Just cleaned thirty year old tank.
- Thread starter Paul B
- Start date
Paul B
Premium Member
tcarlson
I do have a generator but before that I used a SCUBA tank with an air stone in an emergency. Like I said I use a reverse undergravel filter over dolomite. I use a large homemade venturi protein skimmer with ozone and two powerheads for current. The tank is 6' long built into a wall. It was originally a thirty gallon tank then twenty five years ago when I bought my new house I got the bigger tank and moved the stuff into it. I now use MH and compact flourescent lights but for all but the last three years I used regular flourescent lamps except for a few years when I used VHO lamps. The tank looked the best with the regular flourescent lamps and I could grow all kinds of soft corals. The first three pictures were almost all soft corals. With the MH lamps I can't keep the soft corals and the coraline algae that was growing in plates now grows in the shadows. I use two part calcium and Lugols iodine about a drop a week. I try to get as much natural water as I can but it is kind of hard to transport from my boat. In my opinion, the most important thing besides the natural water is the fact that I collect all sorts of live food under rocks in the mud. I go to a muddy boat ramp and lift rocks and shake the living stuff into a pail. I remove most of the mud and dump the rest (except the crabs) into the tank. There has not been a paracite or disease in over twenty years. One fish, (which I have never fed) a brutlyd is 18 years old, the rest are about ten or twelve. I have no sump or any other kind of filter. There is no maintenance except the twenty five year thing and maybe a good diatoming three times a year or so. Water is changed maybe 30 gallons three times a year. There are hard corals maybe 10 or 12 and sea mats growing all over the place. I don't seem to get the problems that many people seem to have. In this reef I have hatched octopus, arrow crabs, clownfish, blue devils, banded coral shrimp, seahorses and local purple sea urchins.
The tank was featured in "Marine Fish Monthly magazine a few years ago.
I do have a generator but before that I used a SCUBA tank with an air stone in an emergency. Like I said I use a reverse undergravel filter over dolomite. I use a large homemade venturi protein skimmer with ozone and two powerheads for current. The tank is 6' long built into a wall. It was originally a thirty gallon tank then twenty five years ago when I bought my new house I got the bigger tank and moved the stuff into it. I now use MH and compact flourescent lights but for all but the last three years I used regular flourescent lamps except for a few years when I used VHO lamps. The tank looked the best with the regular flourescent lamps and I could grow all kinds of soft corals. The first three pictures were almost all soft corals. With the MH lamps I can't keep the soft corals and the coraline algae that was growing in plates now grows in the shadows. I use two part calcium and Lugols iodine about a drop a week. I try to get as much natural water as I can but it is kind of hard to transport from my boat. In my opinion, the most important thing besides the natural water is the fact that I collect all sorts of live food under rocks in the mud. I go to a muddy boat ramp and lift rocks and shake the living stuff into a pail. I remove most of the mud and dump the rest (except the crabs) into the tank. There has not been a paracite or disease in over twenty years. One fish, (which I have never fed) a brutlyd is 18 years old, the rest are about ten or twelve. I have no sump or any other kind of filter. There is no maintenance except the twenty five year thing and maybe a good diatoming three times a year or so. Water is changed maybe 30 gallons three times a year. There are hard corals maybe 10 or 12 and sea mats growing all over the place. I don't seem to get the problems that many people seem to have. In this reef I have hatched octopus, arrow crabs, clownfish, blue devils, banded coral shrimp, seahorses and local purple sea urchins.
The tank was featured in "Marine Fish Monthly magazine a few years ago.
Paul B
Premium Member
traip93
My dive partner once found a 45 cal pistol with a silencer off a rock jetty in New Jersey. If I had it it may be in my tank (but I doubt it. In Manhatten there used to be a very large aquarium store about a block from the Trade Center. They had a 300 gallon tank with an entire toilet bowl in it. It got a lot of attention.
I keep a tank because I think it's interesting and it's a part of my diving hobby. I don't keep it to see how long I can keep something alive. My animals seem to die of old age which seems to be about twelve years for small fish like damsels.
