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47 year old tank


sen5241b

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I personally blame "the rap," and am still looking for a good Church of Reef, what kind of prayer and snail gets rid of cyano?

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These razor shrimpfish I added are extreamly cool but I doubt they will live long.  They eat very well but only live new born brine shrimp and for the last two months there has been a problem with brine shrimp eggs.  They are very hard to find and the ones I have have a very low hatch rate so I am using 4 or 5 times more than normal and still can't get a good hatch of shrimp.  I also have a few pipefish, mandarins and ruby red dragonettes that rely on shrimp so this may be a problem.  I even ordered them on line a wek ago and they are not supposed to get here for 2 more weeks.  My selection of fish depends on new born brine shrimp but there must be a problem with them at the collection site.

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I got these two shrimpfish last week and they are very cool. One of them is not so well as he stopped eating and is covered in parasites. He was damaged when I got him with a broken "tail", which is more like a spear, and rotted fins, clowdy eyes etc. The other one is fine and eats all the baby brine shrimp I could hatch. (you can see the broken tail on the one on the left)
The lights didn't come on yet so I am not sure if the sick one is alive, if he is I may try to remove him and cure him, but I don't think I could catch him. If he dies, I will replace him as I think the LFS has two more. I didn't look at this one when the guy in the store put him in the bag. That was a mistake as I usually scrutinize fish very well before I take them. If I could catch him, I can cure him in a couple of days but I have to go through setting up a tank, and all that. They are an interesting loking fish but eat a lot and are so skinny (which is why they are called Razor fish) that they need to eat at least 3 times a day. I have been having a hard time getting good brine shrimp eggs and have 3 vials of them that hardly hatch. I received new eggs yesterday so Ihopefully I will have better luck. I have been hatching shrimp for probably fifty years on and off but constantly, every day for the last 10 or 15 years. I ususlly hatch them twice a day because of all the shrimp eaters I have
 

Edited by paul b
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 I eat fish almost every day but they are dead before I eat them.  I talk to them about my old girlfriends and bore them to death. Then I eat them. But the fish in my tank live long and prosper and are very lucky because almost all of them are spawning. So my fish know life's pleasures while I am slaving and driving through snow to get them worms for dinner. I just got them lunch and took this picture of my house just before I parked. By the way, on my way home from the LFS on the highway. The Jiboni in front of me in a silly car without 4 wheel drive spins out of control right in front of me and stops facing me on the road. This is what I go through for my fish

I just took this picture of my house.

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It's getting nasty down here too. Spinning out is only part of the fun of a snowy day. Thats why I drive2 wheel drive cars. It's like an exciting ride that you dont know what is going to happen around the next corner.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The shrimp fish with the parasites croaked after a day, so I replaced it.  Now they are doing great.  a couple of my most interesting fish.  I may get a few more.

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What gives, I thought this tank was 44 years old?

It is now.

 

Good news, I wrote about 175 pages of the book already and I like the way it came out.  I want it to be about 200 pages and still have quite a bit more ideas so I think I will make it.  I should have it finished in a week or two.  Then it is off to the publisher and see what happens.  I hope I don't have to wait to long for him to stop laughing.  I won't know if he is laughing because he thinks the book stinks or I write funny.  Or maybe he will just think I am funny looking.  But I like the book so if no one reads it, I will just keep reading it myself.   Writing it brought back a lot of memories from when the hobby started and I put all of that down.  As you know, I don't go along with much of the current wisdom in this hobby because I think most of it is heresy created by rumors with a little LSD mixed in.  Half the book is about DIY stuff that I feel makes this hobby very easy.  I have a chapter on keeping "hard to keep creatures" and Supermodels predominate that chapter.

I would like to print maybe 100 copies to go along with the E Book thing but I haven't gotten that far yet and I have no idea how much this is going to cost me.  I guess I can sell my hair.  Oh wait a minute.

 

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It is now.

 

Good news, I wrote about 175 pages of the book already and I like the way it came out.  I want it to be about 200 pages and still have quite a bit more ideas so I think I will make it.  I should have it finished in a week or two.  Then it is off to the publisher and see what happens.  I hope I don't have to wait to long for him to stop laughing.  I won't know if he is laughing because he thinks the book stinks or I write funny.  Or maybe he will just think I am funny looking.  But I like the book so if no one reads it, I will just keep reading it myself.   Writing it brought back a lot of memories from when the hobby started and I put all of that down.  As you know, I don't go along with much of the current wisdom in this hobby because I think most of it is heresy created by rumors with a little LSD mixed in.  Half the book is about DIY stuff that I feel makes this hobby very easy.  I have a chapter on keeping "hard to keep creatures" and Supermodels predominate that chapter.

