Tank birthday and I'm a Geezer

Paul B · May 9, 2014

Those bananafish seem to be spawning. I can't see one of them to well as she is in the nest (I think) The other one follows her in there all day.
Notice how fat she is compared to the last shot of her

And I just got this guy today. Very cool.

He gets along great with this guy,

Paul B · May 9, 2014

Someone asked me these questions on another forum but I am tired of typing so I am also putting it here. Make believe someone asked me this.

I've heard that pipefish are difficult to keep in an active reef tank because, like seahorses, they can't compete for the food. How do you overcome this problem?

Like many things in this hobby, I don't think of that as a problem but just something you need to do to keep such a fish. There is no competition because pipefish don't eat what the other fish are eating. They only eat pods or new born brine shrimp. I have an auto feeder that dispenses pellets, not for the fish, but to feed the pods. Pipefish, unlike Supermodels want to eat all day but they won't find enough pods because I have to many pod eaters so I hatch brine shrimp every day. I put some in the feeder I built and the rest I shoot at the pipefish with the pumps off. They are not a buy and forget fish and have no sense of humor.

Also, supermodels aren't worth the trouble (so I've heard). Their hair always clogs the drains and they require constant small feedings throughout the day. I guess they're kind of like anthias.

I worked with a few Supermodels and some Anthias have a better personality and all Anthias eat more. Also anthias hair doesn't clog my pumps.
(about if I use RO/DI water: I usually use RO/DI water unless I run out, then I use chicken soup.
About the calcium I use: I use "Dow Flake" ice melter but I can't get the powder any more. I can get pellets but I have not tested them yet. I am almost out of the powder so I need to test the pellets next month. Maybe I will test them on an anthias or a Supermodel.
Here is a video of the dragon face pipefish eating new born shrimp.

This is a video of the rest of the fish eating live worms.

This is a video of the fish eating shrimp from the feeder.

This is a video of the whole tank, but it gives me a headache.
You can see the bluestripe in here eating from the feeder.

These are the feeders I use for everything.

Here is a video of me running on the beach in my Speedo. Ok forget that one.:uhoh3:

Paul B · May 19, 2014

The tank now has 3 pipefish in it. I can't find the pair of bluestripes but I am fairly certain the Korilia powerhead ate them before I found the problem and corrected it.
Now that that is fixed, I would like to get another pair of them. I doubled my production of new born brine shrimp because the pair of mandarins, scooter dragonette, pair of multi stripe pipefish and dragonface pipe eat an awful lot of shrimp. The multi stripes do not know about the shrimp feeder or they are to stupid go eat from there but we are still learning and they will get it.
If I had an unlimited number of brine shrimp eggs I would fill the tank with seahorses which has always been a goal of mine. But they only live a few years and that is a set back, but pipefish breed more readily than most fish.
My copperband has gotten a little larger than I would like, but it is not really his fault so I won't punish him by taking away TV or anything. He enjoys National Geographic.
The pair of clown gobies are also still spawning and killing the acro's. But who cares?
I "may" go out in my boat tomorrow to collect some amphipods, grass shrimp and most importantly, mud. But my wife is still in a lot of pain so I am not sure I will go.
I have not tried the boat out yet this year but if I collect I need someone to stay in the boat while I go to the tide pool, not that there are that many boat robbers or anything.

Paul B · May 21, 2014

Unfortunately for the fast growing Montipora, the torch corals grow faster and sting them to death very quickly. Oh Well he should have grown the other way.

