paul b

Thanks. There is no places in my tank, not covered in sponge where there is no coral.

Yesterday I threw about 25 small mud snails in my tank. Today,I can't find even one. I am waiting to go out to dinner and I was watching my tank with the room lights off. (Yes,i am weird) I noticed my new, smaller 6 line wrasse which I have not seen in the week or two since I added him. If you have a pair of fish it is hard to know if you have two unless you see the both of them at the same time. In my tank I can go months before that happens as the structure is a huge system of caves that go from one of the tank to the other. The smaller 6 line wrasse looks pregnant although I didn't think she was old enough to spawn. I also found my new little bi color bleeny but I am pretty sure she is to young to spawn. A few more months maybe. I am pretty sure my Rainsford gobies are spawning as they "live" in a hole in the gravel next to an undergravel filter tube. They may even be going under that filter plate but I am to stiff to get under the tank with a flashlight to look for them. I don't have pictures of the 6 line wrasses because they are to fast, but these guys are also spawning.

Most of the rock has been in there for many years. In the beginning of the hobby we didn't use rock, only dead coral skeletons so all the rock was added over the years. Occasionally I will either find in the sea or build a rock so some of it changed. These pictures were taken last week.

We now live in a condo and,they uncovered the pool yesterday but it has no water in it so swimming is difficult and noisy. The walls of it are also filthy. Apparently there is a leak in the thing someplace and they are repairing that. After they do that and fill it, I would imagine they will have to throw a clean up crew in there for a few weeks until it is cycled. I saw the maintenance guy dumping a few dead shrimp in there to start the cycle. Then when they allow us to go into the pool, we first have to dip ourselves in fresh water for 3 minutes in case any of us harbor flukes. When they finally allow us to get into the water, we can only go in one at a time and before anyone else can go in, that person has to stay there by themselves for 72 days. If God Forbid a person is seen to have spots, the process has to start all over again. This is going to be hard because many of the people have freckles. It' better be a long summer.

Stupid anemones even taking over the back of my tank

I have two of these little gobies and they always hated each other. Now all of a sudden they "like" each other, "A Lot" and this one is pregnant as all fish should be. They will spawn soon as all healthy, paired fish will.

As I was sitting in my workshop/Man Cave a little while ago, this woman walks in. (I have my door open so people out on the street can see me) She was a nice looking woman maybe fifty or so so I figured she wanted to date me, take me out to dinner or sue me. It turns out she is starting a salt water fish tank and a neighbor told her that I have fish. So we talked for about 45 minutes and she has a small, like 30 gallon tank and unfortunately is listening to LFSs and is having all sorts of problems and really wants someone to explain to her what she should do. I hate to start Noobs on this because I can tell that she wants a tank full of corals, moorish Idols, achilles tangs, SPS corals and she wants it all by 2:00 Tuesday. Well, she wants a couple of damsels anyway. I went through the entire speech of the no dry foods, no corals, now anyway, no whale sharks etc. I think she is getting it and she wanted to borrow my book, which I gave her even though it is my own and only personal copy. I also told her that it is not for Noobs which it says near the beginning of the book. In a couple of weeks I am taking her water collecting because she lives behind my house so she is on the same beach and didn't realize you could collect water. Of course the LFS told her she couldn't do that because she is buying water from them. I will also give her some rocks and bottles from my tank because she is using bacteria and ammonia from a bottle. I told her that is OK if you get your fish in a bottle otherwise that is not my method and she can choose which way to go. But she loves my tank so she is going with my system. (which of course may be a problem unless you look like me, and she doesn't) I am thrilled to know someone with in fifty miles of my house with a salt tank. I will let you know how this goes.

To update my copperband is doing fine and he seems to think he died and went to heaven. I notice a lot less aiptasia but I have a few very large ones and one that is bigger than my copperband and he is actually afraid of it. I would be too. The thing is like the Godzilla's of aiptasia's and probably thinks it is a carpet anemone andI think my fireclown will host in it soon. I injected it with all sorts of things but I may have made a mistake and injected it with Regain which would account for it's unbelievable growth. I rubbed some Rogain on my head and have started to grow aiptasia out of my ears. My Janss pipefish I think is way older than it's lifespan is supposed to be but I have no idea what that is. My bluestripe pipefish is still trying to mate with him but being the Janss is three or four times larger, he is way out of her league. My rainsfords seem to be constantly spawning and my watchman goby female has not come out of her burrow in a couple of months so she is also probably tending multiple batches of eggs. I can see her in there and she seems to be very content but the male doesn't allow her out so I "shoot" worms in through the back of her cave so at least she can eat. Being married to a fat bully who won't let you come out to have some fun is just mean. He seems to want to keep her barefoot and pregnant. Or bare finned and pregnant. I am not sure what to call a Watchman female, maybe a Watchgirl, or a Watchbabe I don't know. My SPS for some reason are growing like that aiptasia and reaching for the stars as are "most" of my LPS. One LPS I think it was an elegance go completely covered my a Hammer coral which seemed to grow overnight. Now the thing is touching the front glass as is a very old gorgonian. Last week I "Very gently" pushed the entire reef structure back from the glass a few inches because I was hitting some montipora that was making it hard to clean the front glass. I need to do it again but I hate to do that as I hear things breaking and I don't like the sound of that. I don't do much to my tank so I have no idea why some things are growing so good, but I have been playing quite a bit of Vintage Linda Ronstadt lately. I have to clean the front glass every day and really could clean it twice a day. I don't get it. My tank is not all great, I also have some bristleworms that almost qualify to be moray eels. I really need to trap some of the ones over a pound. This is my Daughter and has nothing to do with this post, but neither does anything else.

