Paul B's thread

Hi my name is Dave long time fan first time poster ;)... I just wanted to say I read the entire thread from the first post to this last one and it was really enjoyable to read it start to finish. I used to read every few pages but it is 100% more enjoyable reading it all together.

That being said this thread has further pushed me to go in the direction that you take @Paul B with your tank practices that I was trending towards already without even really knowing it. Sad to say I won't be adding an underground filter to my current tank but who knows I may think of it when and if I can get a bigger tank. I have never QT'ed a fish I just drip acclimate them. I had been blowing around the detritus in my tank for a while and have noticed a huge change in the tank since I started doing that. I will start focusing even more on some of your practices and hope to one day get the same amazing results as you have. My first goal is to get my clowns spawning and after reading this thread it makes a lot of sense that they haven't spawned based on the crap food I've been feeding them (they're about 9 years old now).

I have also been focusing on better live food (just ask Paul I've pm'ed him way too much about brine shrimp and white worms) and I have stopped using pellets as of a few days ago. I used to use them out of convenience but after reading this whole thread I will be using them for emergencies only. I picked up some LRS food yesterday and have just been feeding the tank that and white worms (which the whole tank corals and all go beserk over)

This new guy is at the very beginning at the right in the back, you can hardly see him but he is behind that black fish that I forget what it is.

I'm about 99.4528% sure it's a McCosker's flasher wrasse. I had 2-3 in my old 55 and loved those guys...

Cat food makes them grow very fast and I have so many worms I was thinking of eating them myself.

Is cat food better or worse than bread, yogurt and yeast? I never saw anything about cat food in all the research I read and I have plenty of cat food!!!
 
Paul is there a specific kind of clam you use or recommend? I live in Ipswich MA (home of the little neck clams) and I have access to tons of fresh seafood and didn't know if freshness mattered more than what kind of clam?
 
I stil feed the worms bread and yogurt, but I think all you need is catfood. I just don't know what to do with all the bread after it is almost gone and all I have left is the ends.

I use chowder clams which are just really big clams. But any clams will do. One chowder clam lasts me almost a month, they are huge.
 
I stil feed the worms bread and yogurt, but I think all you need is catfood. I just don't know what to do with all the bread after it is almost gone and all I have left is the ends.

I've only had my colony for a few weeks and when I went to split it there was no bread left whatsoever they devoured it completely. If it keeps happening that they leave moldy bread I may try the cat food idea...

I use chowder clams which are just really big clams. But any clams will do. One chowder clam lasts me almost a month, they are huge.

Ok thanks I've reached out to some local clammers and they're going to get me some of the larger clams in the area. If a big one lasts about a month in your tank a smaller one should last almost as long for my 25 gallon tank. I'll have the freshest clams possible picked within hours of freezing!!!

The clam flats were closed today because of over 2" of rain last night so I'll have to wait a few days unfortunately…
 
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This Morning we got "take out" from a diner and went to a local beach and drove almost up to the crashing waves.
Then I took out my DIY hand sanitizer and cleaned my hands and steering wheel, radio, turn signal etc and opened the breakfast cartons and coffee.

We had a nice breakfast and found a dumpster to dump the cartons. Then I took another sanitizer and cleaned our hands, steering wheel etc and made sure we didn't touch our face.

While there we saw a young girl, about 20, walk in front of my car and sit on the rocks near us. It was raining and as she started to leave we noticed that she had on a Fordham shirt. Our Daughter graduated Fordham 20 years ago and just went back there for Law School.

We rolled down the window and commented on her shirt and told her our Daughter goes there.
She was very polite and nice and said her brother goes to Fordham and she was going to The Annapolis Naval Academy.
I said that was fantastic. Then she said she got into "West Point Military academy " which blew me away as that is the best school in the country, maybe the world. I was so impressed by this young Lady. :giggle: I love to see someone like that, someone who will make a difference in the world. Someone with respect, social graces and brains. She saw my Viet Nam Veteran hat and thanked me for my service. Fantastic girl and I hope I see her again as I would love to talk to her more.

