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

[KathyC]

lol

 

[h2o]

Very interesting tank u have going there, keep the pics coming

 

[Paul B]

Thanks h2o,
Unfortunately that little burrfish will never be well behaved enough to live in my reef.
He really doesn't know he is supposed to eat live shrimp, snails and clams but he will wake up one day and figure it out. I may go boating today and maybe I will catch him some tankmates.

 

[Paul B]

Ok now I know what to feed my burrfish, fiddler crabs. My wife and I spend the night out on the boat and this morning I collected four fiddlers just to test them out. My burrfish devoured all four of them as soon as they hit the water.
We are going out again monday and I will collect a bunch of fiddlers.
Fiddlers are an interesting animal to keep but you need to have the correct home for them. You can't keep them underwater or they croak, you need more land areas than water areas. They just need to take a dip occasionally to wet their gills. I have kept them for years.
But now I will just keep them for burrfish food.

 

[Paul B]

Ok I spent $100.00 on boat gas, went to a nice tide pool and collected a bunch of fiddler crabs and now he got tired of them.
Click the picture

 

[Bob 1000]

Paul I had a similiar fish before they love it when you smash the crab a little first.. All groupers and puffers love them.. It'll grow like crazy.. I would smash the crabs one at a time or rip the claws off and they'll never get clawed and scared to eat them.. Best of luck..

 

[Paul B]

Yeah Bob, I know that, I did crush a couple just before that video but I would like him to work a little for his meal. That one in the video is a male, I took the large claw off first and he devoured that instantly.
No one crushes them in the sea and the first one he ate, he killed and ate himself, like a man, well a man fish anyway.

 

[Bob 1000]

lmao Paul.. Yeah you should have your fish man up every once in a while,,lol..

 

[Paul B]

For the last three days it has been over 100 degrees here in NY and today is supposed to be 104. I am leaving the lights off in my reef today as I have no chiller. The corals may like it and will just sleep late today. It is 86 degrees here now and it is 7:20 am. It looks like another boating day

 

[Paul B]

The fiddler crabs are so happy to be in my workshop that they were doing the wild thing.
One of them is loaded with eggs so I can't feed her to my burrfish. Well, I can but I would feel to bad about it. After the eggs hatch, probably in a day or two I will return her to her tide pool.
I will probably get a Christmas card from her later this year.
The babies will live a couple of days then disappear. This happens all the time with fiddler crabs and many animals spawn when their conditions change, even to worse conditions.

 

[Paul B]

My Daughter will be getting married in a few weeks and my wife wanted me to take out this Hope chest that we have to take out this little hanherchief. It was my Mother's hope chest and she was 99 years old when she died so this wooden chest is about 85 or so. In thosae days, around 1920 or so women needed a dowry to get married. So they had to keep all these clothes and other junk in there to bring to the marriage, I know, stupid. Anyway we keep it in the back of the fish closet so you have to remove absolutely everything in that closet to get to the thing.
When the closet was empty I noticed everything was wet, I figured either the tank was leaking or somerthing was splashing back there.
But it is just from humidity. Today here in NY is is almost 100 degrees and the humidity is about 85%. That means that everything is wet, no matter where it is. The air is just soaked so there is nothing you can do about it. If I turn on the de humidifier today, it will just use electricity, suck out gallon upon gallon of water from the ait but it won't make a dent in the moisture.
I rarely get an opportunity to crawl under the tank to check things out and I was not too happy with what I found. One leg of the galvanized stand is very corroded.
It is soaking wet just from humidity and there is no circulation back there.
Another leg was rusted but I managed to dry it and coat it in epoxy resin but this one is in worse shape. When I get time, and when the humidity is lower, I will also coat this leg in epoxy but I will also install another leg next to the rusted leg. I don't want to remove the bad leg because the tank has been there for decades and I don't want to disturb it.
It lasted long enough so I got my money's worth out of it. :tongue1:

 

[Paul B]

Today we went to the sand hole which is about 45 minutes from my harbor. Here it is.
It is full of diamond back terripins, hermit crabs, horse shoe crabs, fiddler crabs and grass shrimp.

We spent some of the day there but had to leave before low tide or we would be stranded there for 12 hours. It is a beautiful place and the water is clear and warm like the Caribbean. Then we went here to Cold Springs Harbor which is next to it. Some of the wealthiest people in the world live here, not that it does me any good, but I can enjoy their water that they don't own.

Of course I did have to take my inflatable boat to shore and check out the grass flats.

 

[Paul B]

OMG they are all over the place. Little devil snails. See the white spots on the glass, yea I know it's a lousy picture, forget about that and concentrate.
They are on every inch of the rock.
I am going to put up a pot of linguini, I think I have just enough of them for a nice meal.

 

[Paul B]

My wife who has no interest in reefing has found a new hoby, killing mojanos.
She wanted to use the zapper so I told her to leave me some mojanos because some people who come over like to try the thing.
She zapped all of my mojanos in a few minutes. Now I have to find some and feed them to make them grow so I can have other people Zap them.
My daughter loves this also.



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[Paul B]

The MH light on the left side of my tank has lost it's color, this is the second time this has happened with these lamps. The lamp is much less than a year old.
I will replace the lights and I really need to re aquascape. There is some room in the rear of the tank and I want to get the rocks more to the back so the gorgonians are not squashed up against the rocks.
The tank is 6' long but only 14" front to back.
At the time when I got this tank in the 70s it was considered huge.

 

[gasbatalla]

I like that the tank has been running so long, it really shows your love for the hobby. Just two questions. How many gallons is the tank? And what are the orange fishes just below the blue tang?

 

[Paul B]

The tank is 100 gallons and is 6' long, those orange fish are fireclowns the larger one is 16, 17 or 18 years old, I really don't know. Fireclowns are not that common but you see them occasionally.

 

[gasbatalla]

How do you take car of the gorgonians? Any special needs ? A friend just gave one to me, he had it next a carpet anemone so it wasn't doing so good. In my tank only about half of the time the polyps are extended. I have it in the tank about mid level and medium flow. Any advised?

 

[Paul B]

I feed them but for years I didn't so I am not sure it makes much difference. It seems the thick ones do good, the thin purple and red ones I can't get to live very long but these grow fairly well.
I have medium flow and just two 250 MH lights.

 

[Paul B]

I didn't feed my reef for three days because we were not home due to my Daughter's wedding but the animals didn't seem to mind. The half dead corals I got from a LFS that went out of business are doing well and seem to be re covering. I got them almost free so if they die, it is no great monitary loss. They just make my tank not look as healthy as it should look. In a few months those corals should look as good as new.
I really need to do some work on this tank but it will have to wait until winter, just too busy now. Some of the structure collapsed towards the front glass and the extra corals were just put in there, but there was really no room for them. I have to re-aquascape to fit everything. The gobies and pipefish are still spawning and everything looks good. Many new feather dusters sprang up all over the place and the two SPS are growing well as are the gorgonians including one sick one I got from that LFS.
That gorgonian and small green coral are against the front glass as is the rock