47 year old tank

[paul b]

Last night just before sundown my friend and I go to a boat ramp to collect water.
I back my Jeep up to the water on a boat ramp next to a beach, roll out the hose, throw the bilge pump into the sea and start pumping water into the car.

I have collected water on this beach for maybe 20 years and in all that time I have never seen anyone launch a boat or take one from the water. As a matter of fact, I never even saw a boat in the water there as that is the eastern Long Island Sound and it is a 27 mile wide stretch of open water and kind of rough.

There is space for two boats to launch at the same time.
After one of my three 8 gallon buckets gets filled, a cop shows up. I figured he will ask what we are doing and making sure we are not dumping Anthrax, Prizapro or those little tags that read, "Do Not Remove Under Penalty of The Law".

Now on my car I have a boat ramp permit and a beach access permit that allows me to drive on the sand right into the water like a submarine if I want.
I also have Vietnam Veteran license plates and Combat Veteran stickers.

The Cop says, "Is that your car?"
I almost said "No, I am stealing it, but first I want to fill it up with sea water and load it with 8 or 9 tuna infected with ich and fin rot just to see if the owner knows how to cure them". But I figured I would just say:
Yes Officer, this is my car, is there a problem?

He said: Do you have a boat? I said, Yes, but it's not here right now. (Like Duh, I think he would have seen a boat as behind my car was the Atlantic Ocean with a beautiful sunset and nothing to obscure his vision.

He says, you need a boat to use the boat ramp. I said, I have a boat ramp permit and it is almost night time, in 20 years I have never seen a boat here, there are two ramps and I would move if a boat came.
He just said, (In a tone like he just had a fight with his wife and lost) "Move your Car".

I could tell this Gentleman had nothing to do, was in a bad mood and instead of looking for criminals he felt like chasing two Veteran Geezers collecting a little seawater at night for a fish tank.

(Because I am a Veteran I got the $50.00 beach access permit for free)

So I only had one bucket of water.
We then went o another beach much closer to my house. I drove on to the sand down to the water and found a place in a hole in a big rock to throw my sump pump and I collected the rest of the water there which was much cleaner anyway.

I hope when that cop went home he has a 500 gallon salt water tank and everything including his clingfish, bristleworms and flounders are infected with flukes that are this size.

This is the beach we ended up collecting at.

 

Edited August 28, 2019 by paul b

[paul b]

I changed my cell phone battery. First I look at some You Tube videos to see how to do it. It seems that most cell phones it is easy, but I have an I Phone SE and it is not so easy and it's a good thing I still have 20/20 vision because you need the Hubble Telescope to see the screws that are smaller than this
---------> , < ----------
The battery kit comes with the screwdriver for that and a different one only for cell phones for the two tiny screws to take the case apart.
There are about 20 screws to remove and you get a very sharp tweezer to "un plug" the connectors.

I skipped a few of the steps and found a much easier way to change the battery and so far the thing works fine but I did find when I opened the case that the bracket that holds in the battery connector was not screwed in and was just laying there. The 2 screws were just thrown in the case and I am surprised they didn't short anything out. (So much for having 4 year olds putting phones together)

I couldn't replace the screws because the holes were stripped. I folded a paper towel over the connector so it will be held in place by the back cover when I close it (I hope).

The bracket is supposed to go over the black connector just to the left of the point on that blue flat plastic "Spudger", not the screwdriver.

[paul b]

We went out to a nice dinner on the water 2 days ago and I got stuck.  The boat had two problems but luckily we got home without swimming which was good because the restaurant is 15 miles away.

The ignition switch shorted out causing the starter to engage when I put the boat in  reverse.  I have never seen that before and neither did the mechanic in my marina.
The neutral  safety switch , which prevents you from starting the boat (and your car) in gear powers the start circuit so you can start the engine in neutral.  But the switch shorted out causing the starter to engage while running the engine.

I fixed that at the dock before we left so that only delayed us for 15 minutes.

