47 year old tank

[Origami]

Welcome to the world of 3D printing, Paul. I've been building things on and off for several years now using FDM 3D printing. Haven't yet brought myself to mess with the resin yet. Last week, I just saw that some researchers had developed a resin-based instant 3D printer - one that printed the whole device in one shot rather than building it up layer by layer. It was limited to objects with very small volume, though. (Less than a half-inch cube, I think.) Pretty neat to think about, though.

[paul b]

That is cool.  Those things I made took 6 hours to make.  I do them at night so they are printed when I get up.

Resin is nasty stuff and it gives me an instant headache so I wear the supplied carbon masks.  And you have to clean out all the resin after it is finished so it is a little process.

 

On another note:

 

Yesterday we were at an art gallery where my SteamPunk "Art" pieces are displayed along with other artists and there was a photographer there because it was a huge crowd that could barely fit in the small gallery.

 

The photographer noticed my pieces and apparently liked them so she took pictures of myself and my wife in front of one of them for "Dan's Papers".

 

Dan's Papers is the largest free paper on Long Island NY and covers all of eastern Long Island .  About 2,000,000 people.  It is in every restaurant, bar, supermarket, card store, laundromat and lfs.  

 

So they tell me that this Thursday I will be in there.  Christie Brinkley I am sure gets that paper so I am sure she will want me to make her a piece.   OK, Maybe not. 

 

 

[paul b]

In a little over a week my reef will have reached 49 years old.  Maybe I will change the water. 

[treesprite]

When you get to year 50, you have to invite us all to a party.

[paul b]

When it gets to fifty, you have to invite "me" to a party. 

[paul b]

OOOOOOOhhhhhhNNNNNoooooo.  My Fireclown has cataracts.

His eyes are also a little cloudy.

I think it's because he constantly spawns, like every day and it is affecting his eyes.

 

He is about 29 years old but I lost his birth certificate. 

His mate is only about 21 or so but I could be off by 4 or 5 years because I got her when I bought my last pair of socks, and I don't remember that either. 

 

[paul b]

Here is something I just finished.  It has the most movement yet.

 

https://studio.youtube.com/video/Q4pO2nwV4gA/edit

 

 

 

[paul b]

Last week I put in another Sunburst Anthius and I haven't seen hyde nor hair of him.  I searched every day behind and under the rocks even at night with a flashlight and still couldn't find him.

I looked at the screens on the powerheads and all over under the tank on the floor.  Still couldn't find him.

 

That is until now.  I fed a bunch of live white worms and he came out to say hello.  I don't know where he was hiding but I have a lot of fish that do that.  Probably half my fish I rarely see.

But this one is happy and healthy and I will get another one this Sunday I hope.  Really nice fish.

 

[ImGoingCoastal]

What an awesome fish!

Sent from my SM-G970U1 using Tapatalk

[paul b]

Tonight I got the first good look at one of my Gecko Gobies. They have been in my tank over a year and I have never seen the entire fish as they are always hiding in a cave where they live.
I have an enormous supply of white worms now and I shoot a bunch in the back of the tank. I looked through the algae overgrown back glass and saw one of them sucking up worms.

They are one of the best looking fish I have ever seen, I just wish they would come out at least every 6 months or so.

[paul b]

I just went to an LFS here who promised me copperbands, male mandarin, male bluestripe pipefish etc and You know what I got?  Nothing.  Zippo.

 

He had tangs, damsels, very common, boring stuff that everyone has.

 

Then a friend of mine told me of a brand new store near my wife's Doctor so we went there.

The place is very new and clean.  A beautiful store that I would like to live in, but the same boring stuff.

This place is also more expensive but not out of sight.

 

He charges $49.00 for a copperband (if he had one) and the other guy charges $29.00 (if he had them)

 

This place also gets in fish every 3 weeks which is weird, but they quarantine them for 2 weeks before they sell them.

I asked the Mgr. if I could get the fish before he quarantines them.  I will even pay more for them.  They are going to let me know by E Mail so I will see how that works out. 

[sethsolomon]

Yah its kinda sad that most shops only bring in the basic bread and butter fish. they never bring in the oddities that they may sit on a week longer than other things.   I don't know how far away you are from NY Aquatics  in Yonkers, but they seem to always have some bizarre oddities more than most sellers. 

[paul b]

I am now pretty from Yonkers so I won't be going there.  I lost my connection who used to order things for me and I am at the mercy of the LFSs who don't ever order what I want.

It's almost impossible to get pipefish except for stripped pipes which don't live long and are to common.

 

This hobby is going down to the dumps unless you want common, run of the mill stuff, which I don't.

[paul b]

29 year old Fireclown with eggs.

 

My new guy.

[paul b]

I took another video.  About half of the fish are hiding but I have a lot of those types of fish.  Not seen here is a

Hippo tang, bluestripe pipefish, mandarin, 2nd sunburst anthius, 2nd possum wrasse, 2nd watchman gobi, 2 gecko gobies, 2 rainsford gobies, green clown gobi, 2nd striped cardinal, 5 fish that I have no idea what they are and an arrow crab.

 

I took this to show a natural tank.  You can see tufts of hair algae, cyano, aiptasia, asternia stars, dead corals and Godzilla larvae.

The 29 year old fire clowns are tending their eggs as they lay them every few days.

