Everything I know, in case I forget as I am getting old

[paul b]

I have theories about just about everything and unfortunately, most of them are probably to radical, simple, inane, old school, or complicated for many people to understand, comprehend, agree with or even bother to read, so if you are one of "Those" people, don't read any further, just go and watch TV, I think there is a re run of the Opera show where she gives away Cadillac's to homeless cats.

 

Now I am far from the God of fish tanks, corals (SPS, LPS, leathers, suede's, velour's or velvet)

 

I am however the God of UG filters and maybe bald heads which I have always aspired to be famous for. In my many years of reading, diving and learning I have noticed a few things. Much, or most of what we do or want to do with regard to this hobby is either wrong, almost wrong or even dangerous, but what we can all agree on is that it is expensive. I will get to that as I feel it is a very cheap hobby. I just may be rich and this money is just a drop in the bucket or else I am poor, or to cheap to spend anything so I can feed my family. The truth is that I am neither, I am like most of us, in the middle, in the "fusion zone" as I like to refer to it as. I would also like to say imperically that I do not have the nicest tank on here, probably far from it, but it ain't to bad either

 

I am getting old (er) and in a few years I am sure I will start forgetting many of the things I learned through trial and error, the things I picked up in the 50s 60s and 70s that is all but forgotten about now as parchment paper degrades over time. I am fortunately still sharp as a tack, OK maybe a slightly duller tack, but a tack none the less, OK a finishing nail, not one of those aluminum Home Depot finishing nails, a good steel one from an American hardware store, a store that was started in the 40s after the big one.

 

Much of the things I do to my tank I can not print as I am sure I would be put away. Things like using Clorox in NSW to eliminate red tide or heating the water to kill paracites without affecting the parameters. Curing PopEye in a few seconds with a hypodermic needle or cleaning a fish of ich, flukes or flounders in a day. I won't even mention putting in copper pennies before they invented liquid copper. These are things I have posted in the past with regret because of the flood of hate mail. OK, maybe not a flood, one or two E mails, but to me that is a deluge. As I said in the beginning, some of you should be watching Opera and not reading this, I think she is just about to give away one of those cadillac's.

 

I mentioned a few times that I have no need for a quarantine, or hospital tank, Whoooa, I was bombarded after that. The Idea that I let all my fish become sick, infected with all sorts of things such as crypocaryn, velvet, black ich, jaundice, hemorrhoids or psorisis. I usually say that if you don't have my tank, maybe you should quarantine. But of course I can't leave that alone although I do try. I think that in "some" instances, paracites are good. OK I said it. Now will you please stop reading as I am only wrighting this now because I am bored.

 

It seems to me, and I also posted this numerous times, that so many people, maybe even the majority of people have problems with things like diseases (or those sweat stains in your armpits) You can use things like Priazo, copper, KicK Ick, (Oh God) or any number of things. I myself am 65 years old and the only thing I take is fish oil. I also give it to my fish but that is not what this is about. Ok, it is a little about that, but only a little. Fish in the sea probably never get sick. Why is that? No it is not that they have free access to Priazo from Obamacare. They also don't get eaten right away if they get a few paracites. They don't get sick because of their immune system. Their immune system works better than ours does. It makes sence as they have been around longer than us and their immune system has to work in the water. The water that they live in contains everything that ever was, including dinosaur poop, Wash water from Columbus underware, and Amelia Airheart. No, Literally, Amelia Airheart. Our piddly immune system only has to protect us from airborn stuff like excess gas from those chili houses in Texas and maybe some simple viruses. Diseases can get around much easier in water than in air so a fish immune system has evolved for that task. In the sea, fish eat live, "whole" food such as fry, fish eggs, shrimp, seaweed or Happy Meals. Most fish don't spit out the guts, heads, scales, fish hooks or bones. In many tanks they have to do with pellets, flakes dried nori, cardboard, dried ants or some frozen concoction. (in the 50s tropical fish food was dried ants, no, really) Many of the frozen foods are very good but they are not live food which is vastly different. Flakes and pellets have a purpose, I use them to feed my worms, but it is live, or at least frozen "whole" food (with the guts) that will keep a fishes immune system up to where it can fight off things including paracites and sea gulls. You can tell if this is working if the fish is spawning or making spawning attempts to spawn as only fish in excellent health will spawn. I personally have never seen a fish that was spawning afflicted with any disease but some people tell me that is not true. I have a word I like to call those people, and that word is "wrong". OK maybe one fish got sick while it was spawning, he don't count. But anyway, this post was not supposed to be about immune systems because I have posted that to death and if you ever had a fish get sick with any disease, it is because it's immune system did not protect it and unfortunately, that is our fault, not the fish, the dealer or the old lady on the corner who collects tin cans and cats.

