in his sumpless reef tank. To his astonishment, his fish started eating the clams and that is how we came to know how to keep Copperband Butterflies.

A similar Pioneer was Galileo. As everyone knows Galileo is famous for inventing the telescope but what many don't know is he also invented the refractometer. Galileo went to the university in Piza. His laboratory was in the Leaning Tower of Piza which made fish keeping "Interesting". His AtO kept making his tank overflow but that has nothing to do with how he invented the refractometer.
Galileo was never a happy kid and was always fuming at his Mother because she gave him a first name that sounded just like his last name. Galileo Galilei. Everyone made fun of him and one day as he was looking through his telescope someone stormed in and yelled "Hey Galileo, Galilei, Galaxy, Gibralta whatever your name is, your Mother is calling you"?

He got so mad he threw his telescope into his reef tank. His Mother heard the commotion and came in just in time to take the instrument out of the water and she looked through it backwards and said. Hey Galley (thats what she called him for short) your salinity looks a little low!

Way before this in the year 79 we had Pliny the Elder. Pliny actually gave us the internet along with Wikipedia. In the year 79 AD that was a big deal because we didn't even have USB plugs so he had to use solar electric to charge his wooden slide rule. We have Voltaire to thank for USB plugs along with "stray voltage". He never liked to use his full name "Nom De Plume Voltaire" because it sounded like a Sissy Girly Man name but as we all know he discovered voltage which is named after him.
Of course we can't have stray voltage without amps. Amps were discovered by Ampere or André-Marie Ampère. He never gained much notoriety because stray voltage doesn't really have any amps to speak of and we never say "our fish died because of stray amps". It's always volts.

We also can't have Volts or Amps without the other guy, Ohms. None of us know who Ohm is named for but it was actually Georg Ohm. No, Really!. Thats the guys name. I think he also had something do do with GFCI's and was a distant cousin of Susan Sarandon, who had something to do with Saran Wrap.
Unfortunately Ohm was sometimes confused with Olds. Ransom E. Olds was an auto pioneer and we have to thank him for inventing storage places where white flour, ASW and two part calcium additives can be stored along with Oldsmobile parts.
Last but not least we have the Wright Brothers. They owned a bicycle shop which was very profitable but they got bored so they invented an aeroplane. You may not know what they have to do with reef tanks and the truth is, not much.
But during their first historic flight, Orville wanted to see what happened if he taped a pink tipped anemone to the left wing of their aircraft. He carefully removed the animal from his thermos bottle, dried it off and applied Gorilla tape.
Orville steadied the wings as the motor of the historic craft roared into action. He let go and Wilbur flew an astonishing 120 feet.

As soon as the craft landed, Orville, who was running alongside came up to the wing to see how the anemone fared. (he didn't care much about the plane or his brother) But to his horror, when Wilbur landed he immediately stepped on the brake propelling the anemone into and through the propeller causing the creature to turn into a very wet snot that engulfed poor Wilbur which in turn gave him the inspiration to invent that little handle on your steering wheel that sprays water onto your windshield to clean away squashed bugs.

 

[Paul B]

Most of us get cool stuff for Christmas and our birthdays but I am lucky as my birthday is actually on Christmas day.

Years ago I used to get a lot of presents because of that, but in those days everyone used to get more presents than now and that happens as we get older. We already have everything that we need so we get things like gift certificates for restaurants, Home depot, Regain, liposuction etc.

One big problem I, and I assume many older people have is we get a lot of electronics for gifts. Electronics don't work for old people and I honestly feel that feature is built into the device.

For instance this year I received from my wife a pedometer. I have been walking every day and I don't know if I am walking a mile or 20 miles so she got me this thing.

It is tiny and you wear it on your wrist. The "instructions" came on a piece of paper the size of those strips they put in fortune cookies and it is written in 5 languages none of which is English.

I just want the thing to tell me how many miles I walked and maybe the time, but that is an option I don't really need as I am retired and I don't care what time it is. I also don't need it to tell me what day it is because I am retired and every day is the same.