 

Tank now is all NSW taken right from the surf with nothing added and nothing has ever been quarantined, medicated, dipped, de-wormed or anything else.

 

https://studio.youtube.com/video/-5sRqSdej1c/edit

[paul b]

In case that video doesn't open. 

 

 

https://youtu.be/-5sRqSdej1c

[paul b]

New Lamp

 

This one only took a couple of hours.

[paul b]

My tank is doing great but I have about 2,372 aiptasia.  I guess my copperband was eating them, who knew?

 

I have been tying to get a new copperband and they are normally very common but for the last couple of weeks I have not been able to get one.

 

3 LFSs promised me last week that they will have them today, so tomorrow I am going on a quest.

I am getting my taxes done tomorrow and that is about 40 miles west of here so I will try some stores there.

 

I hate it when I can't even get a common fish.  If I find some I may get two of them.

 

I gave up trying to get the types of fish I really want as all stores only stock silly common fish like tangs and some wrasses.

 

I have one Mother of all aiptasia about 4" tall and If I can find a spare tank I would like to keep that one for study as I never seen one that big.  Nice looking animal.  

[paul b]

I am very happy with my tank now.  I have quite a lot of the fish I prefer to keep which are all smaller, odder and a little more difficult to get like the Janss Pipefish.

I am going to try to list the fish but I am not near the tank.

 

Copperband

Hippo Tang

2 Rainsford Gobies

2 Possum Wrasses

2 Sunburst Anthius

2 Fireclowns

Perchlet

Fang Tooth Blenny

2 stripped cardinals

Black cardinal?

Janss Pipefish

Bluestripe Pipefish

Mandarin

Scooter Dragonette

Purple Psudo

2- 6 line wrasses

Yellow wrasse

some kind of stripped wrasse

2 Gecko Gobies

 

Red something and 5 or 6 other fish that I can't remember. 

 

[paul b]

 Now we live out east on Long Island and it is not very populated out here.  No one is worried about Lyme Disease any more from ticks so I am sure the ticks feel bad.

 

I baked some muffins this morning and put coffee in a thermos and we took it down to the beach to have breakfast.  We stayed in the car because it is 32 degrees and very windy.  But it was nice to watch the waves crashing on the rocks while we ate.

 

Then we took a ride out east and discovered some roads that led to the sea and a park we never knew was here.

I also found a lagoon where I may be able to collect amphipods but I am not sure if a road goes there.  I can go by boat but my boat is on the other side of the north fork of Long Island and I can't really get there from here but I can put my inflatable boat back there and find the place. 

 

My fish eating some live white worms.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhWLAxI2I8k

[paul b]

In these tough times My wife and I have been trying to get innovative and to do things that don't involve other people, or at least not other people that have to get to close.

This week we played a few Scrabble and Monopoly games that I had to dig out of mothballs.
We do a crossword puzzle at night and we also have a WII game, which is on the TV and we can play golf
(I hate golf), tennis, boat racing and a few others.

I touched up some paint that my wife has been telling me to do for a while. 

We take a walk or I ride my bicycle.
I have hobbies and a nice workshop/Man cave so I could occupy myself forever but my wife can't. Her hobbies all involve exercise, mostly in a gym which of course are closed now.

I don't want to leave her alone to much because she is already to depressed that she can't do any of her things (her MS medication increases depression) and now she has a big leg brace which she hates. But in the scope of things, it's better than what a lot of people have to endure.

All in All the people around here all seem happy and are coping.
WE were donating food (bagels) to a hospital until our Daughter yelled at us to stay home so now all we can do is call a restaurant and have them deliver it to them.

I don't know if we will do that today. The "older" people here are all living with someone so they are taken care of.

I will see how many times I can wash my car today and clean the glass on my tank. My fish are getting mad at me as they are tired of looking at my face. 
But it's the entire world which doesn't make it sound any better.

Early in the morning I always turn on the TV to see if the thing peaked yet, and as we know, it has not. Here in New York our hospitals are filling up and they have tents in the parking lot for the overflow.

Thankfully the children aren't affected as much. Our Grand Kids left Manhattan and are in Vermont on top of a mountain far away from anyone except cows. Thank God for Skype.

It should peak soon (we hope) and I hope everyone stays safe and healthy,

[Origami]

Stay safe, Paul. Your daughter and me have something in common, we both got on our folks about going about business-as-usual in these times. My father would be especially vulnerable as he has a weak heart and would almost certainly pass from this if he were exposed and infected - and all it would take is a brief encounter with somebody who didn't even know they were infected - maybe a checker at the grocery, or another consumer standing in line at the pharmacy. Mom would have a rough time of it, too. Hang in there - you're in the hotbed of this thing and I fear that my folks, in Southern California, will see it get still worse in the coming weeks.

[paul b]

Tom we are being very careful, we open mail outside, then sterilize.  We keep a respectable distance from everyone and I go to the supermarket at 6:00am when it opens and there is almost no one there.  I made sterilizing wipes from 93% alcohol and paper towels in a tupperwear box and use that on my hands, door handles etc.

[paul b]

This is a shot through the back of my tank after I scrapped it clean.  It's a mass of sponges.

 

I also got two of these guys there, very hard to photograph.

 

[paul b]

I took a couple of pictures of the back of my tank..  Yes, I am really bored today, and it's raining.