 

Thats enough about food and immune systems. As I said, I am posting this because I know, in time I will forget, and then, even if no one else reads this (and I am quite certain only me and the night watchman at the OTB office will see it) I may again come across it in 10 or 15 years in my nursing home, and in my stupor, I may remember some of it and hopefully someone will at least get me a goldfish to occupy my time. A goldfish and maybe a picture of a Supermodel.

 

I see people use all sorts of chemicals to control things that our bacteria are supposed to do for us for free. Things like Rowaphos, Rowanda, Rotweilder or whatever it is called. I am not sure why you would need it but I would imagine if you need those silly Bio-pellets in a reactor you would also need that. I never used any of it so I am sure I am doing something wrong. I guess my bacteria don't mind doing what they are paid to do. Of course i also collect bacteria as I feel that if you don't do that (and I realize one or two people don't live near the sea) the only bacteria in your tank is that stuff in your dealer's tank and all he has is the stuff from his wholesaler and all he has is the stuff in the shipping water that is mixed with bilge water from some canoe that also has some of columbus wash water and possably ear wax from Jimmy Hoffa. I hear all the time that people get the horrors because their nitrate measured 12 or 15. I don't think my nitrate was ever that low, not that I have a test kit but I do get it tested just so I can write these rediculous threads. My nitrate is now about 40, it could be 50 but even if it was 680, I really don't care because if it was to high, the corals would let me know right away. I feel the same about phosphate, anthrax and calcium. but I do add calcium in the form of driveway ice melter at a cost of about $10.00 a year so I don't want to waste it. I also use baking soda for alk, I think that costs about 99cents if I get it on sale and once a year or so I add some Epsom Salts after I soak my feet in it. Maybe that also adds beneficial bacteria, I can't be sure. (that expensive calcium you buy is driveway ice melter and baking soda)

 

Then we have nusience algae. It grows on every healthy reef and it is not a nusience there, but in our tanks it sometimes is. I don't want it growing on my corals although in the past my tank has looked like a produce stand. I still have a slight amount but just as much as I want. The first thing people ask when they hear about an algae problem is "what are your parameters?" Then they all say "change the water" Does that ever work? No, but people still change massive amounts of water every day in the hope of eliminating a natural substance that has nothing to do with changing water but what do I know? Stores have to make money also so changing water is good. It won't do anything for algae growth except maybe make it grow faster but we keep doing it for lack of a better "cure". If you take RO/DI water and put it in the sun, and an ant dies in it from exhaustion after doing the macarana, it will grow algae. Try it. New tanks with all brand new water grow the most algae, I wonder why? Maybe algae can grow with just a tiny smidgeon of nutrients, but wait a minute, there is also algae in the tissues in the coral so if we eliminate all the nutrients (like that was even possable) we may also kill the corals. OMG, it is an unfixable connundrum, like a paradox. I love paradoxes. I really don't know why algae sometimes grows and sometimes it doesn't but you know something? No one else knows either. We think we know, like we know all about paracites, Obamacare and global warming, but we don't. Some day we will know everything and I hope that day never comes but for now we don't. I bet the Neanderthals thought they knew everything until they were taken over by Liberals. If you have a tank long enough you will see cycles of all sorts of different, colorful and annoying algae's. Most tanks don't have a long enough lifespan to notice these things but I do. Every few years my tank would get an outbreak of something even if I didn't change anything. I think the next outbreak may be Brocclirabe, onions or tent catterpillars. I stopped those cycles a few years ago by installing an algae trough but an algae filter would do the same thing. Now I really don't care what causes nusience algae as it will only grow where I want it to grow and I realize I can't completely stop it as that would be unhealthy. After all it grows everywhere and if it didn't what are all those urchins, slugs, snails, rabbitfish, chitens, sea hares and tangs eating?

