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Paul B

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My Hippo tang still looks perfect and loves his dinner of clams. He doesn't realize he is supposed to eat seaweed and be a vegan. I really hate the look of those seaweed clips too.

Hey guys a tip. When you take a picture of your tank, remove the silly algae clip from the front glass.

I am very surprised my Janss pipefish is still living. I never thought he would last this long as they are supposed to be delicate.
I know I keep saying it but quarantine is making your fish sick and keeping them from being robust, healthy, bulletproof fish. Fish need dirt, bacteria, parasites, mud, and most of all no Rap music or pictures of your Mother n Law in site of the tank.

Earthworms are great, leave the mud in. If your fish ever get sick from anything, or they don't die of old age, it is your fault. Don't drive past the LFS and shake your fist at the owner. He didn't make your fish sick.
Feed them worms and clams once or twice a week, three times would be better and every day would have your fish live much longer than you.
Don't worry about bacteria unless you are worrying that there isn't enough or any live bacteria in their food.
I got nothing else. Have a great night,
 

Paul B

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I just got back from my favorite LFS. We had Doctors appointments in the old neighborhood and that is where the store it so I go.

(My blood Pressure is 170 over 70 so they may put me on the cover of "Perfect Blood Pressure" Magazine)
I twisted my good leg in the Dr's office stairway and now I walk like I did just after my knee surgery. Of course my wife got mad at me for that. Women do that. They get mad at you for hurting yourself. It must be in their genetics.

I went there with a pocket full of cash hoping to see something I wanted like a nice new shiny coral, but they got nothing. The couple of anemic looking bubble corals I would have taken were over a hundred bucks and they didn't look worth it. I wanted something for all my efforts and the 60 miles I drove so I got a little arrow crab and a small Rainsford gobi to keep my other one happy.
They had 4 arrow crabs, 3 of them were dead so they were cheap.

The problem with arrow crabs in my tank is that I have huge bristle worms and when the crabs shed, the worms attack them.

I am getting a lot of cyano which is interesting and I will just have to wait until the cycle of it is over. It is thick and almost black like asphalt. Flamingo's eat that stuff which is why they are pink. (I thought that was from the shrimp they ate but according to National Geographic, it is shrimp, Who knew?)

My tank isn't deep enough for a flamingo to walk around in and they tend to poop all around the rim of the tank. I also don't think they are reef safe as their toes make holes in the anemones and they may have parasites or athletes foot so they would have to be quarantined for 72 days. By then, the cyano will be gone.

The cyano is probably coming from something in the NSW I collect. Maybe asphalt.

Everything else is going great, even the local hermit crabs that I collected here. I don't usually collect them because they don't live long in a reef, but these seem to love the place and may be around forever.
 
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Paul B

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So I got the boat back to the Marina this morning and they took it out of the water.





The first thing I noticed is that they didn't put any bolts in the two "Zinc's" on the power tilt pistons. This would not cause any problem like the one I am having but the zinc's are supposed to be bolted in or they don't do anything and they are expensive. To make a complicated story short, they are made of zinc (like Duh) and they are supposed to rot before parts of your boat rot. But if they are just hanging there, they are not doing anything so the Jiboni's would have had to take my boat out of the water to put the bolts in anyway.



The "mechanic" told me "sometimes they rot out".. I was born at night but not last night and I am not an accountant. I was an A rated GM Mechanic and I know stainless steel doesn't rot out in 2 months.



I said, that can't happen. Then he said, "sometimes they come loose". Yeah right, 4 stainless steel bolts coming not just loose, but completely falling off in 2 months.



I mean if you screw up and make a mistake at least make up something plausible or tell the truth that you messed up. I was a mechanic and I could have done that. Or I would at least make up something believable about Aliens or Bigfoot.







We didn't find anything obviously wrong with the shift cable but I had him change this shift arm anyway. I figured I came all this way, took the boat out of the water, removed the drives so I may as well waste some money.







I made it home without incident so I am not sure if it is fixed or not. :cool:
 

Paul B

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Doing a little maintenance with a diatom filter. Sucking out some Cyano and general tidying up. Using a reverse UG filter requires that I do this occasionally so nothing clogs. This is the beginning. In a minute or two, you can't see anything in the tank but the copperband loves it and looks forward to this.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDIG4W5nTMM&feature=youtu.be
 

Paul B

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I can't buy an interesting fish no matter how much money I throw at them. They got tangs and angelfish and I find them very boring. Nothing unusual. Corals, forgetaboutit. They got tiny frags and at my age, I don't do tiny anything. I probably couldn't see them or my hermit crabs would carry them away.

