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Tank birthday and I'm a Geezer

Paul B

Paul B

NJRC Member
redfishbluefish, it doesn't look familiar. I have plenty of pictures of crabs from the Sound but I can't post them so make believe there is a huge picture of a crab here that does not look like a sock monkey.

OK what was this thread about? Oh Spirit Airlines and the tank birthday. I can't put a tank picture up but I have one more airline story. It is not as long, but it is also true as all my stories are.
This story is keeping in line with this thread and as I said, if you don't want to read it, why are you looking at this thread? I think there is a re-run of "I Love Lucy" on.

I think the worst airline I flew was Frontier airlines. I was in Kentucky and the Army sent me to Colorado on Frontier Airlines. The plane was a 16 seater with two propellers one of which were about 3" from my window. The pilot who was about 70 years old, 350lbs. was wearing a 10 gallon hat. He carried a small step stool out so the people and goats could get in.
The plane was filled with some farmers, old ladies and a couple of German tourists. Some of the people had bushels of apples and other produce. The Captain gets in, no co pilot, and we take off. It was rough because there was no real runway, just a dirt strip.
As we climb to about 75' and level off the Captain turns around to yell that we are about to land. We had only been airborne maybe 3 minutes and I thought something was wrong. But nothing was wrong, this was our first stop.
We land and some people get out and some more get on. Again we reach our cruising altitude of, Oh I am not sure but we cleared the tree tops.
Again the Captain yells "we are landing" Some get off and some get on.
This goes on for the larger portion of the day with us landing on every patch of dirt or dead end street all the way to Colorado. Finally we get to the Grand Canyon and I know the trip is almost over. By now the Captain and most of the passengers are all singing "The Yellow Rose of Texas" at the top of their lungs which tended to drown out the drone of the propeller next to my ear. So the Captain says, I am going to tilt the plane to give the young soldier a good look at the canyon. Before I could say NNNNOOOOOOoo he's got this thing on it's side. The singing seemed louder now as goats, chickens and produce was flying all through the cabin.
We finally land in Colorado and I got off, it took me a while to get out of my seat but those two old ladies helped me.
That was what the Army booked me on. Viet Nam seemed so much safer.

OH, and I just remembered that crab. I did find that in my tank ,not the Sound, and I remember I didn't know how he got in there. I still have that picture someplace.
 
Paul B

Paul B

NJRC Member
test1.jpgLook at that, I got a mini Picture posted. OK, that is not even a real picture. Let me try something else.Bathing cap.jpg

Oh, I forgot, I got one of these last year, and another one a few weeks ago.
 
Paul B

Paul B

NJRC Member
wide angle tank4.jpgFor some reason I can insert tiny pictures, but not from Photobucket where most of my fish pictures are. But I will work on it. Of course I could just become a member, but that is the easy way.
This is cool. Just put your face close to the monitor and squint. Or double click on it
 
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Paul B

Paul B

NJRC Member
You can DIY almost everything for your reef and save thousands. Rock is very expensive to fill a large tank and although I collected all of my rock in the sea, I have gradually replaced it with hollow home made rock as I have posted. It is better than real rock for a few reasons. It is practically free, easy and fun to build, can be made in any shape imagined and especially fragile shapes that you will not be able to find in a store. It is also hollow so there is double the available space for bacteria to grow and the inside may house anerobic bacteria better than real rock. I am sure someplace in this rambled thread I explained how to build it.
You can also easily build your own LED fixture. I think mine cost $250.00 or something like that where as a 6' commercially built fixture would probably cost $600.00. My skimmer (which incidently does not remove proteins, protein skimmer is really a stupid name) cost me less than ten bucks without the two pumps it takes to run. And it is 5' tall and needs almost no maintenance.
The only problems I can see with my tank are not really problems. The corals, specifically the LPS grow to large and sting each other and the pistol shrimp dig to much toppling rocks. My acropora corals grow very fast but they seem to always be in the way of long tenticled LPS corals which kill the acro's pretty fast. I don't move them as the acro's just try to grow in a different direction.
My tank has had invasive algae, cyano, hair algae, marginad snails and probably manta ray larvae, but all of those things left on their own with no help from me. Just a little time and patience normalized everything.
I have never dipped a coral, changed my Ph or quarantined anything in decades. My fish are spawning. That statement is the most important as only extreamly healthy fish will spawn.
Is that a long enough rant?
(make believe there are beautiful pictures of home made rock here.)
 