Paul B · May 29, 2014

My wife just had surgery for two cysts on her back. She was in a lot of pain and the five hour surgery went well. Now she has two titanium ground rods in her lower spine. It could have been worse, she doesn't have Pop Eye or anything.
Today I visited her in the hospital. She is in a large hospital here in New york with a very good reputation. She is in a private room with another woman. An Asian lady whom my wife introduced me to. I asked what part of China she was from and she said she is Mandarin. I figured that because she is very attractive, has a very small mouth and had on a very colorful robe. All she ate was these tiny shrimp, and she only ate one about every 15 seconds all day as long as the lights were on. Her husband secretely told me she is very high maintenance.
My wife is doing fine as long as they keep giving her morphine. An aid came in and poured her a pitcher of RO/DI water which I immediately tested with my Salfert kit and electronic TDS meter. I complained that it was a little cold and she likes it between about 78 and 82 degrees. If it is to cold, and she doesn't have time to become accustomed to it, my wife will just lay on the floor and possably get psorisis. On her legs thay have these plastic bladders that look like little kids swimmies. They inflate and deflate every few seconds and are powered by two "Coralife Super Luft Pumps"
I was there early in the morning and they were gut loading her breakfast which consisted of eggs and mashed potatoes with Selcon. I noticed that the mashed potatoes were made out of instant potato flakes so I told the nurse that she doesn't eat flake food so they better bring her a whole potato. Her IV drip doses her with milk with extra "calcium" and "Alk a Seltzer".
My wife is in one of those real nice, State of the Art hospital beds with the bars on the sides so she doesn't go carpet surfing. After a while the nurse came in again ( I think she does Supermodel work on the side) and she wanted to give my wife a two minute freshwater dip, so we both helped her to the shower and I made sure the temperature and pH was the same as the water in her pitcher. I also specified that she only use water that was treated with "Chemi Clean". As we brought her back to the room, a maintenance guy was just about to clean her window with "Mag Float". I told him it would be better if he used a razor blade. He did a pretty good job but the next day I could easily tell the spots where he missed with the razor as they started to turn red.
They keep this hospital room extreamly clean as it is a bare bottom room, no rugs or anything and the only decorations are plain white PVC structures. I think they also inject Ozone to purify the air. The air filter near the window was provided by "Those Filter Guys" and contains a large "Poly Filter". The floor is vacuumed daily by the CUC (clean up crew) but what I didn't understand was that the maintenance guy also used a turkey baster to blow dust out from behind the furnature.
Eventually another nurse came in and she was French, she was "extreamly" nice and I thought of her as an angel, a French Angel. She also brought the surgeons, "Drs. Fosters and Smith". They were very nice and let her pick her meds out of their catalog. She picked PraziPro, tetracyline, Metronidazole and flat worm exit. We paid a little extra for next day delivery because I love my wife and only want the best for her.
If all goes well, she will be coming home in two days. She is still in pain but that is to be expected and I am praying for a speedy recovery so I can get her out of quarantine.
I have a picture of her in the hospital bed and I was going to post it, but then I thought about it. I thought that pretty soon she is going to be in better shape than me so I re thought posting that picture. After she gets home I will gingerly ask her if I could post that picture. It is safer like that. For me

Paul B · Jun 6, 2014

I just got back from the south shore where I was at my friends house on the water. I picked up a load of amphipod infested seaweeds which I just put in a live bearer trap hanging in my reef. In a couple of days I will remove most of the seaweed which will die in the tank. I just want the bacteria and amphipods along with anything else that is alive.
Tomorrow I will go to my boat which is on the north shore and collect again.
You can't have to much life in a tank and you have to take advantage of it if you can

Paul B · Jun 8, 2014

One of my clown gobies disappeared which is a relief. She probably died of old age or just retired as she laid eggs every week for a couple of years and between her and her boy friend killed a large acropora by covering it with eggs. I think that was their intention all along.
I am not going to replace her as I still got her boyfriend and he looks like he is also getting on in years. They don't have a very long lifespan, maybe 5 years or so. The rest of the fish are doing great and many of them are still spawning. I don't know exactly hao many fish I have as some of them hide for weeks and I rarely get a glimps of them. The pistol shrimp are still digging up the tank and making things fall.
A large montipora was overgrown by an encrusting gorgonian that grew faster and it killed it. But that is a good thing as it is normal (but expensive)
It is perfectly normal for corals to out grow neighboring corals and kill them, that is what they are supposed to do. I didn't put the montipora or gorgonian there, they just grew there so it was not up to me to move them. Survival of the fittest happens in the sea and in a mature, healthy tank.