To add any corals I would have to cut away a lot of blue green sponge that covers most of my tank. But it cuts easy with a razor blade.

We are supposed to take some trips, but again, at my age, I already went to everyplace I want to go. Except the Galapagos. I haven't been there but my wife hates lizzards.

I also didn't go to Easter Island but my birthday is on Christmas so that is a different holiday and I don't know if I can mix holidays like that.

If I decided to go hang gliding or bungee jumping my insurance company would disown me because I already broke or tore everything that is breakable .

I still dive (very occasionally) but from spending so much time underwater, the fish find me boring as they all saw me already.

WE are having people over (again) for the weekend and I know there is a big pool party. Then we will go on my boat to waste some gas and hopefully not get stuck and have to come back on one engine. But that sometimes happens in boating. Boating is fun. Young people today IMO don't know how to have fun.

I tell that to my Daughter all the time. She is 40 and at her age we always had a big crowd and would get everyone together and either go to a river upstate to Kayak down the rapids and camp or go to a lake with our small canoe's or sailboats and sink each other. There would be maybe 20 of us.
We once went to the "Ice Caves" in the snow. They are only open in the summer and they have ice then. We brought ropes and lowered ourselves down into the caves with flashlights. Very cool.

My Daughter and her friends text each other as to what they will do and they do nothing but text each other. They text about how much fun it is to text.

Then they meet each other at someone's house, and sit there so they can text other people to ask them to join in on a group text.
Our Grand Daughter texted us yesterday to tell us she was looking at the window. And she lives in Manhattan so all she can see is the roofs of taxi cabs. I know her generation is going in the same direction as our Daughter. A generation that does nothing.

There's a whole world out there and a lot of it is free. In those days we couldn't rub two nickels together to make a dime but we always did things.
This was at a lake many years ago before they invented time.
 

Timbo

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Couldn?t agree more Paul. I spent my younger days fishing, camping, ?borrowing? wood to build tree forts, lighting things on fire, etc, etc, all costing next to nothing. Memories and experiences that most kids these days will know nothing of. One of the most memorable moments of my life was packing into a van with my cousins and uncle and driving out west. Slept mostly in tents and the smells were ripe but nothing else in life has compared. I don?t have as many or as crazy of experiences as you but it?s sad to see what the next generations are doing for ?fun.?
 

Paul B

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OOOHHHH NNNOOOOO. Disaster. No Really!!.

I looked at my tank and it was all foggy. OK, maybe smoky. A combination of foggy and smoky. My friend was here and he said, "That coral looks like it is dead!!!"



I said, "Can't be" It was fine a few hours ago. Then I noticed my skimmer wasn't working as there is a crack in the plastic and not enough water is going into the skimmer.



AAAAHHHHHHHhhhh.'



I found that one coral was just about all croaked and another one is almost all croaked.

AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!! Oh Noooo.



I got the skimmer working and it overflowed about a gallon of water on the floor. It kept foaming out like when you put 15 times too much soap in a washing machine. :p



OOOHHHH NOOOO.



The effluent from the skimmer was much too much to go down the tube to the drain so we found a big PVC elbow and stuck it on the top of the tube so it at least went into a bucket. It was overflowing all over me.

NNNNNoooooo!!



Then I got my diatom filter and after spilling a couple of gallons of water on my feet and the floor I got the thing running.



The skimmer was still going nuts so I knew there was something in the water.... But What!!!!!



As I was fixing the skimmer I kept getting stung by the long spine urchin. Then I noticed.

Why is his spines sticking out of the water like 4"



Then I remembered. Years ago I had an urchin business and I would SCUBA for urchins and sell them. Once they all spawned at the same time. I think I walked in front of the tank wearing my Speedo which caused that to happen.



But when they spawn, they go to the top of the water and stick their spines out, then spawn. And sea urchins have a LOT of spawn. I mean a LOT. And this is a ten year old very large urchin.



He was still spawning and turned the water into "Half and Half". Normally that is not a problem and the skimmer removes it right away. But if the skimmer isn't working, the stuff rots and the corals frown on that and croak.



Now I have the diatom running and the overflowing is almost managable but still happening. I have to let this keep overflowing for a few hours to get those poisons out of the water so maybe my other corals won't croak. :confused:



 

Paul B

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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.


 
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Paul B

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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.

 

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