Tank birthday and I'm a Geezer

[Paul B]

That is scary Diana. My Grand Son also takes a similar medication which has some of those side effects. I hope your son is alright.

My problem, and it isn't that big of a problem and just one symptom of an aging construction worker is that I have what they called "degenerative disk disease" and micro fractures in my thoracic spine. So in other words, my head may fall off.

Your son has a much worse problem than me because I know what asthma can feel like although I don't have it and your son is young and has his entire life to live. But he is very lucky to have a Mother like you.

I don't think there is any cure or treatment for me other than affixing my head on with duct tape or coral glue and for the pain they give you these medications that makes you want to cut your head off.

It also makes me dizzy which may make me dance better but it also makes you tired and see double. I generally don't like seeing double unless I am looking at a pretty girl because then I will see two of them. But I would really like to see just one thing I am looking at.

Yesterday I thought I had way to many fish in my tank. Then I realized I was seeing two of each of them.

 

[Paul B]

I have a story about side effects from 2 years ago:


WE had a "little" scare yesterday and this morning. Yesterday my wife and I took a walk and about 5 minutes into the walk I started to get itchy.
Like all over. I felt like I had fire ants doing the macarana all over me and also in places I didn't know I had.

Of course we walk up to this couple that we always wanted to make friends with and we were talking to them for like ten minutes. I was dying to scratch
"all over" but I didn't want these people to think I had cooties, amphipods or black ich.

The itchyness was unbearable and I know I was squirming so they may have thought I was a Mime, contortionist or Mick Jagger.
I put one foot on top of the other like I was resting my leg, but I was trying to scratch between my toes. It didn't work.

Eventually we left them and I told my wife "We have to go home".

She said Why! Whats the matter? Are you sick? With this virus around everyone is paranoid.

At home I told her what was going on and she insisted on inspecting me. I had this rash all over my body. I generally don't get rashes and I am not allergic to anything. So she rubs this stuff on me which was probably meat tenderizer and the itching subsided a "little".

I figured I would lay down. Yesterday we put this new blanket on the bed, right out of the package.
As I am laying there listening to Vintage Linda Ronstadt, I notice my tongue feels big. I have a big mouth but my tongue usually stays the same size.

My tongue was scraping against the teeth in back of my mouth and It seemed like I was having just a little trouble breathing. Just a little, not enough for me to call a SWAT team or "The Good Doctor" or even "Doctor Who " (it's an English thing, don't worry to much about it)

Now my Girly man emotions kick in and I am getting a touch worried.

I make the mistake of telling my wife who immediately goes into panic mode and wanted to give me CPR and get out the paddles.
She calls our Daughter in Vermont because her husband and Daughter have allergies to everything except air, and not all air.

She tells me to take Bennedril. All I have is our Grand Daughters Bennedril and she is 7. The largest does on the bottle was for a 10 year old so I take about two doses.

In ten minutes I am as Loopy as the people on Circ De Solei . I can't stand up so I go lay on the bed.

My tongue gets bigger. OOOOOooooooNNooooooo. I'm gonna die and Humble won't be able to come here to take my fish. But if he does he will quarantine them in tree stump remover and they will get nightmares.

I look up symptoms of Corona Virus and a big tongue. A rash are about the only things that the virus "doesn't " cause.

So We call my Doctor on the slim chance that he can see me. Here in New York nothing is open, you can't even open a clam.

But the nurse, who I know answered and she said, as long as you don't have Corona Virus symptoms, the Doctor will see you.
Of course If I had Corona Virus symptoms the doctor won't see me and I will have to go to a fortune teller or Lady GaGa concert.

I go there and the guy immediately sees the rash, takes blood, looks in my mouth, listens to my heart and lungs and doesn't have the slightest idea what is wrong with me but says he is getting a lot of patients now that have this from eating meat.