 

If we really knew what caused algae, ich or cyano don't you think we would have eliminated it 43 years ago when the salt water hobby started? I think it was on a Tuesday about 1:00-1:30 in the afternoon. I mean, Really! But alas. We will still continue to change massive amounts of water, increase circulation, cultivate a clean up crew, buy newer light bulbs, vacuum our substraits, add magnesium and look at pictures of Supermodels, but we will also still have hair algae, cyano and ich. I can not eliminate any of those things but I have found a natural way to allow them to live side by side in my tank, with my healthy, spawning fish and corals while at the same time changing a modest amount of water and not adding one cent of manufactured chemicals "and" having fish living happily for their natural lifespan that is sometimes older than Myley Cyrus. Actually all of my fish are older than her but that isn't saying much.

 

I said before that paracites "may" be healthy for our fish. Of course the fish won't think so, so don't ask them. But I remember after I got drafted and was going to Viet Nam, they inoculated me with everything you could imagine. 6 shots at a time in each arm. Plague, jungle fever, malaria, diptheria, cholera, parot fever, jaundice and Play Doh. I didn't get any of those things. Those vaccines were made out of weak or dead disease organisms. We can't get weak or dead paracites but live healthy paracites work even better. Yes, they may kill our fish, but if they don't, our fish will become immune from those paracites. Why, you ask. I have no freekin Idea. What do I look like? A researcher? No, i am an electrician but a very good one. I also have been keeping fish for 60 years so if you find someone who has been keeping fish longer than that, don't ask him anything as he is probably senile and will just snot and drool on you. I do remember that the Vietnamese people didn't get malaria, but I had to take a pill every day. When I got home my wife and I went to mexico. Big mistake. I never get sick but in Mexico, both me and her ended up in the hospital. Do you who who else was in that hospital with Montizuma"s revenge? Americans thats who, not Mexicans because their immune system was used to paracites in the water. That is why i don't have to have a quarantine tank. I know, all 4 of the people reading this are saying that my tank is a time bomb and will crash any time now. Maybe it will, but it has had one heck of a run.

 

I run a reverse UG filter, virtually unknown by anyone under 57 years old. People think it is old school. Well it is not. Regular UG filters are old school but not reverse UG filters. DSBs are much older (I think). Speaking of old school, the school I went to was heated by coal. There was this old guy (he was probably 30) who used to shovel coal to heat the school. And when the teacher would send us to empty the waste paper basket, we would go down to the basement and give it to that guy who would throw it into the furnace. But I digress.

 

If I have any more ideas, I will post them. But in the meantime, if you have any colorful, connotations, cures, quatations or comments, I would be extreamly happy to hear them.

 

I just came back from my boat and had a few Harvey Wallbangers and Long Island Ice teas so I will most likely forget what I wrote in a few minutes. But of course, that could be senility.

[dave w]

Paul B, first let me say again how much I enjoy your writing.  It is both off the cuff and humorous and appears very genuine.  

 

I also have had saltwater fish tanks longer than some WAMAS people have been alive though never a continuous tank like you.  Whenever I had a tank leak or a meltdown I abandoned the hobby for 5 years because it disappointed me so much to see all the fish die.  I agree with you that at least three quarters of the 200 additives and chemicals sold by a fish store are not necessary for a healthy tank but are meant to take money from the pocket of a beginning fish keeper.  The healthiest tanks come from people with good experience who pay close attention.   And your experience with constant use of live foods for your tank only makes good sense to me.  Fresh fats and vitamins give fish a complete diet like nature does.  No amount of dried food is as good as healthy live food.

