paul b

I am breeding bluestripped pipe fish, bangai cardinals, 2 pairs of watchman gobies and fireclowns. My hermit crabs are also laying eggs but I don't raise any of them anymore.

I go to the sea with a fine net, scoop up a bunch of stuff and dump it in my tank

No there is nothing you should worry about. I have my generator hooked up exactly like yours (which is illegal by the way) Your neutral bar in your panel is grounded, that is it is connected to either your water main or ground stake or both. You can not feed any power back to the power lines through the neutral. As long as you have the main breaker off (very important) you will not back feed the line. I installed a bell on my incoming line on the street side of my circuit breakers. I also have a switch on it. When my power goes out, I hook up my generator just like you do and I turn on that switch. When my utility power comes back on the bell rings and I know to shut off the generator. That power cord you have with two male ends (just like I have) is dangerous and illegal. Just turn off the generator before you un plug it as the male ends of it are energized. (Electrician Construction Foreman Manhattan 40 years)

Correct, which usually burns the house down

From being an electrician in Manhattan for 40 years. I just tested mine in my house and today it is 118 but as was said it can vary from about 110 to about 125 depending on the season, the temp, how far you are from the transformer and the usage in your town. Every 100' or so from the transformer it could drop a volt or two.

Here is a picture of the box fish we collected a few days ago. It is in my un lit, un filtered Long Island Sound tank which has raw NSW in it which is kind of green. I took the picture through a jewelers loupe but the fish never stops and is only a half inch long, the glass is also filthy. It is just an experimental tank so I don't go crazy on it.

Read the article I wrote, after they eat the bryopsis they become solar powered and incorporate the chloroplasts from the bryopsis into their tissues and live the rest of their life on just light. Mine lived about 18 months and I had over 100 of them

As to the original question as to what eats it, Lettuce slugs eat it. Well they don't actually eat it, they more like suck the juices out and the stuff turns into snot. I wrote an article about them years ago. http://www.breedersregistry.org/Articles/b...PoweredSlug.htm

It is actually a little less watts than that because in the US we don't get 120 volts, it is closer to 115 or a little less even though we call it 120.

Who you calling Old? While it is true that I still use what is often called "Old Technology" I have not been in a coma for the last 40 years. I remember when all of the new "inovations" appeared along with the "experts" who approved them. ( I recently was asked to speak to the Northern Valley Reefers assn in Stockton Calif on the history of the hobby) Except for MH lighting and live rock, there are no new inovations that I can think of that will enhance the health of the animals we keep better than the methods we had in the seventees. Skimmers have been around for almost 40 years as I have had one about that long. Ozone also has been here as long, Wet drys came and went (also in the seventees) but they were the fastest at reducing ammonia. DSBs have been around for 20 years and they are no improvement as they do not last very long and IMO they do not reduce nitrate very well or very fast. I would imagine a calcium reactor is kind of new but again IMO not needed. We didn't have powerheads then, I forgot about that. But they came out soon after the hobby started. The food we can buy is different but still lacking in just about everything that our animals need. I called Ocean Nutrition about that and they were supposed to send someone to discuss the problem but he never showed up so I usually obtain my own food. My tank had an algae tray back then as it does now so that is not really new. My fish lived over 15 years then as they do now, they spawned then as they do now. My tank is the same. I don't know, I guess I am old and so are my methods. I don't add pennies to my tank anymore like we did in the beginning to cure ich, so that is an improvement Of course, my fish don't get ich anymore either Ok lets add another dimention to this thread because I can see you all shaking your heads thinking, is this guy nuts. He must be senile, I bet he can't keep a goldfish Yes I do run a reverse UG filter, I know, crazy. I installed it in around 1973 or 4. All of the people with a newer, better inovation that will make a tank healthier or last longer I would like to hear from you. OK just kidding. What are some newer technologies that some feel will make a tank healthier? New meaning not invented in the seventees.