I will tell her Tom. My new copperband seems fantastic and now eats everything. This is the first living thing I ever ordered through the mail. I had linguine with clams last night but I decided not to give him any so I gave him cake instead. He is about 2 1/2" long, just as I asked foe, is inquisitive and hunts all day. He eats just about anything he can fit in his mouth and didn't jump out yet. :cool: So far he doesn't like to come to the front of the tank while I am there, maybe I will try it while I am not wearing my Speedo.

Yeah, the supports were the tough part to learn and I also had trouble turning the things just the right way to print. Nice job.

Order them by the truck load.

I just found out where these Rainsford Gobies are spawning. I cleaned my glass and I also cleaned the algae off my algae scrubber which is on one end of the tank where it is hard to access. But in that back corner I never saw because it is up against a duct and I never cleaned the glass there. I got bored and decided to clean the glass to see if anything was living back there. There they were. They made a hole behind one of the tubes that goes to the UG filter. I am not sure if they got all the way under the filter plate, but they pop in and out to grab some white worms. I see one of the possum wrasses also hangs out there. Now that i know their hiding place, I will clean the glass there once in a while to check them out.

This is very sad. I have been reading Bobs stuff for many years. This is a big loss for the hobby and he will be missed.

Yes that is correct. Those LEDs work on 3 volts and are wired in series. Different color LEDs have different resistances so there may be 12, 16 or a different number of them on a circuit. That doesn't matter. To find a bad one, jump it out like you said. If that LED is the only bad one, the rest will light. If you have 2 or more bad ones, (not likely) you would have to jump all of the bad ones out at the same time. They go bad all the time and if you need to replace one, you should "glue" it to the aluminum heat sink using Thermal adhesive, available on Amazon. Regular glue is not good because the thing needs to transfer the heat from the LED to the aluminum heat sink or the LED may have a short life. If you get the fixture working with the jumper, you can just solder in that jumper and leave it like that until you get the thermal adhesive. I have those jumpers all over my lights for years. Of course it is better to replace the LED but if you want to leave in the jumper, just turn down the brightness of the fixture a little because by installing a jumper you are forcing "slightly" more voltage through each LED potentially reducing their life. But turning it down slightly will correct that. (Master Electrician 50 years)

I don't know what a Reef Breeder light fixture is but if we are talking about an LED fixture, take a short piece of insulated wire and strip the ends. Short out the terminals on that "bulb" LED. It is low voltage so you won't kill yourself but use insulated wire anyway because the voltages vary in that fixture depending on where you are touching. If the rest of the lights work. Replace that LED or maybe you have it backwards. You may have another LED burnt out so I would short out each one until you get the thing working. LEDs either short out or have an open circuit but the jumper will tell you what light it is. I build my own fixtures and have to do that all the time. You may have more than one that is bad. If you short it out and some lights come on, that one that you shorted is also bad.

I changed those 40 gallons of water I collected yesterday. Everything is smiling and all is well. Hopefully soon it will warm up enough to collect some mud and maybe a few amphipods.

For some reason the weather was beautiful here today. 72 degrees and sunny so after I washed my car (again) my wife and myself took a walk down the stairs to the beach. On the way down I noticed that the water was absolutely perfect and clearer than I have ever seen it. You can't tell from that lousy picture but about 50 yards out I can see the rocks on the sea floor. It was like the Caribbean. :p As soon as I got home I packed up my collecting stuff and headed down to a beach where I could back up almost to the water to collect. I backed up, threw the pump into the sea. Started filling vats. And it started raining. :( You really can't catch a break. How does the rain know when I will be collecting water. But it wasn't like Noah's flood so I finished collecting and have 40 gallons. I almost don't have to filter it and could probably get by with just straining out the chopped up seaweed and discarded copies of my book but I figured I will break out the diatom filter for this and before I clean the thing I will just throw it in my tank because I know my fish just love it when I diatom filter the water. Usually I do it once or twice a year but now with almost nothing to do, I do it all the time just to see the bubbles. The alk was 6 and the temp is 52 so I may have to heat it a little.