I would like to print maybe 100 copies to go along with the E Book thing but I haven't gotten that far yet and I have no idea how much this is going to cost me.  I guess I can sell my hair.  Oh wait a minute.

I think it's awesome man. I followed your entire thread on RC and enjoyed every minute of it. And if there is a section on supermodels, hot darn! Heck, maybe even the LSD. On a more serious note, the greats in the hobby have been the people that have gone against the grain.

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Thank you, but remember, when I started in the hobby, there was no hobby so there was no grain to go against.  It was smooth sailing until Al Gore or Brian Williams invented the internet and caused global warming.  But as long as I can remember, we always had Supermodels

Edited by paul b
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Doing some much needed maintenance.  Once a year or so I stir up the gravel as good as I can all the way down to the reverse UG filter.  This typhoon makes a mess and the pipefish are making nasty faces at me as I normally lose my bluestripe pipefish when I do this, but I am going slow and taking all day to do it to try to save them.  I still see them so they may be fine, if not mad.  The rest of the fish don't seem to mind and never do.  This bit of maintenance is the secret to my tank's long term health and it would crash from Old Tank Syndrome (or boredom) if I didn't do it.  I would like to leave this diatom filter on the tank all night but it is a terribly designed piece of machinery and if I kept it running it would burn my house down.  I have 4 of them and out of the four, I have enough parts to get one working.  The bearings are garbage the seals are useless and the overall design is horrible so I really need to re-design one because I need to do this all the time.  I also have one Eheim  running with some floss in it but that doesn't filter to well like that.  I may design a diatom filter using the Eheim as a base.  I just need time and I never have enough of that.  It's been running for about 4 hours now and I keep stirring it up.  I could do this for 12 hours and still find plenty of gunk to suck up but I don't want to make a career out of this today.  The diatom is very hot and I want to finish before the thing stalls like I know it will. 
Maybe I will do it again next week (but I doubt it.) 
I realize most people don't stir up their gravel or sand but most people also don't have a very old tank.  Don't stir up a DSB unless you want to take down your tank and take up stamp collecting

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My workbench looks like a diatom re-design factory.  The XL is on the left,  I think I have two more units stored away somewhere in various stages of disassembly.

 

 

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It is odd, that the motors are the same but the large XL unit on the left has a much smaller impeller.  I never figured that out.  I can probably figure out how to change it around to have the large impeller on the large unit.
The middle unit above has a custom built bag.

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I'm looking forward to your book being published. Only 200 pages, I would have thought it to be around 400 with all the information and supermodels in it.

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I got one filter going great and made another typhoon because you can't have to many typhoons.  This is s a good one as I can't see the back of my tank so I know I am sucking out a couple of years worth of muck.  I think the diatom will last for the entire cleaning.  I repaired the bag, stopped the leaks, oiled it up good and drilled more holes in it to cool it so I am sure it will work at least for this cleaning and maybe next years also.

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I picked up another shrimpfish today.  I can't stand it, they are just to cool.  They had two of them and one was dead.  Although the dead one was very cheap, I took the still alive one.  I am sure in a few days he will be in fighting shape in my tank.

Yes, I know these are not shrimpfish.  I have a nice shrimpfish video but Photobucket says it is to big to post even though it is about 15 seconds.  Does anyone know how to post those?
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The tank cleared up nicely after the 2 typhoons.  I didn't even lost the bluestripe pipefish as I usually do.  Maybe they took a trip when I did it.  I may still do it again if I get time before boating season because I cant hit all the places because the corals are larger than they used to be and I really can't remove rocks.  The 3 razor shrimpfish are doing well and I really like them.
I also need to make another strip of LEDs to supplement my lighting as I don't think my home made fixture is bright enough.  I only have 108 watts of lighting over a 6' tank which is way to low for some corals.  I would like to increase it to at least 150 or 200 watts so I need to either build an entirely new fixture or just add some strips to my existing fixture.  If I make a new fixture, I will add a splash guard because my existing fixture has salt deposits all over it.  I can keep my old drivers and just buy some more LEDs which are only $3.00 each so it is not a big deal.  The big deal is having the time to do this because the lights will be off on the tank for maybe 2 days.  Not a problem unless I get side tracked and the lights stay off.

This is the other side of my workshop that I rarely show.

2015-03-18%2008.22.48_zpsnwfjnxnn.jpg

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I've only seen pictures! Very nice tank, Paul! All your fish look happy, like you say they do... Unless you made them act happy for the video...

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