Paul B's thread

My good friend who is sick still has a fever and is very weak even though he tested negative. His wife is trying to get him to a doctor today to re test him and her as he obviously has something. I am very concerned for him and his wife, our closest friends for most of our life.

Here on Long Island we can't order food from a supermarket for curbside delivery because it is a 2 week wait just to order so I am going to have to go in person because I don't have enough Amphipods to eat and my fish are all hiding.

I know Larry from LRS foods eats his fish food but I am not in the mood for sushi today.
I may have to start fishing behind my house but I am not sure what I will catch there. In Know in the summer there is sea bass but now I think all we have is ducks and seagulls and I don't want to yell Fowl.

I made a nice breakfast this morning and my wife and I had it on the beach. But it was cold. So cold I saw a chicken with a cape-on. :rolleyes:
 
Paul, I feel for you my friend. I have a boat stored at home. If I had a boat in a yard that was closed I would be nuts right now, with all the extra time. Good way to look at it- most marine Suppliers are closed, shipping is slow, so if you needed supplies to get the boat ready it might be tough to get them. We have been going to the beach and forests around the shore that have trails, walking, and once a week hopefully to haul lobster pots. I was in the middle of a basement family room remodel with a 180 gallon tank built into wall with maintenance walkway behind, side door front entry. I have the walls to studs, and 12 can light HALO boxes to wire, and have Carlon boxes and outlets to wire for the aquarium. I wish I could do the wallboard and wainscoting, but I don’t want to go to out, to help stop the nonsense of this virus. We are all on hold. Hang in there! That 180 got filled with life in a hurry, it is holding my wife’s 90 gallon reef from her high school classroom, that surely would have perished. All those fish corals and inverts are loving life and I have boosted her species count by getting some good deals locally and from friends cuttings. God Bless! Make some cool stuff in that workshop Brother! You are creative!
 
I can't order food here as there is a 2 week wait but.

I do have an order in to another food store and am waiting for them to call for me to go pick it up at the curb but we couldn't get everything there. But the food is good because that is the Italian store we normally went to. I managed to sneak in an order before the floor fell out but I am not sure yet if they will be able to manage this order at this time.

We have no milk, bread, eggs, vegetables or my staple, clams. :cool:

We can get eggs here at a farm stand but milk I have to get at a market. I don't drink milk and only use it in coffee but I don't move without at least 3 or 4 cups before I go out or do anything and as you know, when you get used to it, you can't function or stay awake and I don't like seawater or "White Out" in my coffee. :sick: But I am a Veteran and will deal. :)

I just washed my car again, including the engine and spare tire so if I had food, I could eat it off my engine block. I washed and waxed my garage and workshop floor. My reef tank is so clean the fish keep crashing into the glass and I spit shined my winter boots. :oops:

Like I said my wife doesn't have my hobbies so she is vacuuming so much, she is wearing out the oak floor and soon my couch will fall into my garage.

If I get my stuff, I can make my specialty, Manhattan Clam Chowder. (y)

 
This morning I made some really nice waffles. I make breakfast every day and I like to get a little creative and do something different every day as much as possible.
These are Paleo waffles. (Think cave man) No wheat flour or sugar but they taste really good. (we always try to eat healthy up to a point)
(They are almond flour and coconut flour) I am trying to use what I have and the alternative is dirt, ASW or diatom powder. o_O

The other stuff is just nuked apples with a little cinnamon and cloves, and nuked blueberries, bananas.

That red stuff is the "Jumping Juice" I make for my wife for pain, and it works great because if she forgets to take it, the pain for her is overwhelming.

I wanted to eat outside but it is still a little cold, like 55 degrees. I don't live in a Girly climate, we only have Manly climate here where it rains nails and hails cro bars. :rolleyes:



On another note, it seems my friend has the Corona virus. But although he has a fever and not enough energy to get up, he is still breathing with no problems so the Dr. told him to stay home and don't take anything for fever because it's the fever that kills the virus. Or more accurately "inactivates" the virus because viruses are not actually alive so you can't kill them.
If he can wait it out he will get cured and as a benefit will probably be immune to it afterwards. I really hope so anyway.

A market also just called me and I can pick up my food tomorrow. That is good news. Be well everyone.
 
Although we live on a 120 mile long Island and I live on the east end, it is still about 45 minutes for us to go all the way out east on the North Fork of the Island where we live. WE just went out there and explored many beaches that I never knew were there. We had lunch on this one.







My wife can't walk on the sand so we had to stay on the pavement. Connecticut is probably 27 miles across from here.



Then we went to a Park at Orient Point right next to the Plum Island Ferry. I think Orient point is the most eastern part of the US beside Montauk Point which is on the South Fork of Long Island.



