- Location
- Baiting Hollow Long Island NY
You put the worm culture in a plastic shoe box as it is a bunch of dirt. You can't put that in your tank. You just put the worms in your tank.
Tank Thread Tank reached 38 years old...in 2009!
- Thread starter Paul B
- Start date
- Location
- Baiting Hollow Long Island NY
Whenever you want. I just had that at my friends in Smithtown
- Location
- Baiting Hollow Long Island NY
It is 7 degrees here on Long Island today, but my fish are nice and warm. My 2 fireclowns keep the tank at a comfy 78 degrees
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- Location
- Baiting Hollow Long Island NY
I was wondering why I have not had to add water to my worm tank for a month, and I found out. The water resovour that feeds my tank, (blue bucket) sprang a leak and drips into the worm tank that is not the one in this picture, there is a much smaller tank there now. The acrylic tube on the side of the bucket is leaking. I noticed it today as I was changing the bag in the whole house vacuum (red bucket) I put that there as a sight glass so I can see how much water is in the bucket. It has been there for more years than I could count and I don't even remember building the thing so I don't know why it started leaking. But I fixed it (I think, it is still drying) so all is well. If not, I will just make a new sight glass. That bucket was in need of a cleaning anyway as it had quite a bacterial slime built up in it.
- Location
- Baiting Hollow Long Island NY
I posted this some place else (yes, other places do exist) and since I like to hear myself rant, I figured I would also put it here. Just resist the urge to argue with me about it.
They asked me about my practices
I may not be the best one to ask about setting up a salt tank as I kind of disagree with a lot of the common wisdom out there. Presently, most people set up tanks the same way because everyone goes on the internet and sees how tanks are set up. Many people are knowledgeable but a lot of the methods and rumors come about from novices that have one tank set up since last Tuesday and they had one tang with ich and they cured it with chicken bones, a cleaner shrimp, Justin Biebers latest hit single ,garlic, Ginger, Maryann, or something that IMO does nothing for the fish, "but" you can't make linguini and clams without garlic.
You can (and will) argue with people all day long about this stuff but in reality
you need a fair amount of experience over a number of years with a number different types of creatures before you should start posting things as fact.
Of course anyone, including my 18 month old Grand Daughter can post her theories (if she stopped sucking her thumb long enough).
That being said, I believe in a much more natural approach to this hobby. An approach where algae and diseases including paracites can be used to our advantage. This is where virtually everyone will disagree with me. Other approaches of course will work. We can keep a person alive on a respirator indefinitely, but wouldn't it be better for everyone if we could have kept that person healthy in the first place or at least allow their own body to repair itself.
That is my approach and it is simple but the theory may be hard to comprehend.
For instance, when, and if you begin this hobby you will read from the internet. Much of what you will read about is ways to eliminate algae, diseases and paracites. You will never read (unless I wrote it) how paracites and algae "may" in "some" circumstances be beneficial. Algae and paracites are found all over the sea on all healthy reefs and it is not something we try to remove from the reefs. If we removed the algae all the urchins, tangs, algae bleenies, slugs, chitens, sea hares and snails would starve as that is what those animals use as a staple. Many people shy away from that fact and see algae as a pest. They will use all sorts of measures to get it out of their tank, but the truth is that if you have no algae at all, something is wrong. There are certainly nutrients in the water that promote algae and it doesn't take much nutrients to grow algae.
You will also learn about paracites although you probably already do being you have fresh water tanks. Again, most people try their hardest to keep every paracite out of their tank and in some instances that is a good practice. It is also a good practice when setting up a new tank because new tanks with all new water, especially if you use artificial salt water (ASW) are not very healthy at all. What I do is keep my fish in spawning condition through live food such as live blackworms and for the tiny fish, new born brine shrimp less than a few hours old. Spawning fish are as healthy as fish can be and in my experience are not "hardly" ever harmed by paracites. I can say that because of the age of my tank and the fish. A lot of people hate me and my tank because of this as it puts a dent in popular opinion that if you don't quarantine, your tank is a time bomb. (They are also jealous of my luxurious hair) My time bomb is the oldest one on here by far and I have not quarantined in decades. I am sure there are so many paracites in my tank that on Friday nights they sit around the torch corals doing the Macarana. I don't care as they are natural and can stay as long as they like. I also like the fact that I can go to any store, pick a fish out of any tank (or even the ocean) and just throw it in my tank (after I acclimate it for a little while) The paracites in my tank whatever they are doing are keeping up the immune systems of my fish. Again, this is just from my experience as I am not a fish or paracite expert. But I have been doing this since last Tuesday.
The key is the fish "Must" be "always" in breeding condition. That is perceived by a lot of people to be hard. Those are the people who feed flakes, pellets, lettuce and some commercially prepared food that is not live.
