How this Geezer did it in the beginning
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Paul B
Premium Member
Yeah, but put them in a wet suit and a mask, drop them 30' underwater then forgetabout it.
Especially if they are all pretty.
I look at all the girls, what can I tell you. My wife even points them out to me. After 40 years of marriage she knows she has nothing to worry about.
Once in Manhattan where I was working, this open top tour bus stopped in front of me and the most beautiful girl I have ever seen stood up and waved. I almost died, then another one stood up and waved, then I knew I died. Then 50 of them stood up and waved, but they were not waving at me. They were Miss Universe contestants all dressed up to kill and were waving at the camera's behind me.
Just then, my boss called me to ask where I was. I said I was staying there in that spot today and he would just have to dock me for the rest of the day. Then he joined me, and we stayed there. You just can't walk away from 50 of the world's most beautiful women.
I know pretty women as I helped build the New New York Playboy club and stayed there for 2 years. I also built penthouse Magazine and was there 2 years. I am not even sure if I got paid.
Then I worked a couple of Victoria Secret photo shoots, so I do know what pretty girls look like. I even married one, but I can't pick her out with a wet suit and mask on. :worried:
Especially if they are all pretty.
I look at all the girls, what can I tell you. My wife even points them out to me. After 40 years of marriage she knows she has nothing to worry about.
Once in Manhattan where I was working, this open top tour bus stopped in front of me and the most beautiful girl I have ever seen stood up and waved. I almost died, then another one stood up and waved, then I knew I died. Then 50 of them stood up and waved, but they were not waving at me. They were Miss Universe contestants all dressed up to kill and were waving at the camera's behind me.
Just then, my boss called me to ask where I was. I said I was staying there in that spot today and he would just have to dock me for the rest of the day. Then he joined me, and we stayed there. You just can't walk away from 50 of the world's most beautiful women.
I know pretty women as I helped build the New New York Playboy club and stayed there for 2 years. I also built penthouse Magazine and was there 2 years. I am not even sure if I got paid.
Then I worked a couple of Victoria Secret photo shoots, so I do know what pretty girls look like. I even married one, but I can't pick her out with a wet suit and mask on. :worried:
reeftanknewbie
New member
Lmao. Brings a new meaning to fishing for girls. That has to be the best story I have ever heard. Yeah they sure know how to hold a grudge. I have things held against me that happened before I met her but hey she has to put up with me so I cant complain.
Paul B
Premium Member
I have nothing held against me, but once we were in the Hamptons and Christie Brinkley got out of Billy Joel's car right next to me. I wanted her held against me, but I figured it would be in appropriate, and besides she is like 11' tall.
My wife is not jealous and it is very rare that a Supermodel takes an interest in me. Very rare.
My wife is friends with some of my old girlfriends as they are all in our crowd and married our friends. If you have a jealous wife, your marriage may not be that secure. When I worked at the Playboy Club and Penthouse I used to take some of the girls out to lunch all the time. I also used to take my wife's friends out to lunch as we all worked in Manhattan. I didn't take then dancing or to dinner as that may pose a problem. :uhoh2:
My wife is a Babe and she has nothing to worry about from me. I frequently look outside and have yet to see any Supermodels waiting out there for me.
Well, unless they are fish Geeks and for some reason, most Supermodels are not fish Geeks.
But all girls are babes, especially fish Geek girls. :wave:
Thanks, she still seems to like me even though I am probably a pain to live with with all my hobbies.
On top of a deserted lighthouse
Just wondering why she is holding that mask in the picture? You smell bad or something
Paul B
Premium Member
I didn't see that. The inside of that lighthouse is full of flaking lead paint, asbestos and dust from 40 years ago. It was sealed up, I went there as a consultant. The Coast Guard sold all the Lighthouses for a dollar if you keep up the property. A guy bought it and wants to make it into a B&B but the Island is to small. No water, electricity or sewage. I also may have smelled bad as the place is full of birds and it is a long climb to the top.
Aquarist007
New member
Hi Paul, glad to see everything well with you and your family.
Missed you on here.
In your opinion.. what kind critters should a pink tipped trigger not want to take to dinner with??:lmao:
Missed you on here.
In your opinion.. what kind critters should a pink tipped trigger not want to take to dinner with??:lmao:
Aquarist007
New member
haha:lmao: its good to talk to you again Paul
It would add you to the list that it would not like to take to dinner with it?