The device only has two buttons in it. One is marked "R" and one is marked "M".

I fooled around with it for most of Christmas day and it seems the "R" turns on a small light so you can read it after you fall in a storm drain because it is so tiny and you have to stare at it for a while and don't pay attention to where you are walking.

I think the "M" tells you how much weight Marie Osmond lost on Jenny Craig.

I am not yet sure how you can get it to tell you anything else but on the box it has all sorts of functions like your latitude, temperature, Blood pressure, footsteps, battery life, age of some rock singers, recipies etc.

So I wore it on my morning walk and all I can get it to do is tell me what time it is, in military time, but it is five and a half hours off. (I haven't yet used the function about Marie Osmond's weight) I was in the military and even then the time confused me so the thing is a great conversation piece and it will be relegated to my electronics drawer where I keep all my electronic gifts from years past because I have no idea how to use them.

Another gift that will go into that drawer is a lens set for my cell phone so I can take better pictures. There wasn't even a fortune cookie piece of paper to explain how to use these things but I figured out most of them through trial and error. The only part of it I can't figure out is the little remote push button that is supposed to tell the camera on your phone to take the picture. It says on it that it has a blue tooth. I swear I looked very hard and can't even find it's mouth so that will never work.

Also, what is this obsession with passwords? Why do I need a password for everything? I am running out of passwords and had to start using Greek Characters. Why do I care if someone steals my password for my electric bill? If you want to pay it for me, go ahead. Or my cell phone. If someone steals my phone and they don’t have my password, how would they call me to tell me where it is. I don’t keep any banking information on my phone because I don’t know how to.

Speaking of cell phones, I have an I Phone 4. I think they are now up to 42 or so. My wife keeps telling me I need to get with the times and get a new phone. But I think mine is much better than hers. . When she wants to make a call or ask the thing something, I hear:

Siri, call,,,,,,Siri,,,,Si,,,,Siri cal,,,,"Who do you want to call?"

Siri, Call Bob,,,,,,,,,,"Who do you want to call?" Siri, call Bobby Str......

"To make a call, you can say things like Siry, call so and so" . And it goes on like that.

Also her phone sometimes talks to her when she is not even asking it anything. Once we were in Church for a funeral mass. It was dead quiet as it is for most funeral masses. The priest was in a part of the ceremony that called for total quiet and no one was making a sound.

All of a sudden, from seemingly nowhere everyone in the church hears this blasting from my wife's pocketbook:

"I didn't get that. You can ask me things like When is George Washington’s birthday, How much does it cost to ride the subway, What is Bono's middle name, who was Julius Caesars accountant". Would you like to ask me a question?"

I have a really nice, simple phone and it is also nice looking. I am not sure what type of wood it is made out of but it always works no matter what.

When I want to make a call I just look up the number in my phonebook, which I keep in my back pocket. Then I put a dime in the slot and dial the person I want to call. It always works. (Only in my area code of course)

These electronic things also come in such small boxes that it doesn't seem like there is anything under the tree. I liked the old days when there were such big presents you couldn't see the tree. Like for instance one year I got a set of tires for my 1962 Pontiac Bonneville and once I got outdrives for my boat. Now those were some cool boxes.

 

[LongIslandAndy]

Paul Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas !!!! Thanks again for your entertaining post, You should get a column in Newsday because my friend you are spot on and funny. I do have a suggestion for your electronic problems its called youtube. It will tell you how to use any equipment
Be Safe
Andy

 

[Koyfam16]

Happy Birthday!

 

[Paul B]

I am sure you remember that I did once write how a "Mans" store should be. We really need gender specific stores. because Men, like me have no patience. How many times do us men go into a store and there is a woman in front of us checking out. and she doesn't have exact change and searches in her bag for 15 minutes looking for it. My wife does that.