 

I have a different opinion regarding quarantine.  Most of us don't have high quality tanks like yours.  Our new fish introductions have gone through a stressful time of collection (maybe with drugs), transport in a hot boat, dumping into a holding tank and a long period of starvation through the shipping and distribution process.  So my personal opinion is that there is a good chance that disease has had an opportunity to get ahead of the fish's immune system and quarantine allows us to fatten the fish back up so tankmates have a harder time killing it during the acclimitization period.  

 

That said, I think you have a lot to add to the hobby and I put a lot of faith in your observations.  And it's okay to not have the same views on quarantine or something else.  Keep up your valuable observations and your humorous view on things.    

[paul b]

I think quarantining is fine, but while you are  at it, get the fish into breeding condition which is the normal condition for fish and after you put them in your tank, they will become immune from everything just in case your quarantine tank has a minor failure and a few paracites get it.  I can't quarantine because of all the amphipods and mud I add from the sea every few weeks.

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

I want to hear about the Clorox and water heating!

[matt]

I want to hear about the Clorox and water heating!

+1 that struck me as interesting as well...but I read the whole thing Paul. And like Dave I appreciate your writing style...humour or senility seems to be working for it...either way it makes me chuckle and think...the best way to learn :-)

[paul b]

Piper, I also didn't invent the Clorox or the heating, that was Robert Straughn, the Father of salt water ish keeping.  If a tank is just a wasteland of paracites, dead animals and diseases you can save the water by just adding a cup of Regular Clorox to 50 gallons and wait a couple of days.  Then add twice the amount of chlorine remover and airate for a few days.  The Clorox evaporates as it is only chlorine gas in water and it leaves nothing in the water.  My reef that I have now was treated like this 2 or 3 times in the beginning when everything including paracites had paracites and copper was not yet invented.   That water is still in my tank.   It must be "regular" chlorine bleach or you will kill anything you put in the tank.  I have heard lately that the Chlorox method may promote algae because of chlorimines but I am not sure one way or the other.

The heat treatment is easier.  Just throw some heaters in there until the water is about 100 degrees, of course with no animals in there unless you want chowder.  After a day or two, cool off the water and all the paracites should be dead and the bacteria should still be alive.  I have used that treatment once with great results.  These "natural" methods are not used any more because they are free so how could anything that is free work?  Adding chemicals with unknown consequences just sounds more high tech.

I will now get all sorts of mail telling me how those methods can not possibly work.  So don't use them or at least don't complain if you do.  My Mother was born in 1910 and in those days there was no cars.  When she got sick, her Mother would make her sleep in a barn with the horses because they thought the scent of horse poop would cure you.  I don't know if that is true but she lived to 99 years old and never even took an aspirin.

[Rob A]

Now I want some chowder.

[DuffyGeos]

So now I just need to find some horse poop next time my kids get sick. I can get the hay, and will just use the garage. Don't tell anyone.

 

Love your ramblings..... I remember my UG filter on my system in 76'. Don't think I ran it in reverse.

[paul b]

 

..... I remember my UG filter on my system in 76'. Don't think I ran it in reverse.  

 

 

 

 

        

That is why you still don't have that tank.  Many people use a DSB, I think that is the stupidest invention we have in this hobby.  A sand bed that you are not allowed to touch.  That's like if you were married to a Supermodel and you couldn't touch her.

[DuffyGeos]

That is why you still don't have that tank.  Many people use a DSB, I think that is the stupidest invention we have in this hobby.  A sand bed that you are not allowed to touch.  That's like if you were married to a Supermodel and you couldn't touch her.

The reason I don't have the tank is that I went into high school a couple years later and spent all my time chasing girls trying to land a supermodel so I could touch her. Tanks took a back seat for a while.