Mike my original post was not directed at my tank. It was just a statement open to discussion. Everything in our tanks came at one time from a reef (except for an occasional home raised clownfish etc.) We don't have to duplicate a real reef to keep healthy animals but being all of our animals evolved for millinea on a real reef, they are genetically programed to utilize the substances on the reef for survival. The closer we can come to that, the better off our animals should be. All fish are different and most people feed their animals the same thing. We can of course keep animals this way as most of us do but fish in the sea do not eat pieces of squid, clam, mysis, flakes and angel formula. I know it is convenient to feed these things as I feed them also, but a very important aspect of a fishes diet which is almost always overlooked is that fish in the sea eat "whole" fish. They need the bones and most important the fish oil stored in the liver. A fish can be 1/5th liver and most of that is oil. All of those foods I mentioned lack oil and calcium. This one item can keep our fish and corals in much better shape and possably, keep them safe from disease. Fish are not like us. We can sit on a couch, watch TV and eat potato chips for years and "seem" fairly healthy. We can also "breed" in that condition. Fish can not. You can keep damsels for years feeding just flakes but even though they will look healthy, they are not and they will not spawn. Another overlooked factor in a captive tank is bacteria. Bacteria cover everything in a tank but it is the correct type of bacteria for our needs. No it is not. In captivity bacteria go through what the higher animals go through. The strongest survive. The strongest bacteria may be what the LFS has in his diseased tanks for years. I myself add bacteria from the sea often during the year. I feel this bacteria is what has kept this tank healthy for 40 years. Bacterial diversity is never mentioned in writings on this hobby but it is bacteria that keeps our tanks from crashing. If you have tochange water because your nitrates are high, your bacteria are not the correct type or you do not have the correct substrait for them to multiply. A tank should be self sufficient in reguard to nitrates but the bacteria will not work for us for free forever, they need replacements from the sea. This is only my opinion but my opinion comes from almost 60 years of looking very closely at this stuff. OK I was born 60 years ago but I did have a tank from when I was about two to now. Oh I forgot, I live on Long Island and can collect tropicals that come up on the Gulf stream. I got a bunch yesterday

My tank actually does "resemble" to ocean to an extent. I collected all of the rocks (and bottles) in the ocean, much of the water comes from the ocean, I collect bacteria, pods, seaweed, snails, crabs and worms in the ocean to dump in my tank. Just today I collected water, pods and a load of butterflies, pipefish, puffers and boxfish. Some of the mud with associated bacteria also went into my tank. I simulate typhoons with a diatom filter and feed the fish and corals food from the sea which many times I collect. Of course it can not be the ocean but I try to get it as natural as I can. I believe my natural method is why it has lasted so long with no diseases or any other problems. I also have barnacles in there along with an algae trough, filled mainly with seaweed from the sea.

You are definately correct with this although I have 4 pairs spawning now in my reef but I will not raise the fry. Don't do that anymore as it is too time consuming. But the fact that they are spawning proves to me that they are healthy. Living for 15 years and more is another indication they are healthy. As for breeding fish to feed to your tank, that is really time consuming and the fish that will readily spawn in a tank like mollies would be far too few to accomplish anything useful. I feed saltwater fish eggs and live worms. It is the only way I know to get fish into excellent, breeding health. I have found that that is the easiest way to get fish to spawn. If your fish are not spawning or making spawning gestures, they are not as healthy as you believe them to be. This, of course does not work for all fish. Egg scatters will not usually spawn in a tank. This is also one reason why tangs are considered ich magnets. They are always stressed in captivity. If they were not, they would be spawning as they do all the time in the sea.

Thats the most important part Tim. You may find tangs in shallow water searching for food but they normally are much deeper. The huge schools of them stay for the most part in deeper water. Not too deep because they are there for the algae. I doubt they would stay in that shallow water for their entire lives if they have a choice. Actually, the reason for the thread was not to question weather our tanks look like the ocean or can look like the ocean. It was just an idea for a discussion. I have been diving and have a reef tank both for over 40 years and I just thought it would be interesting to compare.

See all of the tiny fry to the left of the nurse shark? They are all over the place on a healthy reef. This is what fish snack on all day. Whole, fresh fish, guts, skeleton and all. From the Cayman Islands