I also feed frozen foods but my system would probably not work in the long run if I didn't use at least some live food. Then again there are frozen foods and frozen foods. Some foods such as frozen bloodworms, mosquito larvae, brine shrimp, and some others are not a suitable food. A suitable food is a whole animal such as Mysis shrimp, fish eggs, clams or whole, live worms.
That is all I use (along with new born brine shrimp for tiny fish)
That is all you need but I feel the live worms should be fed almost every day.
As for algae, yes we don't want it to grow in our displays, but I want the algae to grow in my system, just not on the corals. We use some type of refugium or some place to grow algae other than the tank that has better growing conditions. We want algae, it removes substances from the water naturally without adding chemicals and it does it for free except for some electricity to light it. Algae growing in a controlled place is the best eliminator of algae in the main tank.
There is also the thing about testing. That is another facet in this hobby that people obsess about. The fact is that saltwater is very stable "if" there is some algae in the system and "if" you don't add things that offset the waters natural ability to stay stable. If you change water occasionally like we should do, the water should stay stable with no help from you. The tanks with most of the dosers of various chemicals need testing as they parameters are always off due to the tweeking. It is not bad to know your parameters and in a newer tank we should test to see what is going on, but resist the urge to try to keep the numbers "exactly" where some "expert" feels they should be. Even the temperature has a wide margin as to what it should be. It can be anywhere between about 73 to 87 or so. A little higher or lower doesn't hurt either as mine has gone down into the higher 60s to the mid 90s but that was during power outages and I don't recommend it. But if your fish are in breeding conditions it will be fine for short periods, if they are not, you will be collecting a lot of ich infected fish.
Luckily for me, no one is going to read this except for you and maybe me because as I said, I am perceived to be either a weird nut job who is very lucky or a magician who conjurs spells to keep the tank running as I read in so many places that my methods are next to impossible to re produce
They asked me about my practices
I may not be the best one to ask about setting up a salt tank as I kind of disagree with a lot of the common wisdom out there. Presently, most people set up tanks the same way because everyone goes on the internet and sees how tanks are set up. Many people are knowledgeable but a lot of the methods and rumors come about from novices that have one tank set up since last Tuesday and they had one tang with ich and they cured it with chicken bones, a cleaner shrimp, Justin Biebers latest hit single ,garlic, Ginger, Maryann, or something that IMO does nothing for the fish, "but" you can't make linguini and clams without garlic.
You can (and will) argue with people all day long about this stuff but in reality
you need a fair amount of experience over a number of years with a number different types of creatures before you should start posting things as fact.
Of course anyone, including my 18 month old Grand Daughter can post her theories (if she stopped sucking her thumb long enough).
That being said, I believe in a much more natural approach to this hobby. An approach where algae and diseases including paracites can be used to our advantage. This is where virtually everyone will disagree with me. Other approaches of course will work. We can keep a person alive on a respirator indefinitely, but wouldn't it be better for everyone if we could have kept that person healthy in the first place or at least allow their own body to repair itself.
That is my approach and it is simple but the theory may be hard to comprehend.
For instance, when, and if you begin this hobby you will read from the internet. Much of what you will read about is ways to eliminate algae, diseases and paracites. You will never read (unless I wrote it) how paracites and algae "may" in "some" circumstances be beneficial. Algae and paracites are found all over the sea on all healthy reefs and it is not something we try to remove from the reefs. If we removed the algae all the urchins, tangs, algae bleenies, slugs, chitens, sea hares and snails would starve as that is what those animals use as a staple. Many people shy away from that fact and see algae as a pest. They will use all sorts of measures to get it out of their tank, but the truth is that if you have no algae at all, something is wrong. There are certainly nutrients in the water that promote algae and it doesn't take much nutrients to grow algae.
You will also learn about paracites although you probably already do being you have fresh water tanks. Again, most people try their hardest to keep every paracite out of their tank and in some instances that is a good practice. It is also a good practice when setting up a new tank because new tanks with all new water, especially if you use artificial salt water (ASW) are not very healthy at all. What I do is keep my fish in spawning condition through live food such as live blackworms and for the tiny fish, new born brine shrimp less than a few hours old. Spawning fish are as healthy as fish can be and in my experience are not "hardly" ever harmed by paracites. I can say that because of the age of my tank and the fish. A lot of people hate me and my tank because of this as it puts a dent in popular opinion that if you don't quarantine, your tank is a time bomb. (They are also jealous of my luxurious hair) My time bomb is the oldest one on here by far and I have not quarantined in decades. I am sure there are so many paracites in my tank that on Friday nights they sit around the torch corals doing the Macarana. I don't care as they are natural and can stay as long as they like. I also like the fact that I can go to any store, pick a fish out of any tank (or even the ocean) and just throw it in my tank (after I acclimate it for a little while) The paracites in my tank whatever they are doing are keeping up the immune systems of my fish. Again, this is just from my experience as I am not a fish or paracite expert. But I have been doing this since last Tuesday.
