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Tank birthday and I'm a Geezer

Paul B

NJRC Member
My tank looks lousy. I have not had time to do anything with it and yesterday I posted a picture of my algae scrubber and 3 people rang my bell to see if I could sell them any lettuce. :eek:

Much of my montipora broke and fell in the dark because my hermit crab falls on it and he eats to much and weighs like 2lbs. I think he jumps on it on purpose looking for attention. I used to glue it back but I don't have time.
We have open house almost every week to sell this home and I think my fish feel I will leave them here to become sushi. They are all fine but on anti depression medication. My small bleeny had a very severe case of pop eye where his eye was as big as my head but it cured itself. He probably felt he would be sacrificed first.

I finished building my new King Size bed for the new house that looks like a platform bed made out of railroad ties with huge steel wheels under it. (it comes apart in 4 pieces so I can get the thing in the house) Very industrial/steampunk which is what I am going for. I really hate buying things because if I can buy it, so can anyone else and I like different. :rolleyes:
I also built much of the steampunk lighting.

I received redwood and will start building the tank stand soon but we are covered in snow and ice now so i don't want to work in my garage yet. I got redwood because it is strong and the least likely to warp of all the woods.
The legs will be 4X4s. The new tank will be a 125 gallon and I hope to build the base rock out of cement to hold up my existing rocks completely off the bottom. I still need to get more dolomite to add but i am not sure where to get it yet. I am torn between having the tank with an overflow built in for a sump or not. I have lived all my life with no sump but I can't decide.

All my fish that want to come with me are welcome but that annoying hermit crab may have to walk as he is annoying me. I actually have 9 or 10 of them, some as big as golf balls. They may actually be golf balls, I have a lot of junk in there. :confused:

My bluestripe popefish, Janss pipefish, mandarins, perchlet, bleenies, cardinals, copperband, Queen anthiuses, possum wrasse and everything else is still in there smiling. The fireclowns are spawning. . They don't do much of anything else. :cool: Harlequin shrimp seems content as do the porcelain crabs.

If I get this new tank set up I want to get more small, interesting fish, maybe one tang although I find them boring but then I can despell all the rumors that I can't keep the because of all the parasites partying in there. I will probably have to keep them 10 or 15 years to prove the point though. I will ask what is the most ich prone tang to get, but I only like hippo tangs.

To determine the age of anyone who accidently reads this thread. Without googling, how many here remember a Charlett Ruse?
 

diana a

Staff member
NJRC Member
Moderator
I know Charlotte Russe clothing. I may still have some pieces.

How are the mandarins holding up?
 

diana a

Staff member
NJRC Member
Moderator
Is it this..related to food...a delicious desserts? I was thinking you were possibly naming a item like a typewriternjreefa.png
 

diana a

Staff member
NJRC Member
Moderator
If I know you will be at one of the forum meetings, I will make C Russe, and an awesome Italian cheesecake. My cheesecake takes 8 hours between the water bath in the oven to cooling before it comes out of the oven.

The last time I had a C Russe in Brooklyn was back in 1996 when I was still working on the floor of the NYSE. We use to go out to Brooklyn a lot for dinner
 

Paul B

NJRC Member
1996, Wow, You can't be a Geezer. Only guys can be Geezers anyway. And you are Diana. (sounds like a Girls name) :tongue:
I haven't seen a Charlette Russe in decades. I miss them. They also used to sell them all over Coney Island. Cheesecake sounds fantastic. :biggrin:
I used to be Italian, but I am Sicilian :D

I was born in Brooklyn. :cool:
I never went to a forum meeting, not in NJ anyway. I think I only went to one on Long Island, but I spoke at a few of them :grin:
 

Mark_C

Staff member
Officer Emeritus
NJRC Member
Moderator
Just FYI as an interesting sidenote.
My much loved Grandad, passed for many a year, survivor of Omaha Beach, was known to me as 'The Old Geezer'.
'Geeze' for short. Not Pop, Granpa, Gramps.
Its a good moniker IMHO.
He didn't keep fish.
He drank Schaeffer and smoked Salems.
Dodged WWII bullets, but the big C got him.
 

Paul B

NJRC Member
Here is my platform bed without the plywood in the center and the wheels and handle. You will only see about 5" of the wood all around the mattress. I am going for industrial. It comes apart in 4 pieces so I can install it.