[paul b]

I also spent all of my time chasing girls and I did marry a Supermodel.  Chasing girls is a noble profession as I love girls.  If I was born a girl I would spend all my time looking at myself, that is if I was a good looking girl.  If I wasn't to good looking I would have a nice personality.

I used to drive around in my cool looking baby blue Bonneville trying to pick up girls to take to the beach and I usually ended up with one as I wasn't a perv or anything.

I can't believe this married a lug nut like me.  

 

 

And 40 years later she still seems to like me. 

 

Edited June 26, 2014 by paul b

[Crob5965]

NIce Paul, I always enjoy reading your posts, I am still pretty new at the SW deal but I have kept and bred FW fish since I was 7, much like yourself I ignored a lot of what people said about FW do's and dont's and always had beautiful looking health fish and plants. in the 2 years I have been keeping SW fish I have probably killed more fish than over 20years of  FW lol, so I tend to listen to others a little more now, there are definitely some corners that can be cut in this hobby, but I am slowly learning what those are and where my $ is best spent, I always look forward to your posts they are always insightful.

 

p.s. I'm still waiting to come home to a pile of smoldering ashes because I bought Evergrow LED's which according to 90% of the forums out there should be happening any day now, maybe one of the prerequisites for the pending fire is that I get great coral growth and coloration lol, i'll keep you posted

 

as always thanks for sharing 

[paul b]

 

 I always enjoy reading your posts

So do I as I forget them as soon as I write them and I can go back ten minutes later and try to learn something from them.  But then I start to disagree with some of it and I can't sleep.  It is frustrating.

 

I didn't have to ignore what people said because there were no people with salt water to give me any advice.

Edited June 27, 2014 by paul b

[paul b]

 As to sickness and medications as it relates to fish, this hobby is in the dark ages. We need to turn on the light, it's like human medicine was in the 1800s. At that time we used to quarantine people because we didn't know about immunity. I had an Uncle who got run over by a horse and buggy in lower Manhattan and although his injuries were not to bad, he died of "lock Jaw" which we now call tetanus. We don't die from that any longer because those of us who are not "Jabonies" get a tetna shot every so often that protects us. (Most of us don't get run over by horses and buggies either) Years ago many people died from small cuts and in those days, instead of sitting in front of a computer, they were chopping wood, skinning animals, digging for gold, or doing the macarana. The really old people were still doing the Freddy or The Mashed Potatoes, but lets not dwell on that.

It seems to my simple brain that all we need is a weakened paracite in a vaccine that we could add to food every few weeks to allow the immune system of fish to recognize the paracite and make antibodies for it. If I was 20 years younger I would try to do it myself as it would be a little time consuming but not very hard. That would be a natural method that would force the fish to protect itself from paracites instead of using poisons to cure them. Not getting sick is so much easier and safer than waiting to get sick, then finding some serum to take that will poison the fish almost as much as it poisons the paracite.

It's like cancer drugs. Many people just opt to die rather than go through chemo and radiation as that makes you sicker than the original disease. Some day we will have a cancer vaccine and an ich vaccine. I hope the cancer one comes first because I lost plenty of friends to cancer but not to many from ich.

Ich is also a simple thing to work with as we can see the paracite with a low power microscope and don't need expensive things like electron microscopes, hubble telescopes etc. 

[dave w]

PaulB,

 

I like many of your points about parasite treatment and the "dark ages".  But the internet has supercharged this hobby from the dark ages of 20 years ago into a collection of worldwide contributors from dozens of related fields.  If you propose a chlorox treatment today you'd have people chime in who have used that method for 10 years in hatcheries or who are chemists or algae biologists. Many would agree with you but more important, those that don't wouldn't be disagreeing from superstition, they'd be talking from real life experiences in a related field.   There is more room for unconventional treatment methods today than ever before, it's just that beginners who buy the chemicals don't know of their internet resources yet.  But they learn soon enough because it's free to read forums and very expensive to buy new fish.  