I say just give her a 20 and forget abut it. It isn't worth the wait.
Once my wife sent me into a Mall, a place where I would "never" go, to return something. I would just throw the thing out no matter what it cost. I get that "Mall look"

So I was on line thinking of what disease I would rather have that waiting here on line. Maybe irritable Bowell. Then, I figured the wait wasn't going to be to long because there were only two Ladies in front of me.

The first lady walked up to the cashier and also wanted to exchange something so she put it on the counter and explained to the salesgirl if she had this thing in yellow.

Now the two of them had to go look through the aisles for this yellow thing and couldn't find it. So now of course they had to order it so she had to look through a prism of colors to find the right yellow to match her shoes. If I had a chain saw I would have cut my head off.

Finally she was done. So there is only one lady in front of me so I figured I was almost out of there. Wrong.
She put the item on the counter and gave the salesgirl her credit card. It didn't work. Then she gave her a different credit card which also didn't work.

Now of course they have to call the bank because it just worked a while ago when she got her hair colored to pink.
The bank put her on hold as I was putting gas in the chain saw.
Then the sales girl and the customer realize they know each other and their kids went to the same school. Now they are showing each other pictures of their kids and their dogs.
I looked around for a file to sharpen the teeth on the saw.so I would get a clean cut on my neck.

Then it was my turn. I put the thing on the counter, told the girl to keep it and have a nice day and I walked out.

In a Men store we wouldn't have any of those problems.
There would be a girl, it doesn't matter what she looks like or if she had a nice personality because she doesn't have to say anything. She would be holding a pool cue stick.

The real man would say something like where are the "cro Bars". She would smile and point the pool cue in the direction of the cro bars. She would also have a box near her feet where the real man would put some money. Maybe five or ten bucks depending on what he is buying. That is not sexist . (A Ladies store could hire a man for this) It is so the store doesn't have to waste time paying this girl and she should make a good living and be paid in cash so she doesn't have to claim it on her taxes.

The real Man would then go to the cro bar aisle (because in a real Mans store only manly things would be sold, no incense burners, bed sheets or pink cell phone cases.)

At the cro bar aisle the price would be marked on each cro bar in red permanent marker and it would be priced in whole numbers, no 99 cents or anything silly like that.
If it is supposed to be $49.99, it is fifty bucks. $37. 23 would round out to $37.00 or $40.00. Real men don't need change as I always leave it on the counter or put it in one of those boxes that say homeless dogs, homeless Aardvarks, homeless Veterans, whatever is closest to me.

Then when we had the cro bar that we wanted we would look for that girl at the door.
Just inside the door would be a bucket. We would throw approximately how much we owe the store into the bucket.

Sometimes more, sometimes less. At the end of the day it will almost even out and everyone is happy.
If the store ends up with more money than they are supposed to get, they give it to the girl at the door.
This solves a multitude of problems and there are no lines in a Mens store.

I sometimes go food shopping with my wife and it is painful. It takes hours because she has to read every ingredient. Then she puts it in the carriage and in 5 minutes finds something better so she makes me put that first thing back.

Men have a different way of shopping. The first rule is never let the cart stop. If it stops you are finished.
Go in the store and head straight for whatever you want. Don't look at the colored donuts near the door or the paper towels on sale. Just head for the hamburgers, beer or whatever it is.

As you approach the item, raise your arm and in one quick movement grab the item and keep going. Then head to the next item. If you accidentally skip something, forget about it as you probably don't need it. Never go back.
Then search for the aisle that is the least crowded. Put the stuff on the belt as quickly as you can and estimate how much the stuff will cost. As soon as she scans everything put down a few bucks more than it is worth and run out without looking back.
Thats the way a Man shops.

Ladies should also have their own stores where no men are allowed. (Except the one at the door) They could have chairs, benches, tables with caramel lattes or anything else to make them comfortable. Then they could talk and show pictures of their kids or dogs. Everyone is happy and if the man is waiting home he makes dinner.

 

[Paul B]

Andy, I actually have dozens of video's on You Tube.
Just search for Paul Baldassano there.

I said I was old,not stupid.
I hope you had a great and safe Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your family.