(I have learned that unless you have an arrow sticking out of your head or a crow bar stuck in your nether regions, they won't really know what the diagnosis is)

I almost never eat meat and didn't eat any in a week or so. He gives me a prescription for Prednisone.

Meantime Our Daughter is freeking out because she doesn't want me to go out of the house. It would be hard for the doctor to take blood through my computer screen unless I got really close to it and maybe stuck a USB cable in my arm.

So, I am still alive but the Bennedril is still making me walk like Uncle Festus from the Adams Family.

We think we figured it out. The new blanket my wife put on the bed was the only thing different we did. We bought it last year and one of my hobbies is removing those tags that say "Don't remove under penalty of the law"
So I am not sure where it came from.

 

[Paul B]

And another one: (I am obviously bored while I am waiting for an appointment for my PT appointment for a silly shoulder operation)

So this morning I was going to make a nice breakfast for My wife and our best friends next door. I forgot it is Friday and we normally go out for breakfast.
I figured I would make some eggs, potatoes toast etc and I got some nice farm fresh potatoes and I was going to make a new breakfast recipe for the potatoes which meant I had to slice them very thin.

We have one of those hand slicer things where you slide the potato back and forth and it goes into the slicer and slices the thing.
I have used it many times and you don't have to be a rocket scientist. But you really have to be careful.

So it was going well until I sliced off the end of my finger. This isn't good because I am getting blood all over the slicer and I didn't want to get it on the potatoes because we have ketchup if we want them red.

So I wrap a paper towel around it and figure I can still keep slicing to finish my breakfast menu.
I take another potato and continue slicing. Oops, I slice my other finger and almost cut off the tip of that one off.
I didn't go to college but I assumed it was time to stop using the slicer.

I take a paper towel and wrap the two fingers up together and try to clean up the blood before my wife sees it and gets the horrors.

No such luck, the blood is kind of dripping all over the place faster than I can clean it up. So now I have to wake my wife because I can't keep wrapping this thing up with my left hand and I didn't want to make to much of a mess.

I tell my wife I need a band aid and she sees it and panics and wanted to get the paddles and jump on my chest, give me CPR and call the paramedics to fly a helicopter here to rush me to the ER while she ties a tourniquet around my neck.
(I live five minutes from the hospital.)

She wants to come with me but I convince her to stay home and my friend next door decides to take me to one of those "Emergency, Urgent Care Docs in a Box."

We go to the nearest one with the biggest sign that reads "URGENT EMERGENCY CARE, NO WAITING" Just walk in Doctors on Call.

It's closed

It opens at 8:00 and it is ten to 8:00. So we wait outside while I am making a puddle of blood in the parking lot.

After a while I go to the door and hold up my arm and the "Nurse" comes out and says, we will open soon but we have no doctor. He "may" be here in 20 minutes but I am not sure.

The area is surrounded by golf courses so I figured he was on the 18th hole and was lining up his last shot.
I ask where the next "Doc In The Box" is. Thank God I don't live in Buck Chuck Oregon and these places are more numerous than Starbucks.

We drive to the next "Urgent Care, No Waiting Emergency" places and it's closed. Of course it is, But it opens in 5 minutes so I go through the motions and show the "Nurse" my bloody arm and she lets us in after I put my mask on.

She needs my insurance cards, next of kin, drivers license, photo ID, social security number, Astrological sign, address of my cemetery, first pets name, Mothers maiden name etc.

Then she hands me a pen to sign the 6 consent forms so they can see me. Now I lost one or two pints of blood and am getting a little stupefied and get the forms all full of blood do they really didn't have to write down why I was there as the doctor could tell by the blood stained paper.

The Dr. comes in and soaks my hand in a little bowl of liquid and says he will be back shortly. By the time he comes back the thing is almost overflowing from blood, I am A Positive.

He wraps up the finger with the missing tip and goes to give me a shot in the finger where the tip is still hanging on. But as he is trying to give me the shot, the other finger is bleeding through the dressing going on to the other finger. Now the Dr. is getting a little "Viclemp" and I can see he is getting nervous.