This is the road that goes to Orient Beach State park and that is Plum Island in the background where the Government did animal experiments with incurable diseases and all sorts of Nasty nerve poisons etc.



Now the Lab there is closed and they don't know what to do with the Island. Being what they did there, I don't want to live there but it is prime real estate and may be developed. (No Thanks)

Nelson DeMille wrote a book titled "Plum Island" about it.







This afternoon we are hosting an Anti Corona Virus party.

It will be outside in my driveway. The neighbors will all bring their own chairs, drinks, glasses and snacks. I provide the music.

We will all be at least 6' apart.
 
On a brighter story, I noticed my last batch of Fireclown eggs hatched so with nothing else to do, I figured I would try to find some of them.

I turned off all the powerheads, I have 5 of them. And I looked closely at the film on the surface of the water.

After a while I saw one. A couple of seconds went by and I started to see more and more of them. Of course I can barely see them but there are quite a few all over the place.

I don't raise fish any more so they will become gorgonian food but thats just the way it is. Even if I wanted to raise them, I couldn't as I can't get rotifers now. Maybe in the future I will again raise some fish but now I have more pressing things to do and these guys spawn constantly. I don't even like Fireclowns as they are not that interesting even though thy are quite rare as I rarely see them anywhere.

I got the male 29 years ago as a baby and I thought it was a RedHawk fish because I never saw a Fireclown.

 
WE are still in a funk but getting back to fish. After I lost my copperband my tank is having a big aiptasia invasion.
Those things don't normally bother me but lately a lot of things are bothering me so I wanted to take it out on something and all I have that I am not particularly fond of are aiptasia.

I looked around and found one of my old prototypes of a majano wand. I plugged it in and I was surprised it worked.

I killed a bunch of them and it was gratifying. Some came back so I killed them again. Now I feel much better and hope some return so I can yet again kill them. (The thing is not designed to kill aiptasia so if you have those, don't buy one)



These guys are much more than friends but I am not sure where they are spawning or even how they spawn because I don't remember ever having Rainsford gobies spawning or ever having two of them but for a year they stood on complete opposite ends of the 6' tank. Now they hang out all the time

 
I've got a pretty bad aiptasia infestation myself. Thinking of getting a Klein Butterfly as many folks say they do as good a job as Copperband but are easier to care for. Apparently Molly Miller blennies are also known to occasionally eat aiptasia so I'm considering them as well. Sustainable Aquatics sell captive-bred Molly Miller blennies so that's a plus in my book. Any thoughts?
 
I don't know about the Klein Butterfly or remember if I ever had one, I also never heard of a Molly Miller bleeny.

Maybe I should find out. But I am partial to copperbands and almost always had one. Mine just died after about 10 years.
 
WE had a "little" scare yesterday and this morning. Yesterday my wife and I took a walk and about 5 minutes into the walk I started to get itchy.
Like all over. I felt like I had fire ants doing the macarana all over me and also in places I didn't know I had. :oops:

Of course we walk up to this couple that we always wanted to make friends with and we were talking to them for like ten minutes. I was dying to scratch
"all over" but I didn't want these people to think I had cooties, amphipods or black ich.

The itchyness was unbearable and I know I was squirming so they may have thought I was a Mime, contortionist or Mick Jagger.
I put one foot on top of the other like I was resting my leg, but I was trying to scratch between my toes. It didn't work.

Eventually we left them and I told my wife "We have to go home".

She said Why! Whats the matter? Are you sick? With this virus around everyone is paranoid.

At home I told her what was going on and she insisted on inspecting me. I had this rash all over my body. I generally don't get rashes and I am not allergic to anything. So she rubs this stuff on me which was probably meat tenderizer and the itching subsided a "little".

I figured I would lay down. Yesterday we put this new blanket on the bed, right out of the package.
As I am laying there listening to Vintage Linda Ronstadt, I notice my tongue feels big. I have a big mouth but my tongue usually stays the same size.

My tongue was scraping against the teeth in back of my mouth and It seemed like I was having just a little trouble breathing. Just a little, not enough for me to call a SWAT team or "The Good Doctor" or even "Doctor Who " (it's an English thing, don't worry to much about it)

Now my Girly man emotions kick in and I am getting a touch worried.

I make the mistake of telling my wife who immediately goes into panic mode and wanted to give me CPR and get out the paddles.
She calls our Daughter in Vermont because her husband and Daughter have allergies to everything except air, and not all air.

She tells me to take Bennedril. All I have is our Grand Daughters Bennedril and she is 7. The largest does on the bottle was for a 10 year old so I take about two doses.

In ten minutes I am as Loopy as the people on Circ De Solei . I can't stand