Hello, Geezer coming back to this forum. Paul B

Saying Good Bye to our boat. We have had a boat for 43 years. It was time to move on.

Good Bye boat.jpg


Dale on boat.jpg
 
I just came back from my very Manly "run". Very slow run. But anyway I don't want to dwell on that. On my way back, I was running pretty "fast". Actually probably slower than my walking, but off in the distance, on the street I see this squirrel. He was sitting in the street holding a nut and most likely thinking about where he is going to hide this nut so in the spring he would have something to feed his six kids.

I hear this blood curdling SQUAWK.........I look up.......I see this huge eagle. OK I think it was a hawk. Definitely not a pigeon, and it swoops down towards the squirrel.....

The squirrel hears it and looks up........It was to late. I heard the doomed creature SCREAM amidst the loud CAW CAW of the devil bird. 😳

6 or 7 other crows were on the power lines cheering and it was deafening. I had to put my hands over my ears, (after I put down my sweatshirt, hat, walking stick and phone)

Right now that unfortunate squirrel is being served up as breakfast. :cry:

It brought back memories of that Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds".

It also, for some reason brought back a memory of one of my old girlfriends. She was Greek. A real Greek Goddess, Grecian curls and all.
Her Greek name was so long that it had every letter in the alphabet,,,,,Twice. Her last name alone just ended with "Etc." so they didn't have to make up more letters.

Her Mother really used to go out on a dark night and offer up tea leaves to the moon. I think she was praying that I wouldn't marry her Daughter. She eventually dumped me for a guy with a shorter name. :oops:
 
I just came back from my very Manly "run". Very slow run. But anyway I don't want to dwell on that. On my way back, I was running pretty "fast". Actually probably slower than my walking, but off in the distance, on the street I see this squirrel. He was sitting in the street holding a nut and most likely thinking about where he is going to hide this nut so in the spring he would have something to feed his six kids.

I hear this blood curdling SQUAWK.........I look up.......I see this huge eagle. OK I think it was a hawk. Definitely not a pigeon, and it swoops down towards the squirrel.....

The squirrel hears it and looks up........It was to late. I heard the doomed creature SCREAM amidst the loud CAW CAW of the devil bird. 😳

6 or 7 other crows were on the power lines cheering and it was deafening. I had to put my hands over my ears, (after I put down my sweatshirt, hat, walking stick and phone)

Right now that unfortunate squirrel is being served up as breakfast. :cry:

It brought back memories of that Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds".

It also, for some reason brought back a memory of one of my old girlfriends. She was Greek. A real Greek Goddess, Grecian curls and all.
Her Greek name was so long that it had every letter in the alphabet,,,,,Twice. Her last name alone just ended with "Etc." so they didn't have to make up more letters.

Her Mother really used to go out on a dark night and offer up tea leaves to the moon. I think she was praying that I wouldn't marry her Daughter. She eventually dumped me for a guy with a shorter name. :oops:
Squirrel = tree rat. One less squirrel (actually 7 less squirrels in your story) is a win in my books. Yay birds!
 
I just went to this little pond across the street to get some floating water plants for my garden terrarium thing and accidentally picked up 2 bullfrog tadpoles. There are so many frogs in that pond that it looks like Kermits home coming party. I will let them go in a couple of hours.

tADPOLES.JPG
 
Before my sunrise walk this morning I put those two tadpoles in a bag and when I passed their pond I returned them to the water to see their friends. Now they can grow up in peace until that pond starts to dry up and they find themselves on the street under a 1997 Toyota Land Cruiser driven by a retired Nun on her way home from confession. 😳
 
The LEDs can be any color. I can change them with the remote. The thing also has an oak drawer under it. :)

I just collected 50 gallons of water in the sea. It is raining and rough today so the water is full of chopped up seaweed, mud and small pieces of Columbus underwear.

I already had to clean the diatom filter 4 times and I am not done. This is the dirtiest water I have ever collected and I never even had to clean the diatom filter more than once. :D

Also the silicate is off the chart so I need to remove that before I use it because that is what is fueling my sponges which is almost taking over the tank. :(
 
The LEDs can be any color. I can change them with the remote. The thing also has an oak drawer under it. :)

I just collected 50 gallons of water in the sea. It is raining and rough today so the water is full of chopped up seaweed, mud and small pieces of Columbus underwear.

I already had to clean the diatom filter 4 times and I am not done. This is the dirtiest water I have ever collected and I never even had to clean the diatom filter more than once. :D

Also the silicate is off the chart so I need to remove that before I use it because that is what is fueling my sponges which is almost taking over the tank. :(
I was reading a German article the other day about cyano, and the interesting suggestion was making a tea with unfertilized soil from a garden and letting it settle then adding the clear water to the tank to introduce microbial enemies of the cyano. I know you are a proponent of ocean mud so I wonder do you ever get any cyano patches in your tank?
 
That 50 gallons of water I collected yesterday is now crystal clear and I am removing the silicates with "Phosguard". I had to order more of the stuff because I ran out and it isn't very expensive. I only use it on new NSW so it lasts me over a year.

If all the silicates are out by tomorrow I will heat it up and change about 40 gallons. I keep 10 gallons aside for emergencies like floods etc. of if I catch some weird creature in the sea that I want to study for a while.