He keeps wrapping the finger up but it is bleeding through. I finally said I will hold the bandage tight so it doesn't leak so you can fix the other finger.
He gives me 3 or 4 shots and looks for the needle and thread. I think he left it in his golf cart.

Finally he starts to stitch this thing up and during each stitch he says things like "OOH No, OMG, Dam, Come On," etc which doesn't give me much confidence and I was wondering if he went to medical school or plumbing school.

Finally he gets 7 stitches in and he goes to the other finger which is still bleeding profusely like when you used to use a canister filter and the hose inadvertently comes off and squirts water all over the painting on the wall that your Mother N Law gave you for your wedding gift.

He looks puzzled like I am going to offer advice to stop the bleeding so I say jokingly "Why don't you use that stuff you put on your face when you cut yourself shaving". He says, yes, I have that stuff in a bottle. Good Idea.

He puts a little stick in the bottle and says this is going to hurt. Of course it will. So he puts a little into the pool of blood that used to be my finger tip and I hit the ceiling. Like OMG!!!

It felt like when you are SCUBA diving in Aruba and you point up to show your girlfriend what the bottom of the boat looks like and a Man of War jellyfish wraps a stinging tentacle around your finger so you jerk your hand down at the exact same moment a lionfish was making a grab for a baby Achilles tang
and impales you with 3 or 4 poisonous spines forcing you to grab the nearest thing witch is a spire of fire coral.

If you ever did that, you know what this "death fluid" feels like. I would rather he heated up a sword and melted me together like they do in old western movies.
So he gives me 5 shots of lanicane in that finger and pours the stuff on it. It still won't stop bleeding so I said why don't you use that glue they "stitch" you together with when they replace your knee, and I show him my scar where my new knee is. He says, I have that and comes back with this tube of stuff I swear he got in Home Depot and blobs it on. It is running down my hand but not stoping anything and just making the table stick to my hand so he keeps wrapping it in multiple layers of cloth hoping the blood won't seep through until after I get home.

I am sitting here now wiping blood off my keyboard waiting for this to stop and I know it will soon as I am almost out of blood.

 

[Paul B]

A visit to the doctor’s office here would go something like this.

First thing in the morning you would call the doctor’s office and get elevator music with a recording that says "Your call is important to us, stay on the phone and your call will be answered by the next available operator". You would get that message twelve or thirteen times with 20-30 minutes of elevator music in between. Then someone would answer and say

"Please Hold."

Now you hear the music again with that same message.

You are now eating dinner with the phone on speaker on the table right next to the bread and mashed potatoes.

The operator comes on and says "can I help you?" You finish chewing and say: Yes, I am trying to make an appoin......... "OK, I will connect you with the appointment desk." Click

You hear:

"Your call is important to us, stay on the line and a representative will get back to you"

Now dinner is over and you are sitting on the couch watching TV with the phone still on speaker. It's hard to concentrate on the TV with Beethoven’s sixth symphony playing through the phone.

"Hello, can I help you? "

Yes, I would like to make an appointment.

"Sorry, the office is now closed; please call back in the morning."



After a few days you get an appointment the week after Easter. It is now December.

You get to the office and park, in the next town because the lot is full and there are a pickup trucks and wheelbarrows in all the handicap parking spaces.

Finally you get into the office and get in line at the desk. You grab lunch.



"The doctor will see you now"


The nurse or the lady who washes the windows shows you to the little room where you get naked, put on a paper gown and wait.

You finish your lunch while you read, "Pregnancy Today or Golf Magazine". Two things you wanted to read but never had the time.

The nurse comes in and asks for three forms of identification with a picture ID and wants to know your medical insurance group number and if they are still in business and how you will pay if the insurance doesn't cover you and how much money do you make as well as what kind of car you drive and what sign are you.