 

Paul B

NJRC Member
Another open house today so i decided to vacuum a little although my wife vacuums probably 5 times a day. I have a whole house vacuum that I installed decades ago. I vacuum the upstairs where no one lives and we rarely go up there. When I finish, I go to shut off the vacuum,,,,,,And it won't go off. I unplug the hose and it still doesn't go off. Usually when that happens, it's the switch on the hose, but Nope. I go downstairs to the basement and open one of the vacuum hose covers (where you would plug a hose, and the thing stops. Aha, the problem must be in that hose connection so i take it apart. Remember the people are coming here today to see the house.
I can find nothing wrong with the hose connection. I go to the vacuum unit itself and tap on it. It comes on. I tap on it again, and it goes off. So at least I know the problem is the relay inside the unit. It is near my RO/DI unit and behind my worm tank so it is a pain to remove to take apart. I can't do it today so I hope no one wants to see it run. It's a job for another day. (There is a worm tank there now)

My door bell in my kitchen rings when you shut off the light over the sink and it doesn't always ring when you ring the bell. It has been like that for years and it doesn't bother me so I never fixed it. Of course I installed the thing when I moved here in like 1979 and completely forgot where I ran the wires. I take out my meter and test the voltage. There is no voltage at the bell so it should not work at all. But it always rings when you shut off the light. Not when you put on the light which would make more sense.

I disconnect all the wires that I know where they are, test all that I can and I can't find the wire that goes to the actual bell and I don't want to take the house apart because people are coming. I tried a few things, then decided to put everything back the way it was until I have more time. I shut off the light, and the bell doesn't ring. I push the button, and it works. I don't know why it works with no power and I don't care. If it ain't broke, I ani't gonna fix it.
This is embarrassing being I am a Master Electrician :eek:

It's the big red thing thing that says Nutone. I think Nutone also made the bell.

 

Paul B

NJRC Member
I "fixed" the vacuum just now, Kind of. I had to remove my ro/di and all the stuff on the shelf . I also had to empty my resevour bucket and remove it to get to the bolts holding the vacuum to the wall.

I took it apart and noticed the relay was black from the contacts arcing. I took the relay apart and saw that the contacts were burnt so bad there was no contacts left which is why the steel that was left was arcing and sticking. I looked in my storehouse for that relay but it is an isolation relay and a rare relay to find. It has a transformer and relay built into one enclosure. I looked on line but that relay is not manufactured any more, I can put in a regular relay and a transformer but I would have to install it outside the housing and it is a bit of work even though I have the parts. I just filed down what was left of the contacts and feel it will work for 6 or so months. If I get ambitious I will put something together to fix it permanently. I left the wires long enough so that I can remove the old relay without removing the thing from the wall and taking it apart. So for now, it is working perfectly.
 
Great explanation. Nice to see someone still repairing solid state electronics. Earlier in my aviation carrier we used to troubleshoot it. It’s almost all gone from the new fleet.
 

Paul B

NJRC Member
David, no one repairs anything any more. You can usually throw out the electronics and fix most things with mechanical relays and transformers. You may lose some function that you never used anyway but if you don't need that function, it pays. I can buy a new whole house vacuum for $500.00 or spend 30 minutes and $6.00 worth of parts to fix it. Our clothes drier also croaked not long ago so I did the same thing. I just threw out the circuit board and re-designed it. I just need it to dry clothes and that is what it does. :cool:
 

Paul B

NJRC Member
OK so I fixed the vacuum and put back the blue bucket that is my RO/DI resivour for the tank. WE went out for the day as the bucket filled. But,,,,There is always a But. Now I don't have my blackworm tank there as I took it out for the move so the waste water for the worms just goes into a small bucket and drains through a short tube into the sink which it is sitting next to.
When I put the resivour bucket back up on it's bracket and hook screwed into the ceiling I "forgot to put the shut off float back in". The shut off float shuts off an electric valve stopping the water from filling the bucket.
No problem because there is an over flow hose near the top of the bucket so that if the bucket fills to high, the water will go through the hose into a drain.

That is unless you kink the hose under the bucket where it partially sits on a steel bracket. In that case, the bucket overflows on your workbench filling the drawers and making Lake Erie on the floor.
The other thing it does is to float the empty bucket away from the sink where the waste water goes into so instead of the waste water going into the sink, it also goes on the bench, into the drawers and on the floor.

This is great, especially when in 5 minutes people are coming to see the house and I am bragging as to how dry my finished basement stays.