 

When I first started keeping saltwater fish in 1984 it was normal to see football sized showfish in a 55 gallon tank of dead corals, my how times have changed.  Today we have refugiums, algae filters, live rock biofilters, live food, lots of light and water movement and many more sustainable species in our tanks. I enjoy your unconventional methods because they relate back to pure biology, but the hobby is coming closer to agreeing with your experiences than in being different from them.

 

And to joke about your supermodel wife, who are WE to pass judgement on HER punishment (of a happy lifetime with you)?  None of us know what she did in a prior life to deserve this!

 

Your experiences in aquarium keeping are well founded and genuine.  Add in the fact that you are a funny writer and your contributions are a great benefit to all of us reefkeepers.  I enjoy reading your posts.

[paul b]

 

 Add in the fact that you are a funny writer and your contributions are a great benefit to all of us reefkeepers

There is no room in this serious and austere hobby for humor.  

[paul b]

Here are some sights at the tide pool where I collect and just hang out.  You kind of need a boat to get here and there is never anyone here.  I have been going here for most of my life and I anchor just off here every weekend to party which is where we were an hour ago.
Mud snails I could collect by the millions

I love to put rocks covered in barnacles in my tank as I feel they look so natural.  I can also collect these all day.

These invasive Japanese shore crabs used to be all over the place with a few under virtually every rock but not to many this year which is a good thing.

[elbowdeep88]

Have you ever tried those mud snails in your tank?

[paul b]

I have been keeping those mud snails since the 60s.  They are in my tank now and always have been.  They live well in a tropical tank as they are very stupid creatures and don't even know they are temperate animals.  Their tide pool goes from almost fresh to salt twice a day and the temperature regularly goes from about 67 degrees to about 90  as the tide ebbs leaving them on the sun baked mud as you see them in the that picture above.  At high tide the water here is 8' deep.  I am going back there today.

[elbowdeep88]

Is that Ilyanassa obsoleta? The "black nassarius" snail that supposedly doesn't do well in tropical tanks? I am appreciative of your first hand account/experience with these.

 

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-11/mg/

[paul b]

That's them.  I know what is written about them but I have been keeping them forever and never saw any problems with them.  They will eat just about anything from cardboard to dead worms but I have never saw them go on a coral as they prefer the glass.  They are so common that I could replace them every year.  I sent some to Albert Thiel about 8 months ago and they are still doing well.

[paul b]

 

The mud that those mud snails are living on is the same mud that I "dose" to my reef a few times a year as I feel the tank needs new bacteria because of what I wrote in my opening rant.  I realize that many people feel their tanks are sterile like a hospital and wouldn't dream of putting mud in their tank.  I like to call those people Sissies.  It's mud, it's good for you and them.   Mud is what makes the world go around.  If God never makes a mistake, why would he make the earth out of mud?

God may have had a reef tank, maybe Noah's flood was an experiment to see if he liked it.  And if he did, I bet he dosed it with mud as he knows bacteria are what makes the world go around.  Bacteria and Victoria Secret Supermodels.  Girls with nice personalities also.   as I like all of them, almost as much as I like mud snails.

 

Speaking of hospitals, once about 20 years ago I was supposed to work in an operating room in Samaritan hospital in Manhattan and the chief Dr. told me to wait for him outside the operating room.  So I was standing there with the white gown, booties and paper hat on looking like Dr Kildare. ( If you are under fifty just put in any doctor's name, maybe Dr. Oz) Anyway I was looking in at the operation and they had this girl on the table and most of her insides were next to her.  I am not sure what they were operating on but she didn't seem to have pop eye or ich.  So I am standing there in this doctors gown with a tool belt on.  I had a hammer, hack saw, pliers, drill, tape, the whole nine yards as I am a construction electrician.

They wheel this girl in on a gurney and put her next to me and she was already kind of wasted on whatever it is they put you to sleep with.  I feel this pulling on my gown and I see it is her.  She said "Doctor, how long is my surgery and will I be OK?"  I told her it was a piece of cake and she would be dancing in the morning.  I hope she was fine but If they were going to do to her like that woman they had on the table, I doubt she was dancing for a while.  Not the Macarena anyway.

