Tank birthday and I'm a Geezer

[Paul B]

This morning I went down to the beach armed with a plastic bag to collect seaweeds. I didn't bring a bucket for amphipods because tomorrow morning at 6:15 will be dead low tide and perfect for amphipod collecting.

The tide was lower than I expected so I turned over some rocks at the breaker mark and to my surprise it was loaded with amphipods. Big ones, babies, teenagers, you name it. I also found a couple of baby eels and crabs but I didn't take those as the eels grow like a foot an hour and the crabs like to eat fish for lunch..

I also got some nice Codium seaweed. I wanted to bring home some Bladderwrack seaweed of which I could fill a pick up truck with it but I didn't find any with a decent holdfast so I will try again tomorrow.

I got 1,374, 869 amphipods today. They are easy to collect but time consuming to count, separate them by sex, eye color, political affiliations, hobbies etc.

Of course, before I put them in my tank I dipped them in fresh water along with tree stump remover, copper, prizeapro, iodine, hydrogen peroxide, (3% so I didn't burn their eyelashes) Then I exposed them to UV light, Ozone and radiation from Bikini Atoll

I dumped them all in my tank along with the mud. Unfortunately, now I have pieces of seaweeds all over the tank which will get stuck in all my strainers, but the crabs should be able to handle that.

If you are the type of person that quarantines and calls the nearest hospital if you see a spot or piece of cyano, don't do this, as a matter of fact, don't even read this.

 

[Paul B]

This guy, (who I don't know) talks about the benefits of amphipods

 

[diana a]

I prefer buying amphipods over copepods.

 

[Paul B]

Diana, I never bought any kind of a Pod.



All the amphipods and mud is in my tank and the fish are smiling from gill to gill.

I glued some Codium seaweeds to rocks and everything looks great. I am mixing up water so I can remove the right side of the tank and re-aquascape.

Every few years I like to do this for a few reasons. First off, I get tired of seeing the same scene and the places between the rocks and corals get filled in with corals and seaweeds so I like to move things around.

I know it also annoys the fish and it is fun watching them try to find new homes.

Adult Amphipods get to about a quarter of an inch but the babies of course are tiny and I get thousands.

They have been breeding in my tank for decades but I like to introduce some new blood occasionally.

 

[Paul B]

I just finished doing a lot of needed maintenance that I have not done in 9 years. My skimmer wasn't working too efficiently and neither was my algae scrubber. Along with that there was hardly any water going into my reverse undergravel filter.

I found the problem. The 5/8" tubes supplying the skimmer was almost completely clogged with tube worms and the skimmer also powers the algae scrubber and UG filter.

The recirculating pump under the DIY skimmer was also partially clogged so I had to take it apart. That is also when I discovered almost all the "Stainless Steel" worm gear clamps were corroded and broken. The tubes were hard like my head so I had to replace all of them.

After that, I removed the rock and corals from the right side of the tank to a vat, and moved everything around to give a more open aquascape. Then I replaced them. In doing that, I got two spines from my large urchin in my thumb.

Being I am a real Man, this did not bother me "much" so I didn't throw the urchin against the wall, instead I just scolded him with harsh language so he won't do it again.