The nurse then says, what’s your name? "Paul", "How do you spell that?" Like the Saint, "Which Saint? Peter?"

No, "P" as in pin head, "A" as in "Are you kidding me", "U" as in are "U" kidding me, and "L" as in "Let me know the college you graduated from".

The nurse leaves.

After you are finished with Golf Digest and have learned 14 ways to breast feed in a subway, the doctor comes in. He doesn't hug you or look at you but looks at your chart and says. I don't see anything blaring here maybe you should see a Podiatrist.

Quote Reply

 

[Paul B]

I am slowly making a big change to my tank. I have so much blue encrusting sponge that I think it is either sucking nutrients out of my water or it is adding some sort of toxin. It is beautiful and looks like light blue montipora but you can't eliminate it. You can see a milky substance come out of it when it is cut. (angelfish won't touch it)

The last time I trimmed a lot of it, I lost almost all my SPS corals and many of the Zoa's. The Zoa's are all tiny now and they were huge. My green star polyps disappeared and that stuff will grow on your piano if it's close enough to your tank.

But the good news is that gorgs and leather corals grow like crazy so maybe they like what the sponge is putting into the water or taking out.
I am slowly changing the tank over to leather corals, mushrooms, gorgonians and of course sponges.

It's this stuff.

 

[diana a]

Yes the sponges will kill your SPS, the sponges release toxic substance, etc into your beautiful aquarium.

Five Reasons Sponges Are BAD For A Coral Reef Aquarium | Reef Builders | The Reef and Saltwater Aquarium Blog

Sponges are some of the most remarkable life forms that we can encounter in the ocean. These resilient and diverse ‘creatures’ are not quite single celled, not quite organisms, but colonies of single…

reefbuilders.com

Are you going to try to remove some? If yes, do you have someone to help you?

 

[Paul B]

Diana thank you for that link. My sponge is pictured there and I knew it was photosynthetic. Unfortunately I put it in my tank years ago before I knew how invasive it was. Now it is here to stay and I am to old to take everything out of the tank to clear off sponge. I would have to just put back some rock where there is no sponge, which is hardly any and leave the rest of the rock in the dark for as long as it takes to eliminate the sponge.

I am not going to do that and besides I like leather corals and gorgonians. My tank is mostly that now anyway.

 

[diana a]

A light bulb just went off in my head. I have an old shelf rock in my tank. The bottom side is completely covered in lime green sponge. Every time I put a SPS on that rock it slowly dies. I don't have that problem anywhere else in the tank. I think I will remove the shelf rock and scrub off the sponge.

 

[Paul B]

Sounds like a good idea. Besides this blue photosynthetic sponge I also have numerous sponges in the dark caves of which I have many. I guess if your tank lasts long enough it fills with all sorts of things we don't want.

 

[Paul B]

2 or so years ago I built a DIY de-nitrate reactor just for fun.
I didn't think it was actually going to do anything and it is behind my tank so I hardly ever even see the thing but today I am going to PT and I needed to kill an hour so I figured I would test the water coming out of it.

I didn't think it was actually doing anything and if it wasn't, I would take it out and build something else out of it. This is it.

I tested the water in my tank which is on the left and is about 60 mg/L nitrate

The water coming out of the device is about 5. I guess it works.

 

[Paul B]

Sponges are known to release compounds in reef water that stunts, kills and even induces bleaching in stony corals. Sure it’s probably no big deal to have a few small cute sponges in your reef tank and refugium. But a big population of sponges, mostly hiding where the sun don’t shine, and where you can’t see them, could be toxifying you reef aquarium water against conditions that our precious corals prefer.

See also Reef Delete is a New Way to Sterilize Aiptasia and Other Pests

2. Sponges COMPETE with corals for resources​

Sponges in a reef tank concern us not only for what they release into the aquarium water, but also for what they take out. All living things need a basic recipe of essential trace elements and minerals and this includes corals and sponges.