We took a nice ride and found neighborhoods and places with in a mile or two from our home that we didn't even know existed.

We looked at all the homes, most of which are impeccably neat and landscaped beautifully. Of course we also notice the homes that we would give a summons to if we were the Landscape Police :cool: But we find very few of those.

I also notice all the people here that display an American Flag, as I always do and it makes me happy to see so many Patriotic families especially in times like these. Some people even put up Christmas lights to raise spirits.

I think Americans at least, will come out of this better, stronger and nicer and maybe with all this money going into medical research they will come up with cures for the diseases that will still be here when the virus leaves. Things like cancer, heart disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkensons and others. We should not forget about those people who have afflictions besides this.

But right now, rightfully so we have to focus on the disease at hand. Here in New York we are not doing to good, but I am sure this will pass and hopefully we won't lose many more, or any more great people :)

That was actually the beach where I collect water. The girl was sitting on those rocks.

 
Sweet pictures but if you're bored you should take some more pictures to help with boredom!!! :cool:
 
Last night I wanted to clean the front glass of my tank because if I don't clean it in 3 days, it looks like sheet metal so I clean it every day.
I lifted the front panel and stuck the glass cleaning magnet inside.

The tank overflowed a little. I figured maybe I dropped it in to fast and it splashed.
The top rim of my tank is just at my eye level so I can't really see the top of the water.

I started to move the magnet cleaner and a lot of water spilled out.

OOOOOOhhhhNNNNNNoooo.

So I stick my hand over the rim and notice the water is right up to the top rim. AAAAAhhhhhhhhh

I immediately shut off the inflow to the tank from this 7 gallon bucket I have hanging from the ceiling behind the tank that automatically fills from my RO/DI using gravity which goes to a float valve on the top of the tank.

I get a hose and siphon out 10 gallons of water so now the water level is about an inch down and in no danger of overflowing.

Then I look for the problem and find it right away.

Lately, with not much to do I have been cleaning the back of the tank using a magnet scraper.
I have a 6' plastic on the back of the tank that leans against the lights because I lose a lot of fish to jumping. Especially when I listen to my Janis Joplin music.

I must have moved the plastic to much and it was pushing down on the float about an inch so the float valve wouldn't shut off.

I tested the salinity and it was about 0.14 so I could have kept kissing gouramies or goldfish.

I immediately took some dry asw and after mixing it with a little water, poured it into the manifold that feeds the Reverse undergravel filter.

I am not one of those people that worry about raising the salinity more than one percent in 24 hours.

So I did that a few times over about an hour and now the salinity is probably closer to 0.018.

I have not seen the tank yet today but instead of letting the ATO fill the tank in the next week, I will add back the water that I siphoned out and eventually it will get back to normal.

These little occurrences are needed to keep the interest up because if nothing ever happened, we would call this "stamp Collecting"

You could see that white plastic piece here over the back top of the tank.

 
Last night I wanted to clean the front glass of my tank because if I don't clean it in 3 days, it looks like sheet metal so I clean it every day.
I lifted the front panel and stuck the glass cleaning magnet inside.

The tank overflowed a little. I figured maybe I dropped it in to fast and it splashed.
The top rim of my tank is just at my eye level so I can't really see the top of the water.

I started to move the magnet cleaner and a lot of water spilled out.

OOOOOOhhhhNNNNNNoooo.

So I stick my hand over the rim and notice the water is right up to the top rim. AAAAAhhhhhhhhh

I immediately shut off the inflow to the tank from this 7 gallon bucket I have hanging from the ceiling behind the tank that automatically fills from my RO/DI using gravity which goes to a float valve on the top of the tank.

I get a hose and siphon out 10 gallons of water so now the water level is about an inch down and in no danger of overflowing.

Then I look for the problem and find it right away.

Lately, with not much to do I have been cleaning the back of the tank using a magnet scraper.
I have a 6' plastic on the back of the tank that leans against the lights because I lose a lot of fish to jumping. Especially when I listen to my Janis Joplin music.

I must have moved the plastic to much and it was pushing down on the float about an inch so the float valve wouldn't shut off.