 

As I read these forums I am amazed with how much I disagree with.  I guess I used to think the way a lot of noobs think but I evolved, or maybe just forgot.  There are so many practices and worries that I find so silly.  Many people worry about the smallest things.  How many times do you read that someone found a small tuft of hair algae?  I have tufts of the stuff all over the place, that is a good sigh because if your tank can't even grow a little hair algae, something is wrong.

Hair algae, flatworms, paracites, cyano, bristle worms, and politicians are natural, if not always wanted.  Most of those things (except the last one) goes away by themselves.  Corals dying is also natural.  I was just telling my wife that I lost a few corals.  But in this case, that is a good thing.   They became overshadowed by other corals and died from lack of light.  That is a good thing and natural, it's like if Chris Christie was on a beach blanket and Kate Moss was laying behind him having an M&M for lunch.  You wouldn't see her at all.

I also think testing is overrated.  Yes I would imagine testing is fine as knowledge is a good thing but it is a problem if you take that knowledge to literally and change stuff because it is not exactly where an expert like Nancy Pelosi says it should be.  Especially if you are like many people who change water every few weeks, if that is you, throw out the test kits as your tank will be fine.  Grow some algae and find some mud.  When I started in the hobby it was written to go out and get some garden soil and dump it in your tank.  I did that.  I am not sure if the bacteria from the dirt in my backyard will survive in a reef tank, but that dirt is still in there and so far nothing bad happened.

 

We forget one important thing in this hobby.  It is not a means to an end, there is no end or goal, it is the trip, the adventure that makes it interesting.  If it gets to much you can start collecting stamps.  Now that's excitement.

This hobby is like sailing, the fun is in the actual sailing, not particularly getting anyplace.  There is no end goal to sailing as it is about the sailing.  You go out, head for a buoy and head back.  Reefing is like that, you start out and never finish.  Because if you finish, your done and it is no longer fun.

 

I have no idea where I am going with this but I am taking my wife's friends out on a moonlight cruise tonight.  I can be the boy toy, or boy Captain, whatever.

 

Edited July 7, 2014 by paul b

[paul b]

So I took the "Ladies" out for the moonlight cruise last night then dropped them off at my marina where they had dinner. It was Lobster night. I sat at the bar and ordered a hamburger. I wanted the Ahi Tuna burger but that was $22.00 so I went with the $18.00 hamburger. Yeah, I know. So the guy brings out this huge burger and a few feet to the right of me on the bar is a red squeeze bottle of "ketchup", so I grab it and squirt it all over my burger.


The "ketchup" is fluorescent green. So I say to the bartender, "Is this some new kind of ketchup?".


He says NO, THATS SOAP. I said, "Soap?" What kind of soap? He said he does the glasses with it. So I said "So you keep dish soap in a red squeeze ketchup bottle that virtually every diner in the United Stated keeps ketchup in, and you leave it on the bar where probably half the people coming in and sitting at the bar are eating hamburgers".


So I got a new hamburger sans the soap.





Anyway, the "girls" had a great time.


Getting back to fish, I am amazed that almost no one autopsies their fish after they die.


I remember once on the news they asked this doctor, how many autopsies he performed on dead people? He said "all the autopsies I perform are on dead people".





OK getting back to fish, I promise. If they find a dead person, and here in New York and especially in Manhattan they find a lot of dead bodies, they just don't look at them and say "Oh well, he has no spots so we don't know why he died?"


They don't do that because there is very little you can tell from looking at someone as to how they died. Of course if they have to pry pieces of him from in between the subway car wheels that would be an indication as the cause of death, but most of the time, they find someone laying there with a nice suit on, decent hair cut, healthy looking, but dead. That calls for an autopsy. Fish autopsies are simple and if you screw it up, most of the time the family won't complain. And, different from people, you don't have to put the dead fish body back together again to make it presentable. You can fed it to your cat so it is like recycling.