The boat ran fine for the trip  and one engine stalled at the restaurant.
I couldn't start it so I docked on one engine.  :confused:

We had a nice dinner and we started to come home on one engine.  One engine doesn't get the boat up on plane (on top of the water) so the boat goes like a displacement boat (battleship, tug boat,  etc) and only went 8 mph.   The boat normally can go about 30 mph.
After a couple of miles I got the other engine started and we made it back to my dock.

Today  I hope to go down there to do some work on it.   The season is almost over and I am not sure I can salvage any more boat time this year but I am going to try.  

I will install spark plugs but I am also going to remove one of the exhaust risers because when I couldn't start it, it backfired a couple of times which "may" mean that some seawater was getting into the engine.  The only place that could happen is at the exhaust manifold.
(a head gasket will also do that but they don't "usually" go on a boat)

If the exhaust riser is clogged and corroded, I  will replace all four of them.  But if it is just a little caked with gunk, I will take it home and scrape it out and hopefully get another month of boating before I change them in the fall.

They are heavy and I am older now so it is not a job I relish, but I really don't trust people to  do anything because I know that after they do it, I will have to do it myself anyway. 
There is little room to stand in my bilge and my new knee doesn't work well but my other knee is worse and I can't twist it at all so this normally not very hard job will be an adventure.  But I am not a snowflake and like challenges.  If it were easy, any Girly Man could do it and Girly men never do this.  All they do is call for reservations and call mechanics.   :agree:

It's those four steel things with the four bolts in each one on either side of the engines.  That is only the small top part as they go all the way down about 16" and from the front to the back of the engines.

[paul b]

I got the riser off the manifold and it is not as bad as I figured it would be.  It was clogged but most of it I was able to get out with a screwdriver and a powerwasher.  This one was getting very hot and thats why. 

 I can probably get five more years out of it.

 

The other three risers don't get to hot so I won't mess with them today.  Now I just need to get gaskets and put the thing back together.

 

I also installed spark plugs.

So I saved $4,000.00

 

It's great to be retired.  :p 

 

[paul b]

After I came home from taking apart the boat I came home to relax. My wife went to her friends house so it was nice and peaceful. I poured a nice glass of Grand Marnier and laid on the couch.
I asked Alexa to put on peaceful rain sounds and I almost drifted off to sleep.

Then the rain sounds started to get violent and I told Alexa to cancel.
I started to drift off.
The sounds got louder. I yelled :
"ALEXA. CANCEL"
She said, "There is nothing to cancel."

Just then I heard this very loud, very annoying noise from my cell phone and like in stereo, from my house phone at the same time.

"SEVERE TORNADO ALERT IN EFECT, DANGEROUS LIGHTNING, HURRICAIN FORCE WINDS, STAY INSIDE, DON'T EVEN THINK OF GOING OUT EVEN IF THERE IS A 50% OFF PURPLE TANG SALE AT THE LFS".

I look out the window and it was dark. It looked like I was trying to see through sheet metal, not that cheap 18 gauge sheet metal like they sell in Home Depot, I mean Manly 12 gauge, galvanized sheet metal like they make Greyhound busses out of.

The rain was coming down as if it was being dumped out of Cadillac trunks and not those new Sissy Cadillac's. I mean a 1957 Pink Cadillac that had trunks you could put three Toyota's in and still have room for the full size spare tire. 

The lightning was deafening. I looked at my tank and all the fish were huddled in the corner with a wide eyed look on their faces kind of like Nancy Pelosi sometimes gets. They even let the anemone and long spined urchin squeeze in with them.

There is a huge tree across the street from my house and the branches were bending like Mick Jagger's legs "AND" my car was parked under it.

OMG, I grabbed the keys and ran out there to move it. The lightning looked like Poseidon's Trident
and the rain was pushing me down just by it's sheer weight but I knew I had to move the car so the limbs wouldn't fall on it.

I get in the car and I am soaked in places I haven't seen or felt in decades. 

I get the car started and the windshield wipers don't move fast enough but I manage to get the car in front of my garage where there are no trees.

;Wideyed
I count to three and run out of the car and in one quick movement I spin around and close the door.

The only problem was that in my haste, while I was spinning around, I threw the keys backwards where they flew, very fast towards the car.

