Hello, Geezer coming back to this forum. Paul B

[Paul B]

So for two days I haven,t seem my favorite fish. This fan tail file. I crawled around the back of the tank with a flashlight and there he was.
Dead. He seemed to have gotten stuck in the tube that goes along the back bottom of my tank to feed one of the undergravel filter plates. It starts about an inch from the glass and gets tighter and tighter. He must have swam through that space and got stuck.



His side fins were against his body so reverse didn't work and his gills were forced shut.

I figured I would try to get him out of there but it was a very tight spot under all sorts of things and behind all the rocks. I got a long acrylic rod with a plastic toothpick thing sticking out of it. (feeding stick) and tried to nudge him out.

His eyes were white as was his skin. Poor fella. After many tries I gently nudged him out where he floated to the bottom and laid there.

A few seconds later,,,,,,He moved. Then he twitched........Then I swear he winked at me.

He got up and swam upright and went in a cave. A few hours later I fed the tank. He came out and ate some mysis.

Today, he is back to his normal self looking just perfect. If I didn't look for him, I am sure he would be sushi now.

 

[JohnL]

Today, he is back to his normal self looking just perfect.

Great news

 

[Paul B]

When I moved here almost 5 years ago I had a Handicapped elevator installed. I went in there yesterday in a pouring rain and the thing is full of water and that elevator is not an outdoor machine and is not supposed to get wet.

I opened up the top door while the car was down and saw that the Jiboni who installed the thing cut the hole in the wall for the door.

(It's outside in the side of the building) they didn't put the tar paper up over the cut where the door goes so the water cascades down into the car.

Anyway, I need to remove the deck boards to access it and of course the "deck screws" they installed it with are rusted so the "torx" head screws are stripped. (of course they are) If you need something done, do it yourself but they wouldn't let me build this house myself so I had to have their "expert Jiboni",,,,I mean house builders do it.

Now I need "easy out" screw extractors to remove the screws to seal the shaft. I have screw extractors and I don't know where I got them but they are made in China so of course they also are stripped and rusty so don't work.

I just ordered some "American made" screw extractors from Amazon which is surprising and I had to look through many pages before I found one.
There is a huge difference between Chinese steel and American steel in tools or hardware which is why you can get a Chinese drill bit for 50 cents and that same bit made in America may be eight bucks, but if you need to drill something in hardened steel instead of butter, you need a good tool.

Chinese grade tools are good for a homeowner who is going to drill one hole in balsa wood once every two years, but a serious crafts man needs a much better tool.

I only buy American for other reasons also because I am an American and a Veteran but almost nothing is made here any more. If I look long enough I can get most things but it isn't easy.

 

[Misled]

I get mine at ACE. A little more expensive but made in the USA, and you don't have to buy a set.

 

[Vinny Kreyling]

McMaster-Carr Paul. I know what you mean about a drill bit.
Use my sons, NFG, went & got mine, no problem.

 

[Paul B]

I also ordered a bunch of American Cobalt bits. They cost about 10 times what the cheap bits cost but they work.

Today I came home and went into my workshop/mancave/fish room and immediately noticed that it smelled really clean. A little to clean so I looked around and noticed the hose came off my Ozone generator and filled the place with ozone.

It was probably off for two days and freshened up the place. There are no windows in my workshop but the smell is kind of nice as long as you don't mind the headache that comes with it.

 

[Paul B]

Today my Gyre pump was making noise so I took the thing apart and found the problem.

These brittle stars must have gotten in there and were having a hoedown making a racket. I talked them into going back in my tank if they remained quiet.

Then I figured I would remove some sponge which resulted in me crashing a good part of my aquascape which I had to re build after I removed about a quart of sponge.

I even cleaned some of the bottles. This one is partially cleaned. I am running my diatom filter through this as the tank now looks like sheet metal as the detritus that was in places I didn't even know I had flew all over the place.
I like the new aquascape and only one end of the tank collapsed and I had to re glue quite a few corals that I needed to remove from sponge encrusted rock.

 

[SantaMonica]

Might be a new invention... the swirling brittle star biotope breeder. Doubles as a power head, too.

 

[Paul B]

I have so many brittle stars if I could convince them to run on a treadmill I could generate electricity for my house.