Paul B · Jun 13, 2014

One of my banana fish has a very severe case of Pop eye and if I could catch him, I could cure him in 5 seconds but he doesn't believe me and as soon as I approach the tank with a hypodermic needle, he hides. Go figure. It is healing and now most of the gas bubble has migrated to his forehead which makes him look like a Cyclops. If I get ambitious I will break out the fish trap and try to get him, just because he looks freakish and probably can't read well as one eye is facing the wrong direction.
He will probably get back to normal in a couple of weeks or so.
I am also having a hard time feeding the copperband as he eats a very expensive meal a couple of times a day. He has grown a little larger than I would like and those things like to eat continousely with no regard to how much worms cost. Yesterday I bought some chowder clams which should last a while.
My mandarins are nice and healthy looking but I am not sure if they spawned in a couple of months. My wife's hospital stay put a dent on my fish feeding and they had to go some days fending on their own, which is fine. Mandarins are a very low maintenance fish and you don't have to feed them. They will live fine in a tank with a lot of pods. My tank has plenty of pods and I even feed the pods pellets a couple of times a day.
But if you want mandarins to be really healthy and spawn, they often need additional feedings of worms and baby brine shrimp.
My possum wrasse is still very cool looking as are my pipefish.
I went to a store yesterday and almost bought some purple firefish but I know they jump out as I have lost everyone I ever bought like that. I mentioned that if I buy certain fish like firefish, jawfish or ribbon eels, to save time, when I buy such fish, I just open the bag and throw them on the floor. It's like if I go to Atlantic City or Vegas. As soon as I enter the casino, I walk past the slot machines, craps tables and roulette wheels, find the nearest garbage can and throw in 4 or $500.00. Then I leave the casino and go out for a good time. Why would you want to waste a day losing when you can save time by throwing away the money quickly and move on.

Paul B · Jul 6, 2014

Here are some sights at the tide pool where I collect and just hang out. You kind of need a boat to get here and there is never anyone here. I have been going here for most of my life and I anchor just off here every weekend to party which is where we were an hour ago.
Mud snails I could collect by the millions

I love to put rocks covered in barnacles in my tank as I feel they look so natural. I can also collect these all day.

These invasive Japanese shore crabs used to be all over the place with a few under virtually every rock but not to many this year which is a good thing.

Paul B · Jul 8, 2014

So I took the "Ladies" out for the moonlight cruise last night then dropped them off at my marina where they had dinner. It was Lobster night. I sat at the bar and ordered a hamburger. I wanted the Ahi Tuna burger but that was $22.00 so I went with the $18.00 hamburger. Yeah, I know. So the guy brings out this huge burger and a few feet to the right of me on the bar is a red squeeze bottle of "ketchup", so I grab it and squirt it all over my burger.

The "ketchup" is fluorescent green. So I say to the bartender, "Is this some new kind of ketchup?".

He says NO, THATS SOAP. I said, "Soap?" What kind of soap? He said he does the glasses with it. So I said "So you keep dish soap in a red squeeze ketchup bottle that virtually every diner in the United Stated keeps ketchup in, and you leave it on the bar where probably half the people coming in and sitting at the bar are eating hamburgers".

So I got a new hamburger sans the soap.

Anyway, the "girls" had a great time.

Getting back to fish, I am amazed that almost no one autopsies their fish after they die.

I remember once on the news they asked this doctor, how many autopsies he performed on dead people? He said "all the autopsies I perform are on dead people".

OK getting back to fish, I promise. If they find a dead person, and here in New York and especially in Manhattan they find a lot of dead bodies, they just don't look at them and say "Oh well, he has no spots so we don't know why he died?"

They don't do that because there is very little you can tell from looking at someone as to how they died. Of course if they have to pry pieces of him from in between the subway car wheels that would be an indication as the cause of death, but most of the time, they find someone laying there with a nice suit on, decent hair cut, healthy looking, but dead. That calls for an autopsy. Fish autopsies are simple and if you screw it up, most of the time the family won't complain. And, different from people, you don't have to put the dead fish body back together again to make it presentable. You can fed it to your cat so it is like recycling.