I said OOOOOHHHNNNNNnnooooo because as everyone knows keys are now like little expensive High def, flat screen TVs and cost as much. They are also not water proof.

OMG!! 

I can't kneel down because my knees are like fine crystal about to break so I lay down flat on the pavement in an inch of water. I can't see because of the rain and the lightning is screwing up my vision, not to mention that it's LIGHTNING!!!! and you are not supposed to be laying in a lake while it is crashing all around you.

But I remembered that I am not a Snowflake so the lightning will only tickle me. 

I look under the car and can't see the keys. Then I run around to the other side of the car and lay on the ground. No keys. I now inch my way like a nudibranch to the rear tires and reach my hand under the tires but NO KEYS!!! 

Then I remembered that I have my cell phone in my pocket and my pocket is as wet as a 10 gallon pico reef that was just set up and is cycling, not with a live shrimp, but a dead one. ;Bucktooth
I got up and threw the phone in the car.

I opened the garage and got a big push broom and I am pulling water from under the car hoping they would somehow emerge, but no keys.

Now I am frantic and the lightning is getting closer. My life was flashing before my eyes and all I could think about was my poor horrified fish. How will they get along with out me. 

Now five minutes have gone by and I still can't find the keys. I know I couldn't have thrown them too far and they don't float so they have to be someplace. But where?

Finally I think to look in a place where I know they couldn't be. On top of the car.

Yep, sitting there right on top.

I quickly brought them in and took out the battery and now they are drying but I don't know if they will work. Time will tell. 

[Origami]

Good luck with your keys, Paul. They can take more than you might think. We were at a water park with extended family when the kids were young. I took a ride down one of those water slides (in a raft) but the keys dropped out of my pocket as I climbed out. Right into the drink they went. I pulled the battery, gave it a fresh water rinse (I didn't have RO/DI on hand - bad planning), and let it dry out. The key worked fine in the end.

[paul b]

My keys still work Tom.  But it was close. 

[Origami]

14 hours ago, paul b said:

My keys still work Tom.  But it was close. 

Glad to hear it.

[paul b]

 

It was a little windy on my beach walk this morning and it wasn't low tide so no collecting.  My house is up over that cliff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6UECkYV_Mc

[paul b]

Today is our annual Cousins pic nic about 60 miles from here on a beach with a shelter and electricity.   We have been doing this for about 45 years as my wife has a very big family.  Many of us old generation went to the big reef tank in the sky but there are plenty of Kids, Grand kids and Great Grand kids to take over.  Many of them I don't even know.

 

My whiteworm culture isn't doing so good as it was taken over by flies. (even though I feed them cultured yogurt) If I open the thing in my house I get a swarm of these tiny fruit fly looking things which I don't want in my house so they are outside now.  

 

There are still worms and yesterday I flooded them for an hour but apparently these flies or their larvae have SCUBA gear so they don't drown.

Now I am going to seal them and put them in my fridge to see if the worms can tolerate the cold better than the flies.

If that doesn't work I am going to have to throw it out and start a new culture. 

I hesitate to do that because I have had these worms for ten years and they evolved into much bigger and fatter creatures, much different then the skinny,  Girly worms you get in a culture.  I'm not sure if they are a different species or if they somehow got into steroids like Sylvester Stallone.  

 

Look at the difference in size from the early batch of worms and the worms now.
There were a lot of them, but they were wimpy.  Now they are fat like Chris Christie, (Who I kind of like) 

 

[paul b]

A few weeks ago I built a Nitrate De-nitrifer out of a calcium reactor that I had laying around.  I ran it for about 3 weeks and it turns 30 ppm of nitrate into zero in a few minutes.

 

Today it's raining and the thing was in my way on my workbench so I installed it.  I don't really have much of a nitrate problem but I felt like experimenting.  I doubt it will lower my nitrates much as they are now about 25 but I like putzing so it is what it is.

 

It's the thing with the yellow pellets.  I didn't use a calcium chamber for the effluent because it dumps into my reverse UG filter which is made out of dolomite so calcium shouldn't be needed.

