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

[Paul B]

I think it was closer to 200, but I did 10 in the last two years. Maybe 8 I forget.

 

[Paul B]

Just playing with some color filters

 

[Paul B]

 

[pbjelly]

I love this feeding setup! The first time I saw a picture of it, I had to comb through the thread to find your explanation for it.
Every time I see pictures of your Mandarin, it looks fat and happy.

 

[Paul B]

Thats because he keeps his main squeeze pregnant

 

[pbjelly]

Lol! I retract my fat statement. Comparatively, he's looking 'muscular'.
I know you're not supposed to call pregnant ladies fat, so I'll just say that she's looking exceptionally 'radiant' at the moment.

 

[Paul B]

Almost all my fish are spawning because I target feed. The pipefish, mandarins and two dragonettes (one red and one ruby red) eat from the baby brine shrimp feeder as well as hunt pods. The rest of the fish get fed from a baster looking thing that I built. I would never just throw food in the tank, and I never have. I "shoot" food to the different fish because the fast feeders like the copperband would get all the food. So I feed one side of the tank, then quickly squirt food on the other side. The copperband goes nuts swimming back and forth. Every day all the fish get some live blackworms and either clams or salt water plankton. I also have a longer feeder to shoot food into the caves where the pistol shrimp pair live. The watchman that lives with them has no trouble feeding as he has the largest mouth of all my fish but the pistols don't come out to far so I want to make sure they get enough. I also think they are spawning.
Another thing I do is have the powerheads on a timers and once a day the pumps go off for 15 minutes (besides when I feed the tank when I also turn off the pumps) I think the fish, especially the pipefish appreciate that as they seem to stick their noses into holes and hunt easier with calm water. The old pair of fireclowns seem to like to mate during those times.

I use one of these to feed the fish and always have.


Video eating worms.



The fish in the tank now are
1 copperband
2 mandarins
1 possum wrasse
1 clown gobi
2 fireclowns
2 bluestripe pipefish
2 dragon face pipefish
1 multi banded pipefish
1 ruby red dragonette
1 red dragonette
2 bangai cardinals
1 watchman
3 or 4 different cardinals
2 or 3 different gobies
2 pistol shrimp
unknown number of hermit crabs
1 long spine urchin
unknown number of local NY mud snails

 

[Paul B]

Today I went to my favorite LFS Aquarium Village and picked up a beautiful torch coral. I already have to many of them but I may go back for another one as I can't help myself. (Thanks Andy)


This is one of their pipes that I got a while ago.

 

[LongIslandAndy]

Today I went to my favorite LFS Aquarium Village and picked up a beautiful torch coral. I already have to many of them but I may go back for another one as I can't help myself. (Thanks Andy)


This is one of their pipes that I got a while ago.

Your welcome Paul, I'm glad you like it

 

[Paul B]

Yes I do. I still have those two local pipefish in a 5 gallon tank and I am trying to give them away. They are very cool but I can't put them in my reef as it is a little to warm for them. They eat all day long as I keep new born shrimp in their tank. If I leave to go on a trip I may have to put them back in the sea or put them in my reef which I think will kill them. The water in the sea now is cold so I would have to gradually acclimate them to the sea temps and that takes time. For some reason I don't have a lot of free time even though I am retired. We are soon having friends from Boston come to visit and I need to decorate the house early for Christmas (as many people do) I still have the Thanksgiving stuff up all over the place and it would look stupid to put Christmas up over Thanksgiving. They should separate all these decorating holidays by 3 months. I go a little overboard for Christmas as my birthday is on December 25th and I play Santa.

My tank is doing very well and I do very little to it. It is just there like a part of the furniture requiring almost no input from me except to clean the glass as the hermit crabs can only clean the bottom 1/2"

 

[Paul B]

Today I went to the frag SWAP. I had a really good time and bought a gorgonian. A few people recognized me from the 4,000 pictures of me that I purposely put on line so I wouldn't feel lonely there. Some people asked me things like my nitrate levels , phosphate levels , why do I use a UG filter, my waist size etc.
I don't know the answer to any of those things because my test kits all came in wooden boxes wrapped in parchment paper that reads to keep in a cool chariot so they are a little outdated. I do however get my parameters checked occasionally at my favorite LFS. Actually I have two favorite LFSs because one of them don't sell worms. (Don't worry Andy, I won't say which one) I let the LFS buy those expensive test kits and I use that extra money so I can buy a nice bottle of merlot to bring on my boat. If the LFS tells me my parameters are fine, that is great, but if the LFS tells me there is something off with my parameters, well then.......OK I still don't do anything but at least I have a nice bottle of Merlot to drown out my frustrations,.

 

[Manolo_AP]

Which LFS sells the worms?

 

[pbjelly]

Hi Paul, It was great meeting you yesterday.
I was so excited about the coral feeders that you donated to the swap raffle that I ended up with two sets. I gave one to my friend Albert, who was A: standing around looking sad after not winning a set for himself, and B: suitably grateful.

Thanks so much for taking the time to make and donate all of this. - Maybe at the next swap I'll finally manage to win one of those Majano Wands.

 

[Paul B]

Manolo I get the worms at either Fish Town USA in Bayside or my friend Manny at 212 Franklin Ave. I forget the name but it was Pet Barn for many years.