Every time I dive I think of all the ways I can make my tank more like the sea I get overwhelmed. First of all the sea is deep. Our animals know that they are in very shallow water and they would never venture into such shallow water if they had a choice. At the waters edge and in tide pools we find only tiny baby fish, you never find a full grown tang in water 2 feet deep. The sea is full of plankton and baby fish, they are all over the place and fish never go hungry. Fish eat all day long and almost never get enough in one meal to fill them. Their intestines are very short and are designed to process a little food continousely. Carnivores eat fresh "whole" fish. Herbivores eat "mostly" fresh algae, but the algae in the sea is also full of pods, worms, shrimp and fish fry. The sea is full of danger which gives the animals plenty of exercize. They are constantly fighting for food or escaping preditors. They are never just hanging out looking out the glass The sea is constantly in motion, back and fourth motion, sometimes much more motion than we could ever provide in a tank. I have seen 12' brain corals toppled over after a storm. The same storm that deposited 30' sailboats up the side of a mountain. These storms break off weak pieces of coral and make room for more. They also sweep debris out of coral pores. Corals can deal with storms by just closing and without storms, corals would be covered with detritus. The sun does not instantly shine or go out as it does in most of our tanks, it also does not shine every day. Sometimes days go by with hardly any light. Lightning hits the sea every few seconds. I don't know if that helps or hurts. And the sea has every element on earth disolved into it as well as all the strains of bacteria. Some good, others not so good. Of all of these things there are only a few we have control of. I think we do a fairly good job but these factors are the reason some people have huge problems. We can't make up for the shallow water by providing more light but we can feed better, add bacteria from the sea, try better circulation, stir things up occasionally and know our limitations. We can't always keep everything. But we try to keep the things we think we can keep. Have a great day. Paul

Today was an interesting day of boating and collecting. I went to my usual place at low tide, the tide pool goes under a road and on the other side there is a lake that spills over these 20' long walls ibnto this tide pool. At high tide the lake is almost the same height as the sea. Anyway these walls are about 4 or 5' high with freshwater spilling over into the salt water. The walls look like they are made of barnacles. There are no cement patches, it is all barnacles. As I was checking them out as I always do I noticed the walls loked like they were crawling with something. At first I thought it was just the barnacles which a lot of it was (I didn't have my reading glasses on) Then I noticed it was tiny creatures, different from any amphipods I have ever seen, and I have seen more amphipods then most people, believe me. These things look like tiny trillobites about 3/16" long. There were billions of them. I collected a bunch along with sheets of barnacles to put in my reef. I know the barnacles will not live more than a month but I am curious about these "pods". Wierd. I also collected a few hermit crabs for my local tank. We tried to get some blue claw crabs for dinner but all we got were two, so we let them go. One of them was the largest blue claw I have ever seen. I am going back tomorrow then tuesday it is the south shore for tropicals. Barnacles NY hermits

My bluestripped pipefish are again very pregnant. If I look close I can see the tiny stringy little babies stuck in his pouch under his belly. No I can't get a picture. Those things are impossable to photograph. They are always in a cave and usually in the back of the tank chasing the baby brine. The only thing bad about having spawning fish, is that you can hardly ever see them. I also have 4 large watchman gobies that are also always spawning but they hang around their nest all the time which is also in the back. Fire clowns too. I am trying to get the bumblebee gobies to spawn and I don't know if they are as they hide too. I see all of these guys when I dump some baby brine in there or put one of those undersea shows on the TV.

I just did one of the things that I love to do which I have mentioned before. I removed a bottle that I have not emptied in years and dumped it out in a flask to check out what is living in there. It is an entire eco system. There was a nice strand of seaweed growing right in the center like a mineature garden or bonsai tree. The thing was just teeming with pods, worms and all sorts of other cool little things. This to me is what makes this hobby so interesting. I sometimes get more excited to watch this stuff than my fish. I had to do some work on the tank because I have a small auto feeder mainly for the hippo tang that puts a few flakes and pellets in the tank in case I don't show up for a couple of days. I heard the thing cycle and the surface of the water was covered with flakes. The top came off the feeder and about a can of flakes went into the tank. I skimmed a lot of it out but the rest sunk so I had to get out the diatom filter and do a thorough cleaning. As I was doing that I found the coral that I had been looking for that my urchin transported into a cave. It seems fine. I also did a little aquascaping to re position all the rocks the urchin moved and to re pile anything that had fell. I also have a problem with corals toppling onto each other so I fixed most of that problem. I also added a few very pregnant grass shrimp. The fish will enjoy that. Tomorrow I will collect some more of those which seem larger this year for some reason. They are all around my boat along with zillions of amphipods. That all goes intio the tank. Have a great day, whats left to it.

The clams will not surbvive much more than a week, if that. I have collected them dozens of times but the crabs will live. Not the mole crabs you can collect at the wave breaking line but any crabs you collect from a bay or inlet. I have all sorts of them. My local tank is many years old.

Seahorses are not particular about lighting. Any light where they can see their food is fine. I have collected them many times locally in NY and have also bred them numerous times in a partitioned area of my reef. Here is a local pair in my reef. The female is in the process of transfering the eggs to the male. I raised some of the fry to adulthood.