The key is the fish "Must" be "always" in breeding condition. That is perceived by a lot of people to be hard. Those are the people who feed flakes, pellets, lettuce and some commercially prepared food that is not live.
I also feed frozen foods but my system would probably not work in the long run if I didn't use at least some live food. Then again there are frozen foods and frozen foods. Some foods such as frozen bloodworms, mosquito larvae, brine shrimp, and some others are not a suitable food. A suitable food is a whole animal such as Mysis shrimp, fish eggs, clams or whole, live worms.
That is all I use (along with new born brine shrimp for tiny fish)
That is all you need but I feel the live worms should be fed almost every day.
As for algae, yes we don't want it to grow in our displays, but I want the algae to grow in my system, just not on the corals. We use some type of refugium or some place to grow algae other than the tank that has better growing conditions. We want algae, it removes substances from the water naturally without adding chemicals and it does it for free except for some electricity to light it. Algae growing in a controlled place is the best eliminator of algae in the main tank.
There is also the thing about testing. That is another facet in this hobby that people obsess about. The fact is that saltwater is very stable "if" there is some algae in the system and "if" you don't add things that offset the waters natural ability to stay stable. If you change water occasionally like we should do, the water should stay stable with no help from you. The tanks with most of the dosers of various chemicals need testing as they parameters are always off due to the tweeking. It is not bad to know your parameters and in a newer tank we should test to see what is going on, but resist the urge to try to keep the numbers "exactly" where some "expert" feels they should be. Even the temperature has a wide margin as to what it should be. It can be anywhere between about 73 to 87 or so. A little higher or lower doesn't hurt either as mine has gone down into the higher 60s to the mid 90s but that was during power outages and I don't recommend it. But if your fish are in breeding conditions it will be fine for short periods, if they are not, you will be collecting a lot of ich infected fish.
Luckily for me, no one is going to read this except for you and maybe me because as I said, I am perceived to be either a weird nut job who is very lucky or a magician who conjurs spells to keep the tank running as I read in so many places that my methods are next to impossible to re produce
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5 star thread all the way, I love that you actually take the time to write about your tank / experiences and share it here with us.
I wholeheartedly agree with you about the obsession with testing. I had a friend who claim he knew everything; tested frequently (excessively in my opinion lol), dosed to correct the "issue" and lost corals along the way.
I wholeheartedly agree with you about the obsession with testing. I had a friend who claim he knew everything; tested frequently (excessively in my opinion lol), dosed to correct the "issue" and lost corals along the way.
Hello Paul,
A very interesting read. As a matter of fact, following your posts about "why do my fish spawn?" I started feeding live worms every other day.
I have a question about additives. Do you not use any at all? If so, how heavy is your coral charge? In my tank, there is a staghorn that grows a bit more than 1cm a month. Keeping up with this with just water changes is just impossible.
I am not one that believes in using everything that comes in a shiny bottle, but there are some things that in my opinion we cannot add without dosing/reactors.
A very interesting read. As a matter of fact, following your posts about "why do my fish spawn?" I started feeding live worms every other day.
I have a question about additives. Do you not use any at all? If so, how heavy is your coral charge? In my tank, there is a staghorn that grows a bit more than 1cm a month. Keeping up with this with just water changes is just impossible.
I am not one that believes in using everything that comes in a shiny bottle, but there are some things that in my opinion we cannot add without dosing/reactors.
- Location
- Baiting Hollow Long Island NY
In the last line I wrote that no one was going to read this, so I don't know why you did. But I do use additives,, I use Dow Flake drive way ice melter and baking soda.
That's about it. I guess it cost me about $3.00 a year or so. Do you know what that stuff in the shiny bottle is? Ice melter and baking soda. It is not a magical ingredient as the magic ingredients already come in the box of artificial salt you buy.
Now, many people say I don't have colorful corals, and they would be 100% correct. I just never bought any very colorful corals. I can but they just don't interest me. My tank is for my own enjoyment and was never meant to be TOTM. It started as a humble fish tank that was just an extension of my freshwater youth. It evolved into a reef that I personally like. I get much more excited if I see my pistol shrimp, mandarins, or clown gobies spawning than I would if I saw a nice bright red 1/2" coral growing. But if you like that sort of thing, go out and buy them.