Pbjelly, it was my pleasure. Coincidentally, I am making 100 of those feeders today as I have gotten another order. I don't make to many of the smaller ones but I guess I should. If you want one, let me know. Where are you in Brooklyn? My Son N Law has a restaurant on Fulton street in Clinton Hill near the Barclay Center.
Paul

 

[pbjelly]

Thanks for the offer Paul, I'm all good with my snazzy pair of feeders.

I'm pretty close to Clinton Hill, which restaurant is your son in law's? I'll have to go check it out.

 

[Paul B]

It is this one http://www.threelettersbrooklyn.com/

 

[Paul B]

I have a slight tank problem. Last week I bought a torch coral with a bunch of heads on it which is very cool as I have quite a few of them. Yesterday I noticed one head croaked, that is not supposed to happen so I broke down and tested the water for PO4 and nitrates. The two kits I have are very old and I have no Idea when I got them. They could be from Columbus so I am not taking the readings to seriously. The PO4 reads practically zero (which I doubt) and the nitrate is hard to read because it looks like ink so according to that kit it is like 4 million. It probably is 50 or so which is higher than I would like as I would rather it be near 25 or so. I am thinking this may be the cause of that coral dying but it could have been damaged when I got it as the rest of my corals seem fine. But The tank is way overloaded, the fish got to big, I feed like an all you can eat buffet because most of them are spawning and I can't do my normal maintenance because of the five pipefish. Every ten years or so I like to remove much of the rock and stir up the UG filter, but whenever I do that, I lose the pipefish. I think their tiny gills get clogged so I can't clean the gravel and it is over due. I also can't catch the pipefish. If I try to remove the rocks I would have to break many of the larger corals as they have grown across everything. I don't see this as a problem but an interesting situation that makes me think. I have a few plans, none of which are good plans but plans none the less. One scenario I will build tank dividers out of plexiglass and section off one quarter of the tank after removing the rocks. Then I would clean that and try to move it to half the tank. Then take all the rock and corals from the remaining side and put that on the clean side, then do that side. This of course would be a night mare. The other plan involves removing everything except the gravel to large vats which I don't have enough. I would break the corals very gently but they would not be happy. Then I would remove the fish and stir up the gravel. If I did this I have interesting ideas on what I want to do with the rock. I want it completely off the gravel and the entire reef would be suspended from above on nylon lines that you would not see from the front. I have been wanting to do this for years but the amount of disruption to the tank would be quite a bit. I love the aquascape I have now as very little of it is actually touching the gravel because I built long fake rock that spans large areas without hitting the bottom. In the mean time I re built my denitrifier coil. It used to be on the tank but during Hurricane Sandy the power went off and that thing was not high on my list to keep going so it stopped and I didn't want to turn it on again until I ran bleach through it. I wanted to try a different model anyway. It is now running in my workshop as I will seed it with bacteria and get it going again. These things excite me and get me thinking other wisw, I get bored.

 

[Paul B]

That coil thing is now changed. There is now an inside coil and an outside coil. The entire thing fits inside that blue tube that gets sealed and just makes it look cool. The tank is running well but I surpassed the ability of the bacteria to process nitrates. It will be fine if I could stir up the gravel as it has been to long and some areas clog. My pistol shrimp are not helping because they piled up the gravel in the center of the tank about 8" high so there are places with no gravel and you can see the UG filter plates. I also have to stop adding livestock and feeding so much but that is the consequences of having the fish spawning. They require a lot of food and I feed the pipefish herd a few times a day. All the fish are twice as large as they were when I added them and they eat twice as much. But it's all good

 

[Paul B]

Today I went for a routine echo cardiogram and stress test. I have one every couple of years because my insurance pays for it and my Doctor has some Supermodels working for him so what the heck.
One of the Supermodels is going to take my blood pressure and I told her, don't bother because my blood pressure is better than perfect. She says, what makes you thing so? I said because I am in perfect shape, can't you tell? I can tell by her expression that she didn't think so. Anyway, she says, what do you think your pressure is? I said 117 over 75. She took it and said "Dam", it's better than that. It's 115 over 70. That's like what Batman's pressure is :lmao: (I said that last part, not her)
So I get on the treadmill and start walking as the Doctor is talking to me. He keeps his boat moored right near mine so I see him all the time. I spend ten minutes on the thing walking as fast as I can then you jump on the gurney and they do the echo and stress stuff. After a while the nurse runs out yelling for the Doctor so I figure I must be going into cardiac arrest, have Ebola or am in the middle of a stroke. The doctor comes in, who by the way is a cardiologist and is about 300lbs. and they are looking at the readout. The nurse says "I can't read it, is this normal?" So now I am sure I am croaking and I see my life flashing before me. Fish, Supermodels, brine shrimp hatcheries, more Supermodels etc.
Then he tells her, she can't read it on that chart because even though I am 65 years old, I have the perfect heart for a 48 year old so I am off the chart.

 

[ReefWreak]

Paul, long time follower, first time responder (I'm new to MR).

Glad you're in excellent health, and keep on reefing.

That's going to be quite a project with suspending the rocks. Is that for ease of access? You could lift them off of the gravel much easier if you were to build an acrylic sheet on the bottom with short rods lifting them out of the gravel surface. You'd have to remove all of the gravel to do that, but if you're cleaning it all out anyway, might be worth considering.

It's always amazed me how long your reef has been going (and so strongly, no less!), so thanks for continuing to share!