Koyfam, thank you

 

[Paul B]

I went for my walk this morning like I almost always do but for some reason my wife got up early and that threw my schedule all off. I normally get out of the house about 6:30 when it is very cold and very dark. But she was up and we started talking, having coffee, moving the stove etc. and I wasted precious time.

Today I got out about 7:00 which made a world of difference and I will never walk that late again.
First of all it was very light out almost daylight. I totally missed the beautiful array of colors the sky turns when it goes from dark to where I could almost see my feet.

But my main concern is that it was very noisy. I live on a country road with the sea behind me and a golf course in front of me. But now they are building condo's near me and I immediately heard those back up alarms from the construction equipment. Beep, beep, beep, then the unmistakable sound of bulldozers moving dirt. RRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRrrmmmmmmmmmmfffffftttt

Horrible sound to hear early in the morning and I never hear that when I get out at a normal time. The country road I live on is a mile from the main road and when I normally walk, there are very few cars so I don't hear them.

At 7:00 am there is a lot of traffic and it makes this infernal Hum which I can't stand. You don't pay attention to it during the day because it is constant. But if you go early enough there are very few cars.

This totally defeated the purpose of my walk except that I did get exercise but it did nothing for my "carma" and the reason I moved out here.

Normally I hear the sounds of tiny birds that are all over the place. There are hundreds of them and they flitter all around me and they call to me. Cheap, cheap, cheap. Even though they don't how much I spend on bird seed.

I can also hear the faint sounds of the deer as they try to quietly walk away from me through the brush.
It is usually so quiet that I can often hear the muffled sounds of frogs. Of course they are hibernating now so I can only hear them snoring .

 

[Paul B]

Andy, I ordered one of these.

 

[LongIslandAndy]

Andy, I ordered one of these.

Now thats funny

 

[Paul B]

CRASH!!!!!!!.

No, not my reef, don't be ridiculous, I have a reverse undergravel filter and everyone who has a reverse undergravel in their tank that crashed, raise your hand.....Higher.

My worm culture crashed. It didn't crash because the worms died, it crashed because I have to many worms. And flies. My two worm cultures are inundated with flies. The fly larvae looks just like worms but a little shorter and the flies are really annoying. They fly around and crash into my bald head.

I tried many things to rid the thing of flies including completely flooding the culture overnight and leaving it outside when it is 35 degrees. The flies just laugh at my feeble attempts and their squeeky laughing really grates on me and exasperates my already grated PTSD.

I also built a container with a small fan on top where it would collect the flies as they hatched and sucked them into a net.

So today I left them outside where it is 30 degrees to stop them from laughing then I quickly flooded their container while holding a huge shop vac over it and as each fly warmed up and climbed out, I sucked them up.

I don't have one of those Sissy Girly shop vac's, this one I built and it will suck the ear wax out of your ears from 10' away through 5/8" sheetrock.

Then I kept running water into the container and pouring it out until it was clean with not a trace of worm or fly poop. After that I poured the entire thing through a course net and ran water over it for 15 minutes which removed most of the soil and those pesky gnats or whatever those little bugs are.

The next step was to swirl what was left, a little at a time in a round container. That congregates the remaining worms in the center and now they feel like they just went to midnight mass and drank to much wine. I sucked up masses of them with a baster thing that I built and put them in a clean container.

I collected about a pint of pure worms. I am sure some of those fly larvae got in but I can't be sure.

I threw out thousands of worms but I still have another culture that has even more flies in it. They are outside now where they may freeze. I will show them.

I may rescue those worms but I have so many that I really don't have to.

I am also considering a new way to collect the worms. I am going to try to use vermiculite which is really tiny pieces of Styrofoam instead of soil. To collect the worms I will just flood it and the vermiculite floats while the worms sink so I can suck them up with a baster. I am not sure how the worms will fare in vermiculite but the next time I go to a garden center, I will get some.

 

[Paul B]

Playing with my new lenses. I got this Hippo when she was very small. She has never eaten seaweed, algae or nori.