I quickly unplug the shut off valve to stop water from filling the bucket. I get towel rags and put them all over the floor. drain some water out of the bucket to stop it from dripping and remove the soaked things from the drawer and hide it in the container I use to do water changes with. I have towel after towel of soaking water in my hands as the door bell rings. I run to the washing machine to throw them in, then I have to get more towels to pick up the water I just dripped all over the floor from the soaking wet towels, I run and put them in the washing machine. I hear the people coming in and rush to put dry paper towels into the drawers being careful not to push down on them so they don't soak up water that is still seeping into the wood. I close everything up and hope for the best.

The people tour the house and I don't want to spend too much time with them in my workshop but that is where my solar panel control unit is along with the central vacuum and new boiler. The people are asking questions about all these things and now want to know about my metal sculptures I am working on on my workbench. Now they are asking about the brine shrimp hatchery, the "Blue bucket" hanging from the ceiling.
What are those white worms in the shoe box. Oh , I see you have a microscope, what do you look at? How hard is it to have a salt water tank, do you think Myley Cyrus can sing, how about that global warming thing, whats up with that, etc. etc. etc.

I finally get them out of there and tour the rest of the house.
When they left I dried up the drawers the best I could along with the floor. Most of the stuff in the drawers were in cardboard boxes which are now mulch.

Back to semi normal once again.
 

Paul B

NJRC Member
So a weird thing happened yesterday. I think we sold the house and should go to contract in a day or so. That is not the weird part. A half an hour after we made the deal, about 6:00 PM our door bell rings. It was a very pretty Asian lady in her late 40s. My wife recognized her as one of the people who came to the house a few days ago to an open house. At that time she breezed through the house and sort of rushed out without saying much so I figured she wasn't interested. We already had over 60 people looking at the place and we were holding out for the price we were hoping for.

Anyway, this Lady has a shopping bag with her so Instantly figured she had a bundle of cash with her. But the bag wasn't big enough so I thought I may be wrong. Of course I was. She spoke very little English and the only Asian words I know is Bruce Lee and maybe Sushi. But she was Korean so those words probably don't count and I didn't want to mention the only Korean word I know as that is Kim Jun Ung.

She kept apologizing for bothering us (which she was not) so we invited her in. I offered her wine, plum wine, Scotch, Rum, beer, chocolate milk and tea all of which she declined. She gave us the Mandarin Oranges that she had in the bag (instead of cash) She was extremely nice and kept apologizing for coming here. She was dressed like she was going to a really nice night club but my house doesn't have any neon signs outside so I am sure she didn't make a mistake.

After taking off her coat and sitting on our couch she told us she was an artist and loves the house so much that she can't sleep. (she said that about 5 times. ) She said to my wife, your house has so much love in it and your Husband (Me) smiles so much as he showed me the house and his art work, I can tell he put so much love in the house and she is also an artist, (she said that multiple times)

She was going on about my Japanese garden and my Asian flair I put into the house and how much she loved my art etc. My wife and I were kind of baffled because I asked her a couple of times how much she wanted to bid on the house. Or even if she wanted to make an offer, But she didn't seem to know. She told me that besides being an artist she has some sort of Google like business and if she could speak English better she could make more money and such. Her husband is Japanese but I am not sure what he does as he could be a Sumo Wrestler or Toyota Dealer, I couldn't figure it out. I asked her how she got married to a Japanese mas because she said she doesn't speak Japanese and both of them don't speak much English. Maybe he has a Japanese/Korean translator thing or they know sign language.

She stayed about an hour which didn't bother me because as I said she was very nice and did I say Pretty?
She asked if she could be our friend even if she couldn't buy the house and if she could visit us in our new home so she can paint the ocean. We said OK, thats fine but my wife and I kept looking at each other as we couldn't figure out what this visit was for. She also said she was going to bring us some Korean food I guess we have a new friend.

Then she thanked us a few times and left. It was a very interesting experience but I am in a fog as to what it was about.
 

Paul B

NJRC Member
All still immune here, all is well. I took down my blackworm tank for the move. I think we sold the house and their inspector is coming over today to inspect things. Even he will find my fish immune although all the outlets and "creative" electrical work he may not appreciate or understand. :eek:
But I will try to convince him that all of that will be gone when I take everything out of the tank and attempt to move it 60 miles.
This will be a good test of immunity because I am buying a new tank and filling it with NSW from the beach near my home there and will just warm it up before I throw in any fish and coral that survive the move. :confused:

They will go from very old water with 160 nitrates to very new water with no nitrates which may upset their stomach a little. I will add some of the old water to keep some of any bacteria and parasites that are in there just for kicks. :rolleyes:

The water will come from here. I suppose it will warm up a little before then or my powerheads will make a lot of noise.

 
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