 

[Paul B]

I got a text this morning that read:
Hello, this is Karen. "The $8,750.00 we owed you has been paid back and will be going back into your bank account"

I texted back and said: "You know Karen, you have been so nice, why don't you keep it. Maybe go out to dinner and have a nice Pino Grigio."

I was born at night but not last night so I know that "Karen" is probably a terrorist in Somalia, Ethiopia, Iran or Brooklyn and wants me to go to my bank account to see where this money is.

Banks don't generally text someone on their cell phone especially before 7:30 in the morning

 

[Paul B]

This time of the year I like to remember all the kids who don't have it as good as most kids. There are so many very sick kids in hospitals who won't be home for Christmas and many never make it home. Way to many of them are infants who were born from drug addict parents and are going through withdrawal.

 

[Genetics]

Welcome back Paul! See you haven’t lost your sense of humor. You ever sell any of your trinkets? I’m digging the gold/brass angler.

 

[Paul B]

Genetics, Good Morning. Yes, I have actually sold almost all my "trinkets". I sold 4 of them on these forums and a few in the art gallery here on Long Island and 14 in Manhattan. I think I built about 25 of them all together.

I only have 3 left but they are large, mechanical pieces so hard to put in a house. I have been trying to move them out but so far,no success even though I am selling them for almost what they cost me to build. I need the space.

This is one of them. It is almost 3' tall.

then this one. and one other. Cool but I don't have room for them as I have been doing other, more space using projects.

Those copper/brass anglerfish I can sell as fast as I build them and get requests almost every day. But they are to hard and complicated to build and just take way to long. I don't have any more except one porcupine fish I kept for myself and a steam punk futuristic blimp almost finished in these pictures.











This last fish I just gave away to a friends wife.



This one sold in Manhattan


This one which was the best one I gave to my Daughter

 

[Paul B]

I thought it was my brand new and tiny 3/4" filefish as I couldn't find him for a couple of days. Then I fed the tank worms and there he was all happy and all so I have no idea what that dried up fish was but I do occasionally find a fish in there that I haven't seen in months or years.

I know I had 2 Gecko gobies and I only catch a glimpse of a fin from those every couple of months at most. It could have been one of them. :thinking-face:

Anyway on another thread I have been in a "discussion" with someone and I have been misquoted a number of times. My method of no quarantine or medication must be very confusing because some people have it almost totally wrong.

I also have nothing against quarantine as long as it is not done for a very long time like 72 days.
But I think if you want to do that it is fine as long as when you put that fish into your tank it has a chance to eat food containing gut bacteria to give it a chance to revive it's immune system to be hopefully immune to things we normally find in a natural tank.

If we don't want to keep a natural tank and prefer instead to depend on quarantine, UV and medication, that is fine. But in such a tank we just can't add anything that has not been quarantined because those fish will not be immune to that. We also need to be careful and not feed those fish live food unless it is from fresh water where there would be no parasites.

Plenty of tanks run like that and if that is what you want, that is what you should do.
All new tanks should be run like that especially if they were set up with ASW and dry rock as those tanks are not healthy and won't be until the bacteria, viruses and funguses settle down and do what we pay them for. That may take a couple of years.

Many people, especially scientific people who like to study charts and learn about all the studies of the life cycle of parasites and such are at a loss unless they are keeping their tanks in a lab.

Frankenstein was born or made in a lab and look what happened to him with all the village people wanting to set him on fire and all that. Frankenstein could never live in a normal house because he ate with his feet and probably smelled like dead people.

Labs are totally different from a common home tank. They are fed certain foods that are sterilized to kill parasites and bacteria lest that corrupt the study. The tanks are mostly bare or just have inert materials like PVC or glass which stresses the fish to no end.

Then they count the parasites to see how they multiply and see how long it takes to kill a percentage of the fish.
They will study how long a fishes immunity lasts after it was removed from parasites and put in a sterile tank. Then in a laborious process they introduce parasites to see how long the immunity lasted.

This is all good information to know especially if you are going to be a marine biologist and are writing a paper on it. For the rest of us with a normal life and tank it doesn't mean anything.