Paul B

Paul B

NJRC Member
I have been reading a lot lately and have decided to upgrade my aquarium practices to incorporate "all" of the advances in the hobby to get my fish in the best possable shape, even better than they were in the sea. I also want to eliminate "all" of my questionable practices so here is a synapsis of what I am going to do from now on.
I keep reading that changing water is the best thing you can do, so from now on I will be changing at the least one tablespoon of seawater every 22 minutes for 6 days a week. On Sunday I will only change that amount hourly. And I will be using "level" tablespoons, no cheating.
The salinity of the make up water will be checked no longer than 35 minutes before it is used and I will use a nuclear calibrated refractometer that I will buy from NASA. After we dismantled the space program they have refractometers left over fro the Mars probe project.
The salt mix I will use is custom made on a spicific mountaintop in the Alps in France where the temperature and humidity is perfect to make ASW.
The workers in the salt plant will wear hair nets and paper booties.
For food, I have found a Chief in Belgium who will shell and devain each individual mysis and check it for disease, paracites, sex and geneology. Only female mysis from the upper class strains will be used.
I will suppliment the fishes diet with clams that I will have grown from eggs in Fiji. I will have the clams harvested when they are exactly 3 years and 5 months old.
Each clam will be read to (the classics) and individually fed throughout their life from a "new" baster.
Any algae discovered in the tank will facilitate the entire emptying of the tank and subsequent steam cleaning while the animals are housed in a sterile room in a safe house in the Bronx.
The glass will be cleaned by the same company that washes the windows on the Sears Tower.
Lighting will a little more complicated. Early in the morning the first lighting will be from whale oil lamps to simulate starlight over the ocean. Those lamps will gradually dim as the morning progresses, the next lights to provide illumination will be headlights from a vintage 1954 Porche but those will only be on for 47 minutes until the banks of LEDs come on which will be supplimented by actual movies of the sun over Sumatra at noon.
Suppliments will be prepared by a retired NASA scientist with degrees in at least 7 different chemistry fields and he should have graduated in the top 2% ofhis class in all fields. If he was also the Validictorian that is a plus.
My tank has been called a sewer and a garbage dump, so to remady that, the only decorations used will have been previousely used in an operation room from Saint Francis Heart hospital in Long Island.
The livestock will not be "caught" but gradually aclimated to aquarium life in the sea by gently coaxing the fish into a glass enclosure while playing clasical music and piping it into the enclosure via waterproof speakers. Only fish that feel comfortable with this music and enclosure will be brought to the surface one inch at a time and transported on a fairly new yacht to their new home.
The room where I will keep this tank will be painted the same shade of blue that the sky over Bora Bora is. Of course a professional artist will be needed for that and not just a "painter".
I feel that these paractice along with a few others )that I won't mention because they may seem by some to be "over the top") will be used to try to quell the feelings that my tank is dirty and a discrace.
What are your thoughts on this?
 
redfishbluefish

redfishbluefish

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Glad to see you are finally going to start doing things the right way. God only knows that you've been screwing around for the last 40 years, so it's about time. Looking forward to the improvements in your tank....not that septic tank sewer that you have right now. :grin:
 
Cdiggy

Cdiggy

Paul you need to start writing your memoirs..... I know I would buy a copy ( but only if you signed the copy and it was written in Arabic.)
 
Edwardw771

Edwardw771

NJRC Member
Great looking tank I always enjoy reading your posts. For posting pics on the site. There is a check box under the insert image from URL button called Retrieve remote file and reference locally. Try to uncheck that. You should then get full pics to post from Photobucket.
 
Paul B

Paul B

NJRC Member
There is a check box under the insert image from URL button called Retrieve remote file and reference locally
Click to expand...
I can do that, but then that entire box stays shaded, how do I get back to the post to add the image?

I even tried drawing a picture on my monitor in crayon, but it still would not go on my post.. I mean I can just pay the 12 bucks to join the forum but I am concerned that even that won't work. As you get older, electronic equipment stops working.
 
downbeach

downbeach

Yea, the first interactive TV show, it was on for a few years, until they realized the kids were starting to glow in the dark. :eek:
 
Paul B

Paul B

NJRC Member
Oh my gosh....I remember Windy Dink and You.....you had that clear piece of film you would put over the tv
Click to expand...
I also remember that but do you remember John Neggy, the artist that used to also do that with the clear plastic on the TV? He tried to teach you how to paint. And do you also remember the glass you put on your black and white TV to make it look like color? You have to be older than 62 to remember those. The top was tinted blue and the bottom was tinteg green so if you were watching a scene with a blue sky and a meadow, it looked great, but anything else was horrible. So we had to watch the Sound of Music all the time because they were always outside in a grassy meadow. TV was invented in 1947 and I was invented in 1948 so I remember everything that happened to TV, like at about 10:00pm it would go off. There was nothing on, just the little white dot in the middle of the screen and that was on every one of the five or so channels that there were broadcasts on.
Do you remember the Timex commercial where they put a Timex watch on a propellor of an ourboard motor and ran it in a barrel. Commercials and everything else was live then. They couldn't find the watch, but they said, if they could find it, it would be working.
Or Betty White in a commercial with a refrigerator. She wanted to show the audience but the door was stuck and she couldn't open it. A stage hand crawled out on stage and tried to pry it open. TV was great then, especially all the mistakes.
 
downbeach

downbeach

I had a little better than a white dot, after the National Anthem, this would appear:

indianhead640x480_zpsdfa06ea2.gif
 
redfishbluefish

redfishbluefish

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
That's not the test screen I remember......no Indian (or should I say Native American?). It was a bull's eye design, but I think it included the call letters for the station....and that incessant beeeeeeeeeeeep. And, just prior to the test screen they would sign off with "The Star Spangled Banner."
 
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