If my tank crashes in a week or two, I was wrong.  

 

[Origami]

Sulfur denitrator? Blast from the past. Great to see some of the old stuff (from the 90's) re-introduced in the hobby.

 

Paul, didn't you play around with an anaerobic tube denitrator a few years back? As I recall, you had layers of tubing coiled inside of a PVC casing to help reduce nitrates. I remember Randy Holmes-Farley had written about a similar design 15 or more years ago.

[paul b]

I did build two of those tube denitrators.  I just threw them out when I moved here.  This thing reduces nitrates much faster.  I am not sure if it has bad effects as I don't have a lot of luck with chemical reactions but I can always turn it into a vacuum cleaner, apple corer or hood ornament for my Jeep. 

[paul b]

 Today is the day the pilgrims left Europe to come here and screw up this country and start religious freedom. Of course they started to burn people as witches, excommunicate them if they texted in church and if they caught them chewing gum on Sunday, they would tie them up and dunk them in ASW that was cycled with a live shrimp.   

They had their first Thanksgiving and invited the Native Americans (who they called Indians because they weren't politically correct like I am, but even the native Americans called themselves Indians, then they started baseball teams  ) 

The "Indians" showed them how to cook corn and turkey and we showed them how to get lung cancer by smoking. Actually I think they gave that to us. I am not sure but they didn't invent HMOs yet which is why there are no more Pilgrims. 
Then Bernie Sanders offered them free health insurance, college, diapers and paper clips which made all the people we left in Europe broke which caused Brixit. 

Here where I live we have quite a few Native Americans because Long Island was owned by them.
We gave them some Toyota parts along with a few eggplants and now they are required to live on a small reservation where they sell cigarettes and 8 track tape recorders.  

[paul b]

My tank is doing great.  My hippo tang didn't get ich, dropsy,  mononucleosis or anything else as some of the tang police said he would get if I didn't quarantine him (God Forbid)  He also never gets algae clips or nori.

 

My watchman gobies will spawn soon and my Janss pipefish is so healthy he does aerobics every morning.  I am really surprised that particular fish lived so long as they are supposed to be so delicate.

 

I want another pair of bluestriped pipefish as they lived out their life like they were supposed to and croak of old age which for them is only a few years.  I think they spawned themselves to death. 

 

My old Fireclown is about 28 years old and still spawning although I am surprised he is not tired of that yet.  I think those guys live into their 30s.

 

A few months ago I bought a quart of clams for bait.  I only went fishing once so I have been using them for the fish.

I am not sure how old those clams are, but I am not eating them and the fish ain't complaining.

My Copperband could probably eat the entire thing by himself.  I don't know how old he is, I barely know how old I am and if my birthday wasn't on Christmas, I wouldn't remember that.

These guys are also still doing well

 

 

 

[paul b]

[paul b]

Today we are going to this very calm, un occupied lagoon with some friends to relax.  If it's low tide I will try to collect some mud, amphipods, seaweed and maybe snails.

It's a beautiful day and we want to take advantage of it as long as the nice weather is around.

 

 

I had a little argument with my wife this morning, and we never fight.

 

She threw out our blender that we have had as one of our engagement gifts in 1973.

Yes, there was electricity then, and fire.

 

She bought a new blender which I am sure is made in China, Japan, Sri Lanka, India, Peru, Tunisia or someplace that is not in America.  I am sure they make great blenders in those countries and I think the local people should use them and be very proud.  But as an American, I care more about American people working.  Not that I want to see any body else starve, but my first priority is to my country.

 

My family all came from Sicily but I am not Sicilian, I am American.

 

The old blender was running just fine and I use it every week to make my wife's "Jumping Juice" that takes away her pain.

 

The new blender, I think it's a "Kitchen Aid" is 100% plastic and sounds like an outboard motor.  It may have been an outboard motor at one time.  It is harder to clean and it will probably last a couple of years and also probably has no parts you can fix after it croaks.

 

To Me it is sacrilege to throw out a good, working American appliance just to get a new, shiny red one that is not as good and will never last as long.

 

Of course I rescued it and will give it to the American Legion or some other American organization so that they can use it at their bar.