There are two ways to run a tank. Both work. One way is to quarantine everything including rocks, and inverts and the other way is to keep the animals in such a state of health they they are seldom, if ever bothered by ich. Both methods work and both require some work. In a new set up like yours I would go for quarantining. That is too late for you so I would go with the other method (which is also my method). I have been keeping fish since the fiftees and I started my still running reef in 1971. (I also started diving in the seventees and have almost 300 hours underwater). At first it was an ich magnet, that was before we invented captive reefs and it was a fish only using dead coral as decorations. We also knew nothing about fish nutrition and there was no specific foods available for salt water fish. In those days all fish had ich and if it were not for copper, there would be no salt water fish hobby. Your LFS and his wholesaler use copper. Fish under stress are extreamly suseptable to ich. A fish will be under stress if it is in a new tank especially with ASW. A fish will also be under stres if it is a schooling fish such as a tang. (these types of fish are always in a school) A fish is stressed if it is a deep water fish like a Royal Gramma, or a fish like a Moorish Idol which needs spongs as it's main diet or a sand sifting gobi in a tank that is too clean. In other words, fish in a tank are usually under stress. You can do much to severly reduce stress on fish. I have found that fish in breeding condition do not get ich. I can say that because I use NSW and also collect seaweeds, mud, bacteria and animals from the sea and put them directly in my reef. I have always done this and I have not seen a case of ich in about 30 years. It is definately in my tank because if a fish is near death from old age, jumping out or some other accident, I will see ich develop just before the fish dies. I can even put ich infected fish in my tank (don't do this) and it will either die or be cured but the other fish will not develop it. I do this all the time (but don't) Fish in a tank are rarely in breeding condition and I found one of the causes. In the sea fish eat a diet of "whole" fish. They do not eat squid, clams, mysis, angel formula, flakes etc, they eat whole fish. Usually baby fish. If you do any diving you will notice that the sea floor around the base of corals is literally teeming with fry. This is a food that they eat every day and they need it. A fish is almost a quarter liver. In that liver is oil. We eat it as Cod Liver Oil. But we, as humans can only use a tiny amount, fish on the other hand get get a large portion of their nutrition in the form of oil. If we can get this oil into fish, they will be in much better health. There are a few ways to do this. You can feed tiny fish. Not easily available. You can feed salt water fish eggs (as I do) Usually salmon eggs but there are also much smaller eggs available. These are loaded with oil and everything else a fish needs but they are rich so I also feed other things. Live blackworms are also loaded with oil. If I run out of all of the above I soak flakes in Cod Liver Oil. This puts an oil slick on your water but it works. If your fish are not breeding or making breeding attempts because they are alone, they are not as healthy as you believe them to be. Fish should spawn every couple of months and most fish live over 15 years. (not small gobies or seahorses) Many of my fish are spawning including pipefish, bangai cardinals and gobies. Even my hermit crabs are spawning. If your fish are in breeding condition they will rarely get ich and if they get a few spots, it will probably disappear. You need to feed these foods a few times a week, not just once.

Thanks Steve. I have amphipods older than most of you guys, what can I tell you?

How about my issues of "The Marine Aquarist" in black and white from 1972?

It is my theory that fish do not become immune to ich through some immune response like when we become vaccinated but I feel they do not become infected if they are in excellent health. Fish in breeding condition rarely get ich. I can say that because in the last 35 years of my tank there has never been ich. Before that there was, when the tank was new and it was a fish only. We didn't have reefs then. There was ich on everything and if it were not for copper, there would not be a salt water fish hobby. We had to keep copper in the water almost continousely. Now for all these years I personally do not have to quarantine because many of my fish are breeding. They are also living long enough to die of old age, some almost 20 years old. I use some NSW right from NY with no treatment, I add bacteria from the sea along with barnacles, crabs, seaweed, pods etc. I am very sure there is plenty of ich in my tank. I will see it if something is about to die from old age or something else but never will I ever see it on any other fish. I have no cleaner shrimp, neon gobies or other cleaners. I know those fish will not remove enough ich to do anything. If you have ich in your tank, you have uncountable tromphants or baby ich if you will. Those things will swim around all over the place until they infect something. If a cleaner fish eats 10 paracites, there are 10,000 others infecting your fish, unless they are in breeding condition, then for some reason, the paracites have a very hard time infecting anything. If your fish that can breed do not breed or at least make breeding jestures, they are no where near as healthy as you believe them to be and they are very suseptable to ich. If you want to keep cleaner fish, go ahead, they are interesting and a nice addition to a reef but if you are adding them to cure ich, you are wasting your time. They will not hurt but the ich disappeared on it's own.