WitsNWrasse
Member
Paul-
i stayed up almost all night reading all 35 pages of this thread. i can honestly say i wish i was related to you.... but i also feel like i am because i know so much about you now.
i am new to the hobby and i am very glad i stumbled upon this post. this whole time i have tank vets pulling me this way and that, that this is the best way to do that, and that you cant do it that way, that you cant put that there, and you cant use that and you need a better this for that.:reading:
before reading this i was worried about which brand salt to use, about which brand had better this or that.... now that i see a "hands off" approach at work i can really see the benefits and how less stressful it is. from now on i am not going to worry so much about getting the best, but just worrying that all my fish and coral are happy. :beer: and i figure thats the most important thing right ?
for me this thread was really radical- especially using baking soda ? i am like you i like to save money and do everything myself or else it isnt done right. i think i am the only one out of all my friends in college that own their own set of power tools :hammer: which i think honestly is very sad- off topic (i guess not really since there has been lots of straying off topic) but most of the friends dont even know how to drill a pilot hole or even take out a screw without stripping it. our generation is sad. i think the reason i am like this is instead of watching cartoons my dad always stole the TV saturday mornings and watched Bob Vila's This Old House. my dad would always make me his DIY Helper- ive lost count of how many wood floors and tile i have put in with him on the weekends.
anyway-
i am going to look more into this way of doing it i think. the tank vets i work with are going to fall over and die with a heart attack when i tell them i am also considering using NSW- i mean i live in san diego i am 5 minutes from the bay and less that 10 from the ocean. cant get better than that.
i havent even set up my tank yet so now is the time to decide i guess :crazy1:
i stayed up almost all night reading all 35 pages of this thread. i can honestly say i wish i was related to you.... but i also feel like i am because i know so much about you now.
i am new to the hobby and i am very glad i stumbled upon this post. this whole time i have tank vets pulling me this way and that, that this is the best way to do that, and that you cant do it that way, that you cant put that there, and you cant use that and you need a better this for that.:reading:
before reading this i was worried about which brand salt to use, about which brand had better this or that.... now that i see a "hands off" approach at work i can really see the benefits and how less stressful it is. from now on i am not going to worry so much about getting the best, but just worrying that all my fish and coral are happy. :beer: and i figure thats the most important thing right ?
for me this thread was really radical- especially using baking soda ? i am like you i like to save money and do everything myself or else it isnt done right. i think i am the only one out of all my friends in college that own their own set of power tools :hammer: which i think honestly is very sad- off topic (i guess not really since there has been lots of straying off topic) but most of the friends dont even know how to drill a pilot hole or even take out a screw without stripping it. our generation is sad. i think the reason i am like this is instead of watching cartoons my dad always stole the TV saturday mornings and watched Bob Vila's This Old House. my dad would always make me his DIY Helper- ive lost count of how many wood floors and tile i have put in with him on the weekends.
anyway-
i am going to look more into this way of doing it i think. the tank vets i work with are going to fall over and die with a heart attack when i tell them i am also considering using NSW- i mean i live in san diego i am 5 minutes from the bay and less that 10 from the ocean. cant get better than that.
i havent even set up my tank yet so now is the time to decide i guess :crazy1:
vitz
New member
I have been asked a few times to document some of the practices from when the salt water hobby started which in the US was in about 1971. It started in Germany a few years before that and al of the older books were translated from German. That is kind of wierd because Germany is land locked.
Here in New York Salt water started in Manhattan in a very large store named "Aquarium Stock Company" it was a couple of blocks from the World Trade Center.
I had just gotten back from serving in Viet Nam and my tank was waiting for me. It had a large catfish in it when I was drafted and I don't think anyone fed it for the two years I was gone, it died a week before I got home.
Anyway, I dumped out the water and looked for some gravel. I didn't have any money (pay in the military was about $300.00 a month) and I was saving for my wedding.
I did try blue driveway gravel but even though that looked great, it didn't work out. I managed to buy some dolomite.
Although Instant Ocean was available then I didn't know about it and could not find it.
Speaking of Instant Ocean, that was invented by the owner of the oil company "STP" that we all used to put in our cars. I am not sure if it did much but it was sticky and if you used it, you were cool. We never kept out cars stock unless you were a Nerd (which was a word that was not invented yet)
Our cars had to be all customized so they were clearly "ours" and didn't look like anyone eles's car.
Also, gas was 27 cents a gallon so horse power meant everything and gave you bragging rights. There was no such thing as Gas economy.
The biggest problem was I still had a problem getting that $5.00 together to fill the tank, I rarely bought more than two bucks.
OK back to fish.
I filled the tank with fresh water and added some NSW from the East River. I added some scats, mono's, figure 8 puffers, archerfish and bumblebee gobies.
The tank was brackish and all was well. After a few months I saw that blue devils were for sale and I had never seen such things and neither did anyone else.
So I went down to the Long Island Sound and added more salt water so I could get blue devils.
They were $7.00 each, a huge expense, more than a tank of gas, so I did some side jobs and bought them. They had so much ich that I thought they were supposed to have spots. They quickly died. I read like a sponge but there was virtually no information in English about ich.
Then I met this marine biologist working in a lab. I told him my dilemma and he told me that copper kills ich.
OK, the only copper I had was pennies so I threw a bunch of pennies in.
Where the pennies are placed determines how much copper disolves into the water, so if you put them in some water flow, they would disolve faster. I made a holder so the pennies would stay on their edge so all surfaces of the pennies touched the water. If you just threw them in the water only half the penny was exposed to the water.