[paul b]

This weekend was pretty good. We went with another couple who have been our good friends for over 40 years to a very small town in Vermont called Poultney. Don't look on a map.

Our Daughter owns a vacation home there. Anyway we live on Long Island so we took the ferry to Bridgeport Connecticut.
This is the Port Jefferson/Bridgeport Conn. Ferry.

 

The ride is a little over an hour. But it's a nice ride and the weather was perfect. The ship crosses over the Long Island Sound where I did most of my boating.

 

After the ferry we drove almost 5 hours to the house which is on a mountain up a dirt road, a few miles from anything that resembles civilization. 

It's a really nice farm house.
They also have a couple of these, that we used to go up and around the mountain. Our friends also had one and he had to keep stopping every time his wife saw a wildflower she wanted.

 

That pond there is man made and is loaded with frogs, like millions of them. It was a stream and they dammed it up a little to make that pond. They used to stock it with trout and maybe Manta Rays but now there are only frogs and newts.

We couldn't make it all the way up the mountain like we normally do because one of the 17 bridges was out and looked like if a small horseshoe crab tip toed across it, it would collapse sending you about 5' down a small, rocky ravine.

 

You wouldn't croak, but that ATV wouldn't fare to well.

They have this swing next to the pond under the apple trees.

 

Coming down back to the house we noticed this cow. Being born in Brooklyn I don't know too much about cows except that they squeeze them to get milk. 

 

Also, being I went to high school and everything I noticed he was on the "road" and not a few feet away behind the "enclosure", which was a piece of wire about 18" off the ground, so I figured cows were not the smartest creatures. 

I told my Son N Laws Father who lives there about the cow. He called the caretaker, who is a close to 80 year old Lady who can hardly walk to go and rustle the cow back to where ever cows live.
She wasn't real happy about that but I can't write the "colorful" language she used here as my computer would catch fire. 

I am not sure how she was able to lift the cow the 18" over the wire to put her back either.

On Saturday they had the biggest event that they have in this town. I am fairly sure it is the only event they have in that town. It's a chili cook off where they all make chili and people vote on which is the best. You buy a cup for $7.00 and you can taste all the chili.

All the townspeople come to this, all 12 of them. I noticed a sign informing you of the rules on what you can put in the chili, and in big letters it read, "NO ROAD KILL OF ANY KIND" at this event. So I assumed at other events you can use that as it is all over the place. We saw (and smelled) Skunks, porcupines, possums, many racoons, deer, beavers, birds, and I swear one of them was an Emu.

The chili I assume was delicious but I didn't try it as I am sure there was something in it that would kill me.

They have a General Store there that is also the post office. It was built in 1730 and still has the horse hitching posts outside. They sell some ready made food but That sign about the road kill turned me off to that. 

WE got to the ferry an hour early and we tried to get on that earlier boat. They were not sure if they could fit us on, but they squeezed and that is my car, that red Jeep. I told them I would get on even if my back wheels were off the back.

 

On our way home, from the ferry I saw my next boat. 

 

[paul b]

The pipefish, possum wrasse, perchlet, mandarins, hawkfish and a few others are camera shy

 

https://youtu.be/wz78aIrFPqs

[paul b]

I found my "almost" complete Log book from 1971 to the 90s.  I see I was having trouble keeping corals but my Alk was 3 and my calcium was about 125   

 

I think I know the problem now.  

 

I also saw that I lost an awful lot of fish, but not from disease.  I really didn't know what I was doing and the food available was horrendous.  I had fish killing each other, I also used to remove all the dead bleached corals weekly to bleach so they were nice and white and during that fish would jump out or the residual bleach would kill them.  

 

My tank was "40 gallons" and I had, at the same time a French Angel, Moorish Idol and copperband along with a bunch of other fish. 

I would buy or get for free sick fish and try to cure them with Human burn ointment or human medications as there was nothing for fish. 

 

I really feel bad for all the fish  killed.   

 

I wrote it i free hand in pencil until about 1976, then I lost some pages but it turns up again typed on an Apple computer which was basically a typewriter as there was no internet.  