Of course it is all true and scientists can spent their entire lifespan on this instead of going out with their girlfriend to a nice seafood restaurant and maybe having the Cod with a side order of clams on the half shell.

But in a home tank we can't separate our fish from the parasites present so the parasites are happily living in there with the fish just as they do in the sea. Those hungry parasites, especially the ones with fangs will constantly try to take a bite out of a fish gill. (If you look really close and maybe squint a little, you can see those fangs. )

When those parasites take a bite out of a fish, the fishes immune system eliminates the parasite in one of a few ways but the fishes immune system is very smart and it remembers that bite.

Instantly the fish starts pumping out antibodies that will repel the next parasite bite so even if this protection only lasts 6 months (Like scientists say) it doesn't matter unless that fish is in a lab where it won't get another parasite bits so it's immunity will eventually wane. Those bites are like measles booster shots.

I didn't make this up as I am an electrician, albeit a really good one. I have posted scientific papers on that because I know people like to read things by people with more degrees than a thermometer. A fahrenheit thermometer because I think they have more degrees but I could be wrong.

 

[Paul B]

A few more days is my birthday. Christmas day.

 

[JohnL]

Happy Birthday in advance Paul

 

[Vinny Kreyling]

Early best wishes for a Happy Birthday Paul.

 

[Reefing102]

Happy Birthday Paul!

 

[Paul B]

As I said, our Daughter took me to Grand Bahama Island on a private Jet. It was my birthday on Christmas. I was totally surprised and I offered to split the cost.........

Of the Champaign.

I won't go into how we got this jet but my family were the only ones on it going and coming. It's a really exciting way to travel but most mortals, including me couldn't even afford the air in the tires of the thing.

It was a Gulf Stream 5. This one.

It is a small airport that only houses these types of planes. WE park right next to the"terminal" about 20' from the front door.

You go into this beautiful lounge where they treat you to Champaign, muffins, granola bars, coffee, etc.

The plane waits for you and you make the schedule so if you are late, the plane will stay there for you.

We walk to the plane that was right next to the back door and get in where the Stewardess, Hostess, cabin attendant asks us to sit anywhere we want. (or whatever is PC to call them but they were stewardesses when I first used to fly)

There is a bedroom, kitchen, couches and lounge area so no regular cabin seats.

The Captain comes back to chat a while and we take off. I have been on quite a few small planes but never small jets. They do shake more than commercial planes in turbulence but not much. Once you get above the New York, lousy weather it was motionless even at 550 MPH.

We land in Grand Bahama Island where someone greets us and takes us to this house.

On the way I noticed that much of the Island was devastated. I found out they had a number of hurricanes and the last one much of the Island was under 20' of seawater. That was horrible for everyone on the Island and there were huge hotels, brand new on the beach totally empty with no windows as they were all blown out. The wind speeds approached 200mph.

Everything in it's path was destroyed.
And this was "salt water" as opposed to Noahs flood which was fresh water. Or at least I think it was because it was assumed to be from rain.

It's hard to tell because Noah used a swing arm hydrometer which was arguably not very accurate. I understand he got it from his Great, Great, Great Grand Father Adam who gave it to him because he didn't have a pocket to put it in because it is hard to fashion a pocket into a fig leaf and Eve got tired of holding it. In those days the swing arm hydrometers weren't accurate because the arm was made out of acacia wood that was left over from the Ark of the Covenant. It was in the shape of a snake with an apple in it's mouth and the gold gilding on it caused it to sink.

Of course they didn't have plastic so the thing was made out of stone and you could only use it once. To read it, you filled it with water then gingerly laid it on it's side and smashed it with a coconut so you can read where the arm rested.

On a side note that not many people know about, Noah had a son named Strauss. He wasn't happy with the choice in clothes in those days as they only had a fig "leaf" to wear. He looked at it and figured if he could rivet a pocket into it he would be the first clothing designer which is how we got Levi Strauss Jeans. (Google it, it's in the Old Testament )

Anyway, we go into this beautiful house and check it out. It was beautiful but dated from the 80s or so and no one lived there for the last 10 years. The beach, pool and Jacuzzi was gorgeous.

There was also a huge Koi pond which had two huge tutles in it.

I will finish this later.

 

[Paul B]

Current tank video.