See it was not as easy as it sounds. The dosage was very tough. It had to be high enough to kill the ich before the fish died but too much copper was fatal to the fish. I found out through experimentation that I had to watch the fish closely and if they laid on their side, there was too much copper in the water and I had to remove some pennies and change some water. Remember, I didn't have ASW and had to drive to the Sound 30 minutes away.
Eventually I got the dosage correct and the fish lived.
The next fish available was domino's and sargeant majors. They were ugly but hard to kill.
I kept a HOB filter on the tank with filter floss and a UG filter. The light was a chrome thing with one of those long aquarium bulbs.
Food was fresh water Tetra Min flakes.
I learned very quickly about salt creep because I could not touch anything in or near the tank without getting a shock. The pump in the HOB filter was iron and should not get wet as was the metal light fixture. I kept a stick near the tank so I could push the button on the light to turn it off. There was no touching the pump without un plugging it.
If I had to stick my hand in the tank, I had to un plug the light and pump or I would get thrown across the room. (GFIs were not invented for another 20 years or so)
To feed the fish without touching the tank, I clamped a can of flakes inside the light and that had a hole in it. I also inserted an air line tube into the can. When I wanted to feed the fish, I blew into the tube and that blew some flakes into the tank.
Notice I never said "we" did anything because I didn't know anyone with a salt water tank so everything was just me. (no computers, cell phones or internets)
I will continue this when I have some more time.
in the late 70's, there was a product marketed for treating ich. it was a penny in a small mesh pouch, heh. and it worked.
Paul B
Premium Member
Wow, that encompases quite a few years. I don't think I read that much of it.
No you don't, I am part flounder
No, the most important thing is that you are happy.
That's because he is a good man. I came home once and my Daughter took apart my entire stereo system to se how it worked.
Where do they think their fish came from?
I'm sure it did, at that time pennies were made of copper
Capn, good to see you. I just got home from a great night of boating. Belly full of two dozen clams on the half shell, lots of good music including Janis Joplin, Linda Ronstadt, Roy Orbison and I am a happy camper :thumbsup:
Hi again Paul,
Well, I am still using NSW for my water changes from Narragansett Bay and feeding my fish worms just about every day....man do they LOVE the worms. It is a feeding frenzy when the worms go in. I know you have gained much of your knowledge from experience, but are there any SWF books you would recommend? Thanks!!
Tom
Well, I am still using NSW for my water changes from Narragansett Bay and feeding my fish worms just about every day....man do they LOVE the worms. It is a feeding frenzy when the worms go in. I know you have gained much of your knowledge from experience, but are there any SWF books you would recommend? Thanks!!
Tom
Paul B
Premium Member
Tom all of my books are very old, the only new book out now is by a friend of mine, Albert Thiel, but it is mainly about Nano Reefs. Of course it has information about any type of salt tank. I am even quoted in it a few times but that would be all the same things I post here. Besides that, I don't know of any other books.
Paul B
Premium Member
Today my wife and I went to the east end of the north fork of Long Island which is one of my favorite places. The water out there is very clear as Long Island is a 150 mile protrusion into the Atlantic Ocean and if you can get to the end, that would be the cleanest water off Long Island and maybe the north east coast of the US. I use this water all the time and it is full of life. Seaweeds like codium grow prolifically there and it doesn't grow much west of there on the Island.
My favorite park is out there, which is a very large nature preserve surrounded by the sea and there are the two remaining natural salt ponds left on the North East coast there. We spent some time in that park on the beach which faces Plum Island where for many years the Government did experiments on incurable animal diseases, or at least that's what they say they did. There could be aliens, UFOs or clones of Paris Hilton there, I have no Idea.
Nelson DeMille wrote a book titled "Plum Island" I kind of know Nelson, he lives near me and we were in the same unit in Nam, although he was there the year before I was.
But the water is great to collect. This marina is the most eastern marina on the north fork and of course I ate my favorite meal at the restaurant right next to it.
My favorite park is out there, which is a very large nature preserve surrounded by the sea and there are the two remaining natural salt ponds left on the North East coast there. We spent some time in that park on the beach which faces Plum Island where for many years the Government did experiments on incurable animal diseases, or at least that's what they say they did. There could be aliens, UFOs or clones of Paris Hilton there, I have no Idea.
Nelson DeMille wrote a book titled "Plum Island" I kind of know Nelson, he lives near me and we were in the same unit in Nam, although he was there the year before I was.
But the water is great to collect. This marina is the most eastern marina on the north fork and of course I ate my favorite meal at the restaurant right next to it.
londonloco
New member
OH yum.....your making me miss home Paul, well, my "grew up dere" home. Now Virginia is home.....
AZBigJohn
Usually confused...
That surprised me, I always figured you for a clams guy! I don't know why, but I've never been a oyster fan, but I love clams and crab..
Still feel guilty eating any seafood in the dining room, because that's where the tank is. I feel like they are all watching me... Maybe it's important to remind them every once in a while who the boss is in our house (and how she allows me to keep them, too) :rollface:
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