If you find a dead fish and it is not yet eaten up, just take a razor knife and cut the thing open starting at the bottom, the soft parts. Lay out the parts and look at them while trying not to squash anything as fish parts are rather delicate. You should find the swim bladder, stomach, liver and most importantly the gills. Get yourself a jeweler's loupe of at least a magnifying glass and if the fish just died you may see parasites in it's gills. Usually that is accompanied by tears in the delicate gill tissues that should look like feathers. You may also find blood in the muscles near the tail. I find that a lot in skinny fish such as copperbands or tangs and I think it comes from collection because to me I think those very sharp ribs sometimes puncture blood vessels. If you see a dark area on the side of a thin fish, that is usually internal bleeding and the fish rarely, if ever recover and Obamacare won't save them. People tell me that autopsying fish is to complicated for the average hobbiest to perform. Yes, if you are a Sissy you won't do this. But I eat fish almost every day and virtually every one of them suffocated on the deck of a ship and by me eating them or autopsying them didn't make their life any easier or harder. But if I find out why it died, I can maybe better be able to prevent it in the future. "Or" I could just flush the thing and chalk it up to the Moon God and buy another fish.





You can see an area on this copperband where it is just starting to show. You have to look at these fish closely but don't put your head so close to your monitor that you get grease on the screen. Below the black dot near his upper rear you can see a slighter darker area that may just look like some raised scales. That is how it starts, then it becomes darker and sometimes protrudes a little. This is very common on thin, newly collected fish.


Don't buy fish with this condition as even though it looks benign, it is caused by internal bleeding as this fish died and I autopsied it. I have seen this many times.


Those fish should have no marks or raised scales especially along the ribs.
These are 2 different fish with the same problem. Look closely

 

 

Edited July 8, 2014 by paul b

[paul b]

So did I lose the two people who were reading this?  Was it the autopsies or Nancy Pelosi?

Anyway I was out by my boat today but I didn't collect anything as my tank is over run with amphipods and snails already.  

This morning I was reading another forum (yes, they exist) and I was amazed there is a 500+ post thread about DSBs.  Silly invention and if you have to write 500 posts about them, mostly about problems why would you put that in a tank?  Maybe it's me.  There are so many things in this hobby that I find silly I can't even think of most of them right now.

OK, I got one "Clean Up Crew".  Many people feel a CUC will eliminate hair algae.  But many of those same people feel cleaner wrasses and cleaner shrimp will also eliminate ich.  We didn't used to call that ich, it used to be oodinium, then it was coral fish disease, or it was that first.  I forget but now it is back to ich.  Or it could be crypt.  Like they put dead people in.  Crypt is more like flukes, or maybe flounders, I also forget.  Whatever it is called, it should not be a concern and we should not have to worry about it.  But I already went through that.

See that green SPS in the post above?  It fell, or was dragged behind the rocks and I lost it for a few weeks.  I found it covered in gravel and half of it died.  But it is now re-growing as I put it back in the light.  These are normal, reef tank occurrences.  I realize many people fret over all sorts of things, things like flatworms and black ich (whatever that is).  I read that now some people dip their corals in insect killer to "clean" these things off new corals.  That would be something like dipping your new girlfriend in "Nair" hair remover.  She would probably live, but she probably won't date you for very long.

[elbowdeep88]

Ive read every post Paul. I think it would be a mistake to not learn SOMETHING from each of them. You offer an awesome perspective that I truly appreciate. My motto has always been "nature does it best" but sometimes it is hard to remember that with all the gadgets, procedures, and scary stories. Your reefing philosophy reminds me of sending toddlers to play in mud. They are exposed to germs and get sick, and are usually better for the wear compared to bubble children who are very clean but when they inevitably do get sick it's often quite serious (or they have constant maladies). Sterile doesnt really work long term and is much harder to maintain than creating an ecosystem that is as balanced as possible.