Since they both adapted to live in seawater corals and sponges need the same suite of elements like iodine, strontium, potassium etc. to keep their cells alive and growing. Thankfully most sponges use silicate to build the skeletons so they don’t compete with corals as much on the mineral requirements for calcium, carbonate and magnesium.

However they are sucking up all the other trace elements that corals need, and essentially competing with corals for all trace elements that we try to replenish regularly through regular additions and water changes. In an aquarium environment devoid of sponges you can be assured that corals are only competing with each other for minor and trace elements.

 

[Paul B]

Good Morning. After my walk this morning my wife and I were eating breakfast and I had the TV on in the background. We have a Long Island news channel here and they talk about what is happening locally.

They mentioned a murder in a town near here so we listened. Then they mentioned the street and it is the street my wife's family used to have a summer home on.

Then they showed a picture and said the address. It is her exact old summer home where the murder took place.

They owned it 55 years ago when this area was what we called "sticks". Practically dirt roads and it was very hard to get here because the expressway wasn't even built yet.

Does that make her famous?

 

[redfishbluefish]

Does that make her famous?

No, but you're now a suspect of interest. The FBI will be knocking on your door some time this morning!

 

[Paul B]

I was looking through my Log book that I started in 1971. I won't publish the entire book because frankly I would probably be embarassed of some of the stupid things I did.

At the beginning of my log book I started writing a book about the different fish and how to keep them. Remember at that time, in 1971 no one kept salt fish so whenever I got a fish, and kept it alive for a while, I wrote about it and drew pictures of the fish.

There were also no computers or cell phones so no cell phone camera's. I had to print the book. Of course this was in the very beginning of the hobby when hardly anyone knew what these fish were and no one saw them in person unless you dove.

It looks like my last entry to my Log book was 1996. It is mostly what I had in the tank, how long they lived and what, if anything I did to feed them and keep them alive.

I see something interesting I logged in 1977. I bought a yellow tang on Roosevelt Ave. in Queens NY for $7.00 and two percula clowns for $3.00 ea

 

[Paul B]

I just got this cool bathtub for my wife. It has a door for her to get in and it is very deep. There is a seat in it and a shower. It also has a UV light I guess so you don't get any ick. It has heat, bubbles and Jacuzzi jets

Now I just have to break out the old tub and install the thing. It's 350 lbs.

 

[Paul B]

My Ruby Red dragonette is pregnant again. You really can't stop healthy fish from spawning. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:
If I had the time and space I would raise these things and mandarins. Very easy fish as long as your tank is set up properly.

 

[Paul B]

Good Mothers Day Morning.

Yesterday in my town they arrested a bunch of Jibonies stealing catalytic converters from under cars.
(they steal these things because they are filled with platinum coated pellets)

They jack up a car and using a gas saw (a very loud gas saw) they cut the thing out.

But these geniuses were stealing these from a parking lot of a security company. The side of the car was printed in large letters "SECURITY".

So of course they caught them because the place had alarms and really clear cameras all over the place.

 

[diana a]

What dumb butts they are. Their mama's must be proud.

 

[Paul B]

Yesterday I took out my wife's bathtub so I could do the plumbing and electric for the new walk in, handicapped, jacuzzi tub.

I had to promise our Daughter that I would get a contractor for this because she figures I am to old and should just watch someone else put it in.

I did try. I hired a contractor and twice he stiffed me so I did like I always do and just did it myself. I also didn't break any tiles.
I don't know how people live if you have to hire someone for the simpliest things.

So far I have never hired anyone for anything except dentists and I am not crazy how they do things either.

 

[Paul B]

I added silicate remover and tested the tank water. The reading went way down to almost not readable so hopefully the sponge that is taking over my tank will croak.

I also tested my NSW and the reading is very high so I assume thats where my silicates came from. I have been using this stuff for years but now I have to remove the silicates before I use that water.