Very pregnant Watchgirl

 

[Paul B]

Today I took our Christmas tree down. For many years I would remove the ornaments and lights then carry the thing outside and spend the next few weeks picking up needles. About 10 years ago I started doing it this way. I put a fifty gallon garbage can on a dolly and roll it next to the tree. Put down a drop cloth and with a pruning sheers remove all the branches and put them in the can. Then throw out the middle stick. Very little mess. This is whats left.

I also kept my indoor lights in this box. You can see how old it is. It was made in the US in the town I lived in. I used that filter for many years.

 

[Paul B]

I also posted this on another forum because someone asked me if my method would work in a small tank of 29 gallons.


Dkmoo, my tank was started in a 40 gallon tank. I started it with ocean water from the East River near Manhattan because thats what I had and I couldn't get ASW. I also used rocks from jetty's in New York. I fed worms and things I could find as there was no salt water food sold at the time. Remember, the hobby didn't even start yet.


That 40 gallon tank had some problems for sure. Ich was everywhere and there was no copper medications because we didn't use that in fresh water. I found a scientist who told me about copper so I got pennies and put them in. I found out from Robert Straughn, (The Father of Salt Water Fish Keeping) to use 20 pennies to the gallon. (pennies are no longer made of copper so don't try this)

My old log book tells of all the problems I had and the medications I used were for humans and didn't work well.



I had a lot of fish then as fish came on the market, I bought them.
LFSs were popping up in the 80s but no one knew what they were doing and I bought all the new fish anyway and experimented until I could figure out what the fish needed. At the time I was also SCUBA diving in the tropics and in New York for lobsters.



Remember this was way before computers cell phones or the internet so there was also no bad information. As far as I knew, I was the only one with a salt tank.
But eventually I figured out what to do and I accidentally started feeding my 7 blue devils live worms that I used to feed to my fresh water tanks of which I think I had 14.



They started to spawn and lived for 7 years. Then I discovered that I didn't need the pennies any more and all my fish were living for many years. Of course I had accidents and lost fish as I barely knew what I was doing and when you do things by trial and error, you will fail more then you win.

Blue devil eggs circa 1972


It took until the early 80s when I think I had it down to a science and stopped losing fish to communicable diseases.
Then much later the internet came out and everyone had an opinion. Thats when the problems started and no one any more experimented, they all asked for opinions. Opinions now are fine but to ask for opinions from people who started the hobby last Tuesday and have kept one damsel for a couple of weeks on life support was not a good idea.

I wrote a few articles in the paper magazines then and like now, people would ask me questions.
(remember, even in those days I still had the oldest tank around)

I would say to feed live worms and clams etc. People would write back and say: Oh thats great, I can't get that so I will feed corn flakes is that OK?..



And thats the way it has always gone.

But getting back to your question of a small tank. For many years I kept a 5 gallon salt tank using NSW and rocks from New York water. Much of it was asphalt, cinder blocks and bricks,


I hatched out these octopus in a small tank.



And kept cool creatures. Most of which I collected in the sea




This was my tank I think in the 80s


Those small 5 gallon tanks using bricks,NSW and local creatures never crashed or had any disease problems. Not once. Don't tell some of the people on here because it would be an argument as they can't grasp having healthy fish by using parasites to control parasites.

Of course none of those people can show their still running tanks from when the hobby started.
Remember us Geezers invented quarantine, copper and medications, that is not a modern thing from the internet. It was because we were un informed and didn't realize that the fish could stay healthy if we stayed out of their way and dealt with diseases the way they have been for millions of years.

 

[Paul B]

I found my Log book. It seems that in 1982 I got a computer. An Apple 2C. But that didn't go on line. (I don't think there was an internet to go on then but I don't remember.
The thing only typed so it was an expensive typewriter.

It would also make Christmas cards, banners etc.
I kept the log until 1992. Most of it is just when I got a new fish or lost fish. The medications I used and stuff like that. I didn't write the every day mundane things and sometimes I went for months before i wrote anything.