My dive partner once found a 45 cal pistol with a silencer off a rock jetty in New Jersey. If I had it it may be in my tank (but I doubt it. In Manhatten there used to be a very large aquarium store about a block from the Trade Center. They had a 300 gallon tank with an entire toilet bowl in it. It got a lot of attention.
I keep a tank because I think it's interesting and it's a part of my diving hobby. I don't keep it to see how long I can keep something alive. My animals seem to die of old age which seems to be about twelve years for small fish like damsels.
Frick-n-Frags
New member
That system is a trip. Most excellent. 
You have found a path to great stability.
Didn't you say once that some of your LR is actually asphalt??
You have found a path to great stability. Didn't you say once that some of your LR is actually asphalt??
Paul B
Premium Member
Mark, yes that was me. I wrote a few articles for FAMMA, Aquarium Fish Magazine,
Marine Fish Monthly and The Breeders Registry. I did not invent the bleach thing but it works real well and I still use it for natural sea water. I also do have some real nice asphalt rocks. I forgot about them because they are completely covered in coraline algae and they do not look like asphalt at all. I collect them at the same beach where I get the amphipods. The asphalt has been underwater for over fifty years and is very porous and full of amphipods. Sometimes I collect a nice piece of it and put it in my tank for a week or so then return it to the beach. It is used at this beach to control erosion. (Please don't write and tell me I am ruining the beach or the ecosystem or the planet) The asphalt is very rough (on one side of course) and for some reason, coraline algae grows very fast on it. In the second picture with the sea urchin, it is hard to tell but he is resting on a piece of asphalt. That was one of the pictures that was in MFM magazine. I also collected that urchin in New York, I used to have a sea urchin collecting business where I would collect them and sell them to hobbiests for algae control. The northern purple urchin, when you put it in a tropical tank will eat algae very fast due to the temperature. Once, twenty four of them spawned in my tank all at the same time. The skimmer, which empties into a 5 gallon bucket, overflowed all over the rug. I had to change all the water. Prolific little pin cushions.
I will attach an article by me in The Breeders Registry about a fish related patent I received. I don't have a copy of the article in MFM but I do have the magazine.
http://www.breeders-registry.gen.ca.us/Articles/v4_i3_paul_b/paul_b.htm
Marine Fish Monthly and The Breeders Registry. I did not invent the bleach thing but it works real well and I still use it for natural sea water. I also do have some real nice asphalt rocks. I forgot about them because they are completely covered in coraline algae and they do not look like asphalt at all. I collect them at the same beach where I get the amphipods. The asphalt has been underwater for over fifty years and is very porous and full of amphipods. Sometimes I collect a nice piece of it and put it in my tank for a week or so then return it to the beach. It is used at this beach to control erosion. (Please don't write and tell me I am ruining the beach or the ecosystem or the planet) The asphalt is very rough (on one side of course) and for some reason, coraline algae grows very fast on it. In the second picture with the sea urchin, it is hard to tell but he is resting on a piece of asphalt. That was one of the pictures that was in MFM magazine. I also collected that urchin in New York, I used to have a sea urchin collecting business where I would collect them and sell them to hobbiests for algae control. The northern purple urchin, when you put it in a tropical tank will eat algae very fast due to the temperature. Once, twenty four of them spawned in my tank all at the same time. The skimmer, which empties into a 5 gallon bucket, overflowed all over the rug. I had to change all the water. Prolific little pin cushions.
I will attach an article by me in The Breeders Registry about a fish related patent I received. I don't have a copy of the article in MFM but I do have the magazine.
http://www.breeders-registry.gen.ca.us/Articles/v4_i3_paul_b/paul_b.htm
Paul B
Premium Member
Mark I forgot to answer your guestion "whats a brutlyd fish".
Its about 6" long and bright yellow. Looks like a kind of short eel. It has a continous fin on top and bottom like a fresh water knife fish. It hides all the time and I only see it at night with a flashlight or during one of my quarter century cleanings. I should have taken a picture when he had no place to hide. And one more thing, my wife tells me that I am lying and he is not eighteen years old. I have to look it up but she may be right, it may only be fourteen years old. So shoot me.