A small amount of the water and sand I didn't filter because I like to throw that in my tank right from the sea for the bacteria and microfauna as I feel that a lack of new bacteria is the cause of many tank crashes. I also add garden soil for the same purpose and always have. :p
 
I don't remember where I posted this but it is 7 years old.

Relax! Have Fun! It’s a Hobby!
JUNE 3, 2015 BY PAUL BALDASSANO
saltwater aquarium fish and corals

I realize that many of us take our aquarium keeping very seriously, but we have to put it in context and remember that it is just a hobby. A hobby, by definition, is something that gives us pleasure, not something that is necessarily important (except, of course, to us and our fish and corals).
Actually, they are not even our fish and corals. Most are wild creatures that we decided to “help” by rescuing them from the sea, housing them in fake water, feeding them foods that they never saw in nature, and illuminating them artificially while providing a vastly different water movement system and forcing them to live with creatures from the other side of the planet whom they’ve never met.

Between the aquarium and the deep blue sea
Besides that, we love what we do and some of us are very good at it indeed. Many of the fish that we “rescue” actually live longer in our care than they would in the sea. If given a choice, I am not sure whether the fish would want to stay in the sea or come and live with us, given that some of us watch reality TV in full view of our tanks. Who knows whether fish even like reality TV? I mean “Dancing with the Stars” shouldn’t excite fish much, as they don’t have legs. I would assume the National Geographic Channel would be a better choice. Also, some people identify as liberal or conservative, but what about fish? I am not sure how fish would vote. Which party is for which fish?

In contrast to their wild counterparts, fish in our care are prone to the same afflictions that we are due to lack of exercise. My dad, many years ago, was a seafood peddler, and every day he walked over the Brooklyn Bridge, pushing a very heavy cart full of fresh fish, crustaceans, and ice. I just walk over to the fridge and grab a shrimp cocktail. Long before that, our great, great, great, great, etc. grandfathers had to run down game if they wanted to eat. They were in great shape. However, now we can drive our 300-horsepower, 3,000-pound cars three blocks over to McDonalds and drive away with a small part of a cow that someone else caught and made into chopped meat.
Reef aquarium corals

Fish in the sea have a hard time finding food and often have to swim after it and then fight with it while simultaneously fending off other would-be predators that either want to steal their meal or eat them. This happens to wild fish at almost every meal, but in our tanks, they kind of float there, waiting for someone to squirt some food in their face at about the same time every day. That’s how they feed supermodels; they just spray some chicken soup into their face once or twice a day.

Fish, like us, have muscles, and although I am not a fish strength trainer, I assume their muscles atrophy just as ours do if they aren’t used. I think if we released our fish into the sea (please don’t!), they wouldn’t make it ten minutes, as all the rest of the fish (after making fun of them for being in such terrible shape) would be flying past them from all angles to catch prey.

No contest
Many of us lose sight of what we are trying to accomplish by yearning for the best tank, in which everything grows and spawns, corals grow up the walls, and we can have the honor of Tank of the Month or Post of the Month or just Something, Anything of the Month. But this thought is completely wrong. This is not a competition, and there is no end game. I know because I have been doing this for over 60 years and I am still not done. We try desperately to get to the point where we’ve won, where everything is perfect, but if we think like that, we are sure to be disappointed.
Aquarium keeping is like sailing. When you go on a sailboat, you don’t usually even have a destination. It’s the act of sailing that is the fun. If we actually get anywhere, that is great, but then if we needed to be somewhere, would we really jump into a very expensive sailboat that goes maybe four miles per hour in a good wind and splashes us every five minutes? I mean really.

It’s called “aquarium keeping,” not “aquarium finishing” because we will never be finished. It is the ride, the act of keeping these colorful and expensive little creatures alive that is the thrill. And keeping them alive is only part of the fun. Changing water, cleaning glass, testing, dosing, re-aquascaping and writing about our experiences are all part of the fun, too. Even when something dies—yes, even when something dies—we can find fulfillment in figuring out what happened. If nothing ever died, we would call it stamp collecting. Now that’s a thrill.

Challenges are part of the fun
So when cyanobacteria, hair algae, flatworms, ich, or any number of other problems occur, be happy for the experience and don’t think of it as a disaster. A tornado is a disaster, an earthquake is a disaster, a supermodel gaining a pound is a disaster, but something happening in a fish tank is not a disaster. It’s just part of this wonderful hobby, a hobby that makes us happy.

I’ve enjoyed this fantastic hobby every day of my long life, and I will keep doing it until they put me in a nursing home. It has helped me through hard mental times and just boring times. Sometimes I spend days on end “working” on the tank, and sometimes weeks go by where I barely have time to feed the fish. I have had large die offs and constant spawning. But I’ve savored all those times and have never been disappointed. You can put whatever you want into this hobby, and I’ve loved every minute of it!
Photo credit: Paul Baldassano
 
This fireclown is getting better with age, Unlike me.

Here he is today at about 30 years old.



This is what he looked like a few years ago. Notice the "bags" under his eye. He (or She) doesn't have that any more.

 
I picked up 3 fish today. The little red cardinals are kind of rare and I have never seen them.

New Fish.JPG



Little Hawk settled right in

Hawk fish.JPG
 
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