If you find a dead fish and it is not yet eaten up, just take a razor knife and cut the thing open starting at the bottom, the soft parts. Lay out the parts and look at them while trying not to squash anything as fish parts are rather delicate. You should find the swim bladder, stomach, liver and most importantly the gills. Get yourself a jeweler's loupe of at least a magnifying glass and if the fish just died you may see parasites in it's gills. Usually that is accompanied by tears in the delicate gill tissues that should look like feathers. You may also find blood in the muscles near the tail. I find that a lot in skinny fish such as copperbands or tangs and I think it comes from collection because to me I think those very sharp ribs sometimes puncture blood vessels. If you see a dark area on the side of a thin fish, that is usually internal bleeding and the fish rarely, if ever recover and Obamacare won't save them. People tell me that autopsying fish is to complicated for the average hobbiest to perform. Yes, if you are a Sissy you won't do this. But I eat fish almost every day and virtually every one of them suffocated on the deck of a ship and by me eating them or autopsying them didn't make their life any easier or harder. But if I find out why it died, I can maybe better be able to prevent it in the future. "Or" I could just flush the thing and chalk it up to the Moon God and buy another fish.

You can see an area on this copperband where it is just starting to show. You have to look at these fish closely but don't put your head so close to your monitor that you get grease on the screen. Below the black dot near his upper rear you can see a slighter darker area that may just look like some raised scales. That is how it starts, then it becomes darker and sometimes protrudes a little. This is very common on thin, newly collected fish.

Don't buy fish with this condition as even though it looks benign, it is caused by internal bleeding as this fish died and I autopsied it. I have seen this many times.

Those fish should have no marks or raised scales especially along the ribs.
These are 2 different fish with the same problem. Look closely

Paul B · Jul 14, 2014

My fish all seem to be doing very well except for the two bananafish. It is weird but they both have eye problems. One had pop eye in the left eye and one has it in the right eye. Fish can get along just fine with one eye and I could easily cure it if I could catch them, but that isn't going to happen. Their eye problems seemed to remedy itself but then they developed huge bubbles over their affected eye. Again, easily remedied if I could catch them but they refuse to come in for treatment. I am not sure what initially causes pop eye as it is a condition of either gas or fluid behind the eye. I usually cure it with a hypodermic needle in a few seconds. I am not sure why these bubbles keep inflating in these two fish but I guess they are not real good at navigating in between coral branches in tight quarters. I think they are both males as they fight all the time and one chases the other through the tank. Now with each one only having one eye, they keep injuring the same eye and it is causing these bubbles which can't heal because they keep injuring it. I just find it interesting as it is one fish behavior that I find odd. They will keep fighting and getting injured until one finally dies. It is just another reason I find this so awe inspiring. That and the girls, as this hobby is a chick magnet.

Paul B · Jul 16, 2014

My powerhead died so I put in one of my 40 year old pumps with a homemade strainer on it and it managed to eat one of my favorite multibanded pipefish. I hate when that happens. Now I screened the thing and tomorrow I will see if I can get another multibanded pipe. They are not easy to come buy and you have to get them just as they arrive at the store before they put them in their tank as they don't have the capacity to feed them.

Paul B · Jul 21, 2014

Paul B · Jul 23, 2014

Soon I will be going on a trip for a few days so I am working on an automatic brine shrimp hatchery to feed the pipes while I am gone. I have two designs I am working on and will use the best one, or both of them if they both work. The rest of the fish will be fine as they know how to open the freezer and feed themselves but the pipefish are a little slow so I need to build something for them.
I also need another shoulder surgery. I think I had 5 of them between the two shoulders but if you have led an active life and worked construction all your life, you wear things out. If you don't wear out your joints, you were not working hard enough or you had a Sissy job. DanceI just had a shoulder surgery last year but the staples holding the muscle to the bone came off. I have to tell the Dr. to stop using these wooden parts, or at least use a good wood.
I don't mind surgeries and rather enjoy the good sleep (and nice looking nurses) I don't enjoy not having the use of that arm for a few months so I will try to do it after boating season as it is not an emergency and I can still lift a shrimp.