[paul b]

We just got back from Connecticut for a couple of days in a B&B for our 46th (I think) anniversary.

 

It poured the entire time.

 

We took the ferry there and it was fairly calm.  As I looked over the side at the sea, I saw this large fin slicing through the water.  I have been out there in the middle of the Long Island Sound many times but I never saw a large shark there.

 

I know a few weeks ago they reported a 12' Great White Shark there so I figured it was one of those.

Then as we got closer I saw a Sea Gull land right in front of it.  I figured the gull was going to be a small lunch for the shark.

 

Then I noticed the fin bending from side to side and I know shark fins don't do that as they are made out of aluminum and are very stiff.

 

All of a sudden this huge fish jumps completely out of the water and slaps down again.  It was maybe 4' or 5'  long and almost as high.

 

It was an Ocean Sunfish or Mola Mola.

It jumped three or four times and after every jump it would lay on it's side at the surface and the sea gull would stand on it and eat parasites off it's sides.

 

Our boat was moving pretty fast so I could only see this for about 30 seconds but it made my day.

I have only seen an ocean sunfish once or twice before but that was far out to sea.  This was about 8 miles out.

Sunfish are the largest bony fish and can reach over 2,000 lbs. or as much as some of my old girlfriends. 

 

Very cool.

 

Coming home it was so windy that they cancelled our ferry due to high winds and rain.   I think the Captain noticed there were some Sissy, Girly Men Snowflakes on line and figured they would get the horrors and croak.

This ferry is a big boat holding maybe 100 or more cars.

 

We drove for an hour to Bridgeport Conn. and got a different ferry to Long Island so we didn't do to bad.

 

I got good news when I got home and found out my book, "The Avant-Garde Marine Aquarist" is back in print on Amazon so I ordered  myself some copies in case I forgot what I wrote. 

[paul b]

Just in case anyone believes I am going to get wealthy beyond my wildest dreams with this book, (and movie) I would like you to know that 100% of any profits from this book will be donated to MS
(Multiple Sclerosis) research in my wife's name.

She has had the disease for 20 years and is not really doing very well with it as MS is so far a disease that can't be cured.

Besides, my wildest dreams involves a flounder, two Supermodels, a bowling ball and a door handle from a 1967 Oldsmobile Cutlass.

[paul b]

At 6:30 this morning the sun just stated to come out and I figured i would go for a bicycle ride.  Loosen up the stiff muscles a little.

 

There is a little hill next to a pond here and I started cruising down the hill.

 

All of a sudden I see this young deer right in front of me not moving.  As I got closer and closer I could tell she had that 

"Geezer in the Headlights" look.

 

Just before I crashed into her she took off.  She was running right next to me for a while and as she looked over at me I could tell she was thinking  "Wow this Old Coot can go pretty fast"    

 

But I don't think deer know much about bicycles going down hill.

This isn't her, maybe her sister.

 

[paul b]

This blue sponge that grows on virtually every spare piece of real estate in my tank is really looking nice.  It is "Bluer" that it used to be for some reason.  I think it is due to the clams I have been feeding and all the clam juice associated with it.

 

The stuff grows a little to fast and I do have to trim it about every month or so but it is a great water filter.

I got a small piece of it many years ago but it really took off.  It's almost like a very cheap coral and I like it a lot.

 

I do throw a lot of it out when I trim it because i don't know what to do with it and I don't know anyone locally with a salt tank.

I also think it is photosynthetic which is weird as sponges are not usually sensitive to light except to hide from it. 

If it gets shaded because something grows over it, it turns very light, almost white.

 

[paul b]

This morning I am washing my worms. My neighbors think I'm nuts and that my PTSD got worse.
My culture of white worms is very old, maybe 10 years and there are tiny flies hatching in there. More flies than worms so it, of course is outside.

I am going to leave them flooded for 24 hours because I know the worms can live submerged for five days in salt water, but I am hoping the fly larvae can't SCUBA dive for long.

I don't want to order a new culture because these are very big for some reason, much larger than the original batch.
I think they are Godzilla Larvae.