I don't understand the question of how heavy is my coral charge, but if you mean how many corals I have? I have no idea as they are all over the place. Some are many years old and pieces break off and grow someplace else. Probably 3/4 of them are LPS as I just like them better. There are numerous leathers and mushrooms and maybe 15 various SPS but as I said, they just sprout up.
I personally don't like wall to wall corals but I know most people do. My aquascape wouldn't allow it anyway as I built much of my rock and you can't see from the pictures, but there are large passageways through and under my entire reef. Corals are growing on all the real estate where it will fit. There are also coral wars especially with the LPS corals as they sting each other so you need some distance between them. I have many dead corals from these wars, they are still in there and most of them have gradually moved away from the offending coral. My montipora is an example. It would be huge but the other corals keep killing it so it gradually tries to grow in another direction. But to me all of that is natural and interesting, much more than if I go to a store and buy a colorful coral that anyone can do with some money.
I strive for natural looking and I think I have achieved it to a certain degree. Certainly not the best looking tank on here, but the tank I want.
That's about it. I guess it cost me about $3.00 a year or so. Do you know what that stuff in the shiny bottle is? Ice melter and baking soda. It is not a magical ingredient as the magic ingredients already come in the box of artificial salt you buy.
Now, many people say I don't have colorful corals, and they would be 100% correct. I just never bought any very colorful corals. I can but they just don't interest me. My tank is for my own enjoyment and was never meant to be TOTM. It started as a humble fish tank that was just an extension of my freshwater youth. It evolved into a reef that I personally like. I get much more excited if I see my pistol shrimp, mandarins, or clown gobies spawning than I would if I saw a nice bright red 1/2" coral growing. But if you like that sort of thing, go out and buy them.
I don't understand the question of how heavy is my coral charge, but if you mean how many corals I have? I have no idea as they are all over the place. Some are many years old and pieces break off and grow someplace else. Probably 3/4 of them are LPS as I just like them better. There are numerous leathers and mushrooms and maybe 15 various SPS but as I said, they just sprout up.
I personally don't like wall to wall corals but I know most people do. My aquascape wouldn't allow it anyway as I built much of my rock and you can't see from the pictures, but there are large passageways through and under my entire reef. Corals are growing on all the real estate where it will fit. There are also coral wars especially with the LPS corals as they sting each other so you need some distance between them. I have many dead corals from these wars, they are still in there and most of them have gradually moved away from the offending coral. My montipora is an example. It would be huge but the other corals keep killing it so it gradually tries to grow in another direction. But to me all of that is natural and interesting, much more than if I go to a store and buy a colorful coral that anyone can do with some money.
I strive for natural looking and I think I have achieved it to a certain degree. Certainly not the best looking tank on here, but the tank I want.
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- Location
- Baiting Hollow Long Island NY
Certainly not the nicest tank on here, but it is the way I want and designed it.
I strive for natural looking and I think I achieved that goal.
I strive for natural looking and I think I achieved that goal.
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- Location
- Hicksville, NY
Hey Paul, do you have plans in place for the tank in the event that it outlives you?
- Location
- Baiting Hollow Long Island NY
Yes I do. I want my wife to give the entire thing to someone who would know how to take care of it, keep dosers and to many test kits away from it, keep the UG filter and feed worms every day. If not, 6 months after I croak, so will it. :lovestory
- Location
- Hicksville, NY
That would be such a shame. Either way, let's hope it all turns out for the best, all around.
- Location
- Baiting Hollow Long Island NY
I am 65 years old, I maybe have, if I am lucky another ten years of fish keeping as I will turn my habits into chasing retired Supermodels by then so I don't think I will have time for the tank.
You're hilarious! 
I hope I have a nice big tank like yours someday. And yes it looks more natural to me. I rather have a natural looking reef tank than seeing frag plugs. Unfortunately when you're working with limited space there's no choice but to put them on the sand bed.
I've always wanted a yellow clown goby. I saw one perching on a mushroom coral at the lfs and thought it was the cutest thing. Does yours have a lot of personality?
I hope I have a nice big tank like yours someday. And yes it looks more natural to me. I rather have a natural looking reef tank than seeing frag plugs. Unfortunately when you're working with limited space there's no choice but to put them on the sand bed.I've always wanted a yellow clown goby. I saw one perching on a mushroom coral at the lfs and thought it was the cutest thing. Does yours have a lot of personality?
Paul, its time to go big. turn your backyard into a REEF where we can all put our corals in there and watch them grow as well as make it big enough so you can do Diving lessons in the "REEF" That would be the best tank in the world. Then build a tunnel that leads into your basement to the in ground tank. so we can look from the glass view OMG OMG OMG ill help you
that sounds awesome
- Location
- Baiting Hollow Long Island NY
I think so because him and his girlfriend spawn almost twice a week
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