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.

 

[Paul B]

I just tested the water I collected today with the amphipods from the Long Island Sound. The salinity is so low that it is the lowest I can read on my swing arm hydrometer. 0.012. I'm surprised anything lives in it.

 

[Paul B]

So yesterday I re-grouted and sealed my bathroom that I just re-built so I am not supposed to get it wet for 24 hours so I had to take a "shower" in my wife's Walk In Handicapped tub.
(here it is before I finished the granite on the right side)

It is very hard to take a shower in this thing without filling it up with like 400 gallons of water but I didn't have time for that and just wanted to take a quick shower.

Don't worry, there are no naked pictures of me in this post. ‍

Anyway, I get in there and am trying to get wet without getting water all over the walls which isn't easy. Then I reached for the "soap".

In my shower I have a "bar" of soap. A bar of real soap like real Men have used since the beginning of time, or at least my lifetime, but Women don't take regular baths with real soap. They need to smell good and moisturize.

Men should smell like rusty cro bars with a little axel grease mixed in.

So I reach for the soap and am hit with 4 choices in identical marble containers that don't say anything.

One is black, one is white, one is purple and I can't tell what the other color is because men can't see those sissy colors.

So I try the first one. It had the consistency of toothpaste and was slippery.
I already brushed my teeth so thankfully I didn't use it for that.

I smeared it on but didn't feel clean and I couldn't get it off, but it made me feel all smooth and silky. Not what I was going for.

Then I tried the next one which was thicker, purple and more slippery and smelled like Lotus Blossoms in the wind.

The next one was thinner and it made soap suds, a lot of soap suds so I figured that was soap and I used that to get the other oily, smelly things off of me.

This morning I got dressed to go for my walk but my pants kept sliding off of me so I just figured I lost weight.

As I am walking, I notice hummingbirds flying around me trying to get nectar out of my ears while honeybees are doing the same thing.

I told my wife of my experience, and she said the first bottle is moisturizing body lotion. The next one is hair conditioner and the last one I tried was shampoo.

I don't know what is in the 4th bottle and probably don't want to know but I know that if I had hair, it would be very luxurious and smell good which is not what I need, being bald and everything but the worst thing was last night, I kept sliding out of bed.

 

[diana a]

Don't worry, there are no naked pictures of me in this post. ‍

Oh at least post a photo in a speedo and with a beautiful model

I laughed so hard reading about your shower experience. I like using Coast or Duke Cannon soap. I feel clean with it.

I’m in Cape Coral FL. We have a high rise condo here. We need to move my daughter into her college apartment on Monday morning in Tallahassee FL. It will take 7 hours to drive that way tomorrow.

 

[Paul B]

Great. Our Daughter went to Fordham University in the Bronx which wasn't that far away but she dormed there. Our Grand Daughter is going away to High School someplace near Canada.

 

[Paul B]

Beautiful beach walk this morning, except I found two dead horseshoe crabs

It must have been a rough night because there was beautiful and large codium seaweeds all over the beach.

Many of them had a holdfast which is important if you want to put them in your tank.

This one is over a foot across.

I opted to take this 8" one. My urchin will destroy it anyway and it is less "branches" for me to pull out of my pumps.

 

[MadReefer]

I feel your pain Paul. My wife does similar taking the liquod, shampoo and conditioner into other bottles. I once asked why and the kicker because the bottles don't matchliquor, So I kept mine under the sink, out of sight, and only took them out when showering.

 

[Paul B]

I have my own bathroom and shower so we don't have that issue.

 

[MadReefer]

I have my own bathroom and shower so we don't have that issue.

I do too now that we moved....ha

 

[Paul B]

Playing with camera. 2 Pipefish doing well, (One is a bluestripe) both Dwarf Waspfish doing well, as far as I can tell. everything is doing great.

The 2 35-year-old Fireclowns are still constantly spawning.

I have always gone with natural looking, and I think the tank is.

 

[Paul B]

Oh at least post a photo in a speedo and with a beautiful model

Thats me in my Speedo. The beautiful model must have been on the boat taking the picture. Of course this was 50 years ago.

 

[Paul B]

This morning started off almost like any other morning except we had our lifelong friend Sue staying here overnight.

This is Sue and my wife probably 10 years ago.



Like every morning at 5:30 I got up and went to make myself coffee in our "Pod coffee maker".

I opened the blinds and heard water dripping. I forgot to put the cup in the machine so it made coffee but it poured all over the counter top and in the drawers. Great!

I cleaned that up and went on my computer to see what was going on with the fish Geeks. Then I went out to the beach
At the bottom of the long stairs I see sandals. They looked like girl sandals which is not unusual because during the day people go to that beach and swim. I don't because it is all rocks and seaweed and just isn't inviting for swimming.




So I start walking and I notice someone on the beach at the surf line bending down picking up something from the sand. I get closer and it is a Supermodel. She is wearing a mini skirt and is kind of dressed up which I find a little weird at 6:00 am.

About 50' away I start yelling "GOOD MORNING" because I don't want to give her a coronary as I'm sure she thinks no one is crazy enough to be on the beach at that time and I didn't want her to think I was a Perv Fish Geek.

She stood up and said Good Morning. She was very pretty, purple glasses, tattoos of animals and numbers, 48248 with a dash in between each number, eye makeup, nice hair style, blue jean skirt, small beauty mark near her left cheek, colorful necklace made of what looked like sea glass, the same on her right wrist, blue toenail polish etc. But I really didn't take notice and just took a glancing view of her.

I think she was searching for stones to make jewelry because the tide was too high to look for amphipods.
I asked her if she found anything interesting and she said, yes, I always find interesting things here. I have been walking on this beach at that time for 6 years and never seen anyone.

I said "have a great day and kept walking.

I could only go about 100 yards because the tide was too high so I had to walk back past her again or swim around the big rocks and I didn't have my Speedo on.




I kept walking and found this:



I don't think that girl was sending me a message so I left those rocks there and continued my walk.

I passed the girl again and kept walking the other way to get in my steps.

You can see her in this picture off in the distance. Let me know if you recognize her.




So I walked up the steps going back to my condo and I hear this big dog barking. This dog has been after me for a year but luckily the guy put up a gate so the dog can't run out into the street to take my leg off. But he was jumping at the gate like Godzilla and for a minute, I thought he would jump over it and tear me apart or just give me the horrors.

So I take out my dog spray. This stuff doesn't hurt the dog and your supposed to spray it up in the air where it makes a noise like geese. Maybe dogs are afraid of geese, I have no idea. So as the dog is jumping against the gate trying to get at me, I take the top off the dog spray and shoot it "in my ear" which instantly makes me go deaf so now I can't hear the dog and I was able to continue my walk home.

Now I will wait for Sue and my wife to get up so I can make breakfast and tell them about my walk.