I tested the salinity and it was about 0.14 so I could have kept kissing gouramies or goldfish.

I immediately took some dry asw and after mixing it with a little water, poured it into the manifold that feeds the Reverse undergravel filter.

I am not one of those people that worry about raising the salinity more than one percent in 24 hours.

So I did that a few times over about an hour and now the salinity is probably closer to 0.018.

I have not seen the tank yet today but instead of letting the ATO fill the tank in the next week, I will add back the water that I siphoned out and eventually it will get back to normal.

These little occurrences are needed to keep the interest up because if nothing ever happened, we would call this "stamp Collecting"

You could see that white plastic piece here over the back top of the tank.

Yikes. Fingers crossed, hoping for the best...
 
Thanks, everything looks great today and on an added note, I think my Rainsford gobies are starting to spawn.

They normally stay on different ends of the tank, but looking through the back glass they appeared to be doing the Macarana. But it could have been the Hustle or Tango. I am not sure because Janis Joplin music doesn't lend itself to those dance moves.

 
Paul have you ever tried breeding anything? I don't remember you mentioning that in the thread but was just curious with all the XXX shows going on in your tank :cool::eek::p
 
I have spawned octopus, seahorses, clownfish, bangai cardinals, coral banded shrimp, hermit crabs, blus devils, bananafish, pipefish, mandarins, ruby red dragonettes, scooter dragonettes, watchman gobies, clown gobies and maybe some I forgot.

I have not raised all of them, only blue devils, clownfish, bangai's, seahorses and I think thats it.

Here are seahorses that I collected, the female is transfering the eggs to the male in my reef.



This male blue devil is over his nest of eggs in that barnacle shell. This was in about 1972.



You can see the baby octopus here.


These spawned every couple of weeks for 7 years in the 70s.


Mandarins spawn constantly.


Clown gobies spawned on and killed most of my acropora.

Pregnant pipe.
 
Paul is there a specific kind of clam you use or recommend? I live in Ipswich MA (home of the little neck clams) and I have access to tons of fresh seafood and didn't know if freshness mattered more than what kind of clam?
The "chowder clam" Paul refers to, is a cherrystone to us New Englanders.
 
Oh my god, those baby octopi!

Yes, those are octopi. They would eat "a" brine shrimp, and when they caught one they would wrap their arms around it and ink.

Yes chowder clams are the biggest of the cherrystone clams. They are as big as a baseball or even a softball.
 
I am diatoming my tank again. Do I have to? No, I just did it last week. I am starring at the detritus particles going into the intake. This is as exciting as watching paint dry which I did this morning when I painted a wall.....Again.
My fish have no idea why I am doing this again and the tank is not dirty. It is just a total waste of time.

But it is an essential waste of time at a time when I have more time than I need. At this stage of the year I would be working on my boat. Of course it is still shrink wrapped and I can't get in it as that is not an essential part of life.

Well, for me it is but I can't leave my wife alone to long as she doesn't have the enormous amount of totally useless hobbies that I do.
She will just keep vacuuming until she makes a hole in the floor and my couch will fall into my garage. I installed a very powerful "whole house" vacuum that will suck out your ear wax from across the street.

I can take fish pictures, but I already have to many. I can wax my workshop floor, but I did that too. My car is very clean and if I put more wax on it I will slide off the seat.

I can spent my entire life in my workshop/Man cave as I am now but only because she is on the phone with one of her bored friends.



 
That is kind of how I feel, but my place is not nearly as clean as yours. I guess I should do all those cleaning type things that I have neglected, but the reason I neglected them is that I never really wanted to them, and now I really don't have enough excuses. Since I just removed the sand bed from my tank, now I should do water changes. But I just dosed some fluconazole for the algae issues I am having, so water changes are delayed for a couple weeks. All I can really do is scrape the biofilm from the front glass and empty the skimmer, and that doesn't take long.

So - we cleaned most of our backyard this morning - I am sealing it off from rats, which are big problem here in Cambridge. Life at home....I think this afternoon we are doing our taxes...Yay!@
 
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