Paul B · Jul 26, 2014

To update my tank, all is well. The mandarins are still spawning, the 2 pipefish are doing nicely as is the possum wrasse. I would like to get a mate for him (or her) the copperband is gorgeous if not a little big. 2 bananafish are well but one has a little pop eye which I could cure in a minute if I could catch him. Clown gobi is fine. I think the pistol shrimp are spawning but I can't tell as they spend most of their time undergravel. Bangai cardinals are old enough to spawn now so I am waiting for that to happen. There is only 1 watchman gobi that is old enough to spawn so that aint happening for a while. There are also a few fish that I have no idea what they are and I forgot when and where I got them. They may have come in as tiny babies and grew up or I could have bought them this morning and forgot. All the corals seem happy and extended, nothing is croaking. The acropora's are getting overshadowed by just about everything so they have to grow in weird designs. That's about it. Nothing is changed so far.

Paul B · Jul 28, 2014

My bangai cardinals finally grew enough to do the mating dance but that is not an accomplishment with bangai's as they spawn like guppies and it is hard to have a pair of them not spawn. I will probably not try to raise the fry as I am never able to catch them.
I built a new baby brine feeder that automatically adds eggs twice a day, hatches them and allows the fish to eat the shrimp all day. I will use them when I go on vacation because the rest of the fish will be fine but pipefish will croak if they even think they won't get fed for a day.

Paul B · Aug 2, 2014

I am loving this new automatic baby brine feeder but not as much as the pipefish and mandarins. They think they died and went to fish heaven. They sit on the thing all day and never leave it except for bathroom breaks. The multi banded pipe and dragon face pipe seem to be a couple and apparently don't realize they are from different sides of the tracks. They always hang out together and stare into each other's eyes. It makes me icky all over.
I may have to use this auto feeder forever as I don't know how to get it out of the tank without disturbing them as they even sleep on the thing. I think the mandarins annoy them.
I can design it so that I can flush out the shrimp shells but I have not determined if I want to hatch the eggs in there all the time as some shells do escape. I will have to work on this.

Video

Paul B · Aug 2, 2014

Yesterday I noticed that my tank was getting dimmer. At first I thought I was getting cataracts, but it was definately the tank. I have perfect vision and can spot a Supermodel a few football fields away.
I raised my DIY LED lighting and noticed that about 8 LEDs were out. So much for them lasting 30 years. I soldered in new ones and now the fish are all applying Coppertone sun screen as it made a big difference.
I think, if I get time, maybe this winter I will build a new fixture. The aluminum one I have is getting corroded looking and the solder joints get crusted in schmutz. I think I will design a plastic fixture because aluminum is just a lousy metal to have over a tank.
Aluminum lights work well over a Lady GaGa concert because you don't notice the white, crusty aluminum flakes that come off them as the people that go to Lady GaGa concerts are a little weird anyway and wouldn't notice if hermit crabs were slithering up their noses.

Paul B · Aug 5, 2014

This is my vacation feeder, (almost) When I go on vacation I get a girl to fish sit. I don't want her to hatch shrimp, deal with worms or cut clams so I freeze individual, daily portions of food in old film containers. Film was like Scotch tape but pictures stick to it. Any small containers will work. Ask your Grand Mother for the cup she puts her teeth into.
Anyway, my fish sitter just takes one of the pre packaged food containers and dumps it into this device that thaws it and disperses it to all parts of the tank. It is just a tiny powerhead that pumps into a small plastic container that has holes in it. The food thaws and goes out the holes to the tank. If I didn't do this, the copperband would eat all the food or it would just go under a rock. I have always done this but I figured it may be interesting for anyone that lives under a rock

Paul B · Aug 12, 2014

We just came back from a week out in the east end of Long Island in Amaganset which is about 75 miles from my house. We had sole access to a beach house on the Atlantic that someone we know owns but was in Colorado Our Daughter, Son N Law and two or our Grand Kids also came. I did find a fairly large snake just behind me in that first picture. I tried to catch it but it got away in the scrub brush. I didn't collect water because I didn't have room in the car but I go there often so the next time I go, I will get some. My fish are fine and I think they do better without me. I had a fish sitter and a different pipefish sitter to monitor my new automatic brine shrimp hatchery and feeder which worked flawlessly. The pipefish are smiling from gill to gill.