I just lost that clownfish that appears in that picture of my tank. That picture was maybe tan years old and that fish was an adult when I got him. When they get that old they get real ratty looking, I'm getting to look like that too.
Its about 6" long and bright yellow. Looks like a kind of short eel. It has a continous fin on top and bottom like a fresh water knife fish. It hides all the time and I only see it at night with a flashlight or during one of my quarter century cleanings. I should have taken a picture when he had no place to hide. And one more thing, my wife tells me that I am lying and he is not eighteen years old. I have to look it up but she may be right, it may only be fourteen years old. So shoot me.
I just lost that clownfish that appears in that picture of my tank. That picture was maybe tan years old and that fish was an adult when I got him. When they get that old they get real ratty looking, I'm getting to look like that too.
polskp
New member
That is definitely a cool tank. I really admire your unique thinking, maybe I'll relax a little on the water changes. . . Paul, have you ever kept an anemone in your tank? I would imagine all of your tankees thrive. Also, the urchin in your pic is identical to those that came on my florida rock. I got five, what is their approximate lifespan? I really like those little guys.
Your stories make me wish that I wansn't landlocked here in the frozen tundra. I would like to collect my own food and pods, very cool!
Your stories make me wish that I wansn't landlocked here in the frozen tundra. I would like to collect my own food and pods, very cool!
Paul B
Premium Member
polskp
I guage my water changes by my nitrates, Since they have been zero for a while I do not really change water much. I think they were zero because the tank was so old and dirty that most of the UG was partially clogged. I will test it next week and Ill bet they are about ten already. For most of the years that I had this tank there were anemones in there. I have not had any since I put in MH lights there was just no room for them. I don't know if you had the same type of urchin that I collect. I doubt that they live that far south but I am not sure. I know that they do range into the Gulf of Mexico. In my reef I only get about a year out of them but each one eats an area of algae about ten inches long and an inch wide a night.
If I did not live near the sea, I would move. I spend most of my summer on my boat and hopefully when I retire in a few years I will get a really big boat to take people out for parties.( have a captains license)
One more thing, my wife tells me that I lied again, I set up the tank in 1972 not 1974. How do they remember these things. Now I have to update my profile. I will not let her read any more of my posts.
I guage my water changes by my nitrates, Since they have been zero for a while I do not really change water much. I think they were zero because the tank was so old and dirty that most of the UG was partially clogged. I will test it next week and Ill bet they are about ten already. For most of the years that I had this tank there were anemones in there. I have not had any since I put in MH lights there was just no room for them. I don't know if you had the same type of urchin that I collect. I doubt that they live that far south but I am not sure. I know that they do range into the Gulf of Mexico. In my reef I only get about a year out of them but each one eats an area of algae about ten inches long and an inch wide a night.
If I did not live near the sea, I would move. I spend most of my summer on my boat and hopefully when I retire in a few years I will get a really big boat to take people out for parties.( have a captains license)
One more thing, my wife tells me that I lied again, I set up the tank in 1972 not 1974. How do they remember these things. Now I have to update my profile. I will not let her read any more of my posts.
coyoteseven
New member
Beautiful tank, Paul! :inlove:
You did all the 'wrong' things for over thirty years and yet have one of the best looking and thriving setups I've seen on RC to date.
Very impressive. :thumbsup:
:celeb3: Congratulations! :celeb3:
You did all the 'wrong' things for over thirty years and yet have one of the best looking and thriving setups I've seen on RC to date.
Very impressive. :thumbsup:
:celeb3: Congratulations! :celeb3:
Paul B
Premium Member
There was an article I wrote about six or eight years ago about this tank and the beginnings of the hobby in general that one of the writers for "Marine Fish Monthly" published for me either in the magazine or on his web site (who remembers). It is about a page long and some may find it boreing but I will try to attach it anyway. It tells about how the salt water hobby started (for me anyway).
sammystingray
New member
I think a lot of things look cool once they have been taken over by life.....more commonly pumps...I hate when they are new, but once life is on them, they blend right in ......in your case, bottles. I like it.
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