Paulb didn't print anything to put in his tank with his 3D resin printer, but he would put it in his tank if he wanted to. He told me so. The thing does have some foul smelling resin which is the reason it comes with carbon infused masks which work very well and you can't small anything through them. Of course since this Corona Virus thing I have been using them to go to a supermarket or if I see a Supermodel that I want to talk to. I have been using the same 2 masks now as that is all they give you and now you can't get masks for anything. You also have to use Nitrile gloves to clean the printing surfaces along with rubbing alcohol which you also can't get now. But I have a large supply. The resins come in various colors and I have used the black and gray. I really like the thing after a dismal starting out phase. Now I think I could print just about anything. The stuff cures with UV light or sunlight and I am fairly sure it is inert. I would use it in my tank but I would put just about anything in my tank. This thing on the left was a failure. The two on the right are what I was trying to do. With a 3D printed you have to also print those supports that you cut off after it is done. The printed stuff almost has the consistency and feel of wood after it is cured Those pieces I printed are on the top and bottom of the glass tube here with the firelight in it. The glass tube is the middle of a wine bottle.

Prototype of new model of aiptasia injector. It has an 18" tube on it and I can change the needle by just sliding it out. It is shown here full of Luguls Iodine which is something I am testing in the thing. So far the aiptasia have a nice red tinge but I am not sure if they will croak or love the stuff and do the macarana. I also want to try metheline blue. I don't care if that kills them, but how cool will they look? I already tried hydrogen peroxide and I think that has aiptasia vitamins in it. I know battery acid or boiling, almost anything will work, but I am having fun

That sounds great. I never heard of nizoral shampoo. I devised this almost 90 degree angle needle to inject aiptasia. It has an 18" tube where I can push the plunger to inject the little devils

My tank is doing great except now I have to clean the glass every day and I could do it twice a day if I felt ambitious. If I left it for 5 days it would be the same as looking through the left front fender of a vintage Ford Thunderbird. It doesn't bother me and is just because there is so much life in the tank. This is a sign of health. When I feed the fish, like I just did there are tentacles virtually evrywhere. I have sponges encrusting on every exposed surface and wriggling out of the edges of those sponges are nothing but tentacles. Probably spagheti worms. If I lift the edge of a sponge, the real estate is covered in bristle worms. Brittle stars completely cover any area next to the glass like behind the thermometer, heaters or any rocks that touch the glass. Any small part of exposed rock is filled with pores and out of every pore is an arm of "something". If I turn off the pumps, multitudes of creatures leave the gravel and rocks to swim to the surface and suck up anything they can find in the surface film. I can also usually see tiny new born clownfish there. The back glass is covered in a film of algae, cyano and coraline algae which is crawling with snails, small worms, amphipods and asternia stars. The pipefish hunt there and are always smiling. These are things that all make up health and come from feeding things like clams that exude clam juice which is just tiny particles of clam in "juice". Sponges live on this stuff as do all the other beginnings of the food chain. To keep pipefish, mandarins, bleenies and other small fish this stuff makes it much easier as I don't really have to feed those fish. View through the back of my tank. Those are sponges

So far here in my town of Suffolk New York we have almost 29,000 cases and almost 900 people already died so far. But the people going into the hospital is a little down. We are supposed to wear face masks but of course you can't get them anywhere. I have them on order from Amazon for 3 weeks already and they are another two or 3 weeks out, so my wife and I are wearing the same two masks we started with. Two masks came with my 3 D Printer so thats what we use. I sterilize them after we use them. Theres an argument in the town now because some officials want to give them to our many migrant farm workers and others want to give them to seniors. I can see both sides because the masks are to protect people from you, not the other way around and the farm workers are out all over the place and in stores.

I just realized, actually someone told me I made a reference to China and it was disrespectful to Chinese people which was not my intention. I actually have quite a few Asian friends and am just mad at the government of that country, not, of course the people.

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. It was probably made in China and soaked in Anthrax before they sent it here. 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. If I find somehow that it is from China, I will donate it to the Chinese President

WE are still in a funk but getting back to fish. After I lost my copperband my tank is having a big aiptasia invasion. Those things don't normally bother me but lately a lot of things are bothering me so I wanted to take it out on something and all I have that I am not particularly fond of are aiptasia. I looked around and found one of my old prototypes of a majano wand. I plugged it in and I was surprised it worked. I killed a bunch of them and it was gratifying. Some came back so I killed them again. Now I feel much better and hope some return so I can yet again kill them. (The thing is not designed to kill aiptasia so if you have those, don't buy one) These guys are much more than friends but I am not sure where they are spawning or even how they spawn because I don't remember ever having Rainsford gobies spawning or ever having two of them but for a year they stood on complete opposite ends of the 6' tank. Now they hang out all the time