Unorthodox ways to do things

Paul B

Paul B

Premium Member
I thought it would be interesting to talk about some of the odder things some of us do that is not the norm.
Thanks to computers and the internet much of this hobby has become a cookie cutter endeavour and many people do the same things the same way.
I started way before the internet so there was no easy way to exchange ideas so I had to develop them myself. I have been doing these things for so long that I forget and think everyone does it that way, but I find that I am wrong. When I post these Ideas, people just look at me funny. Well, I can't really see them, but I think they are looking at me, or at least the computer screen funny.
So I decided to write down some of the wierd-ish things I do that some people may not have heard of. If you did, just humor me.

I think I will start with Pop Eye. I just answered a post about this and the person is still looking at me, or the computer screen anyway.:hmm6:
Fish get Pop Eye all the time, I don't know exactly why and neither does anyone else. I know there are all sorts of theories but trust me, no one knows for sure. :uhoh2:But no matter what caused it, it is easy to treat. This usually heals on it's own with no help from us and I would wait a while to see if that happens, but if it keeps getting worse, the eye could completely pop out. That is not real good and I know I would not like that happening to me. Of course I don't think fish feel pain like we do but that is for another post where everyone can yell at me for my opinion. ;)
If the fish has a severe case of Pop Eye, no matter what caused it, the eye is protruding for one of two reasons. One is gas behind the eye and one is pus from an infection. Either way it is not an eye problem but a malfunction in the way the fish was designed. If you look at a fish skull, you see a dent in it where the eye goes and a tiny hole in the back where the optic nerve attaches to the eyeball. Once gas or a infection gets back there, the preasure has no place to go so it pushes out on the eye. (we have sinuses and all sorts of places for preasure to go, not that it makes us feel any better but our eyes don't usually pop out) It does not seem like there is any blood flow to that area because there are no veins that I can see and no hole through the skull for the vein to enter. There also would be no need for blood flow there as the eye has it's own blood supply that seems to travel with the optic nerve. Of course I am not a fish surgeon but I do occasionally operate (if their insurance covers it) :D
Anyway, the preasure needs to be releived so the eye can get back to where it is supposed to go.
To do this, I catch the fish and hold it in a net. I position the fish so that I have access to his eye. Then I take a sterile hypodermic needle with nothing in it and gently stick it in the thin stretched skin that is still holding the eye in. Usually the top part is stretched the most. Then I pull back on the plunger and the eye instantly goes back to where it is supposed to be. Either air or a milky fluid will come out. Sometimes the eye does not go back all the way and I do it again the next day.
If I notice that there is fluid and not just gas, sometimes I inject a little injectable antibiotic, then remove it.
In the 45 years or so and the dozens of patients I have done this on, I have never lost a patient, been sued, caused blindness, or could not cure the fish.
I don't puncture the eye and the needle can not penetrate into the brain because the skull is totally behind the eyeball.
Now for people who think this is barbaric, and you know why you are. Just think, if your eye was hanging out of your head to the point where you could lose it and someone said to you that they could totally cure you in 5 seconds would you say, "Oh my God No, I kind of like my eye like this, maybe I could get on TV" Or would you say, "hurry up and do the dam thing?"

I will post another one tomorow, in the meantime, if anyone has any un orthodox ways to do things, feel free to post as I am not the God of fish tanks.
 
My most unorthodox thing is to read your posts and not stare at you (or my computer screen) in a funny way.
 
Well then start stareing because they will get wierder. I thought everyone did this stuff. :beer:
 
I picked up some antique glass bottles and put them in my tank and mounted frags on them.

I think the idea might have been slightly influenced by someone on RC with a pretty established tank but I don't recall...... :)
 
I have no idea where you got that idea from :smokin:
Budcanandcopperband.jpg
 
The second unorthodox thing is chlorine bleach treatment of sea water.
Don't do this. Don't do a lot of the things I do. I am not responsible for anything you do, so just take it for what it is, unorthodox. :debi:First of all let me say that I did not invent this, that was Robert Straughn "The Father of Salt Water Fish Keeping".
In the fiftees this guy who was my mentor collected and kept just about everything except corals. His favorite thing for a tank was an undergravel filter but he didn't understand the principal of how it worked. He used it as a particle filter and didn't know or understand the bacterial aspect of the deviceAnyway, he also explored using Clorox or chlorine bleach to treat sea water. In his day and in my early days you could not easily buy artificial sea water so we just went to the sea and collected it. Here in New York where I live I used to collect it in the Long Island Sound. For those not familiar with that body of water it is between Connecticut and Long Island and it is fed in part from the East River which runs past Manhattan. It is not the best place to collect water because of a few factors. There is chemical pollution from the city run off, industrial run off from the factories, bacterial pollution from sewage treatment plants and paracitic polution from the red tide that occurs almost every year when the Sound gets too hot.:eek:
Not all of these problems can be fixed with bleach but organic, bacterial and paracitic pollution can. Bleach will not help with insecticides or metals so that water should not be used anyway. Of course we want to try to only collect pure water.:strange:
The dosage of bleach is one teaspoon to every five gallons of water. After 3 days the water needs to be airated and preferably run over carbon. If you don't want to use carbon then don't use that water for a week. Either way add chlorine eliminater at twice the dosage available at any pet shop.
It is very important that only "REGULAR" bleach be used. Any scents and your fish will die in about 10 seconds. Don't ask.
Now I know most people don't use NSW but there is another use for bleach.
If you have a tank of water where everything died from either a paracite, bacterial infection, flatworms, ich, fungus, the heartbreak of psorisis, whatever, you can still save the water. Bleach is just chlorine gas in water. If you left a bottle of bleach un opened, it would become fresh water as the gas evaporates. After the bleach does it's job, it evaporates leaving just pure water.
I have done this quite a few times with excellent results. Some of that water is still in my reef as my tank has never been emptied.
You remove any animals that are still living and add one cup of regular bleach to fifty gallons of water. You should leave in the rocks and sand. Airate it and after 3 days filter out any dead organisms (they will all be dead) and suck out tthe detritus with a canister filter. Add twice the dosage of chlorine remover and either run over carbon or airate it for a week. If by then there is no smell of chlorine, you can use it. I would test it first on some brave fish because I did once have an accident where I killed almost all of my fish. I used
"New Fresh Scent Clorox" bleach and in less then 10 seconds most of the fish were dying, some tried to jump out of the water. I did manage to save a few. Oddly enough the corals did not die but for a few weeks after, they had a nice fresh scent.
The first squid eggs that were successfully hatched, did so in bleach treated water.
When I started in this hobby everything had ich. I just thought all salt water fish naturally had white spots. :worried2:
There was no copper so I used pennies. There also were no test kits so I lost a lot of fish. Sometimes the ich was so severe that the fish would start to get spots in the bag even before I put them in the tank. I think it was from osmosis. OK maybe not. But you know what I mean.
When the water was like that and nothing would live in it, I took out the bleach and treated the water. If it were not for bleach, I would have quit the hobby. :headwallblue:
So to sum up. Please Don't do this. I do it but I am wierd. This is a thread of un orthodox practices, not necesarilly what you should do.
Someone once called me yelling that his fish died because I told him to put bleach in his tank, "with" his fish. I never said to do this to a living animal unless you want it dead, but fresh smelling.
 
Jacob, no. If you have a healthy tank, don't put anything in it, especially bleach. Unless as I said, you want great smelling but dead animals.
This stuff wil even kill Godzilla. Remember the last Godzilla movie where they killed him with that big Alka Seltzer looking pill? That was bleach.:hmm3:
I also said, to don't do anything I do.:confused:
I just thought it would be an interesting thread .
I do a lot of things and take it for granted, but most hobbiests never heard of any of this stuff. :beachbum:
 
I was being sarcastic
Click to expand...

I know you were. Otherwise I would have said, "I am fed up to here, (my hand is under my chin) with people not reading fully what I am trying to say.
But I didn't because I knew you were being sarcastic. :wavehand:
 
Are you serious!?!? Do you really do these things and have success with them or are you just pulling our legs..? That's incredible if you do.
 
Of course I do them. I could make this stuff up but I don't have to. Most people on here were brought up with computers and never heard of these things but I thought it would be interesting and informative to put up a thread about it before I get too old and forget what a fish is. :smokin:
This hobby is easy now but how do you think we came about all of this stuff?
Remember when I said I cured ich with pennies. That was a normal thing to do. What else would you do? There was no liquid copper or kits. Pennys worked great, the only problem was you had to take them out when you saw the fish lying on it's side, that meant you over did it and poisoned the fish, but they would usually recover, you just had to remove 10 or 12 cents. :spin2:
Just to demonstrate how things have changed, my Mother recently died at the age of 99. When she was a little girl living on the Bowery in Manhattan and she got sick, her Mother would make her sleep in the stable with the horses. They figured the smell of horse manure would cure her.
I guess it worked, she was never sick a day in her life right up to the end.:strange:
Anyway, back to fish:
It was trial and error, mostly error. I did say I killed a lot of fish. I don't any more.:beachbum:
 
Paul B said:
First of all let me say that I did not invent this, that was Robert Straughn "The Father of Salt Water Fish Keeping".
In the fiftees this guy who was my mentor collected and kept just about everything except corals.
Click to expand...

He kept corals too ;) I've got a copy of his coral book :D It talks about placing your corals in a shallow bowl of sea water and taking them outside for a few hours of sun every few days :)
 
I'm a bit old-school, I still run reversed UG filters in all my tanks. Probably the most terrifying thing I do is a 20% water change every ten years whether it needs it or not.

never tried bleach, but I can't say it hasn't crossed my mind. Strikes me as kinda similar to what we do with ozone. Love the thread, great stuff!
 
whipsaw said:
never tried bleach, but I can't say it hasn't crossed my mind. Strikes me as kinda similar to what we do with ozone. Love the thread, great stuff!
Click to expand...

The bleach thing is used different than we typically use ozone. It's not used in a tank with live fish, but rather to pretreat (sanitize and oxidize organics) water before use in the tank. It needs to be neutralized first. Of course high rates of Ozone can be used the same way.
 
Ah yeah. I wonder if peroxide would do the same thing? and how hard it'd be to get back out.

I didn't start with saltwater until sometime after commercial salt mixes hit the market, though I had some friends that still made their own synthetic sea salt. It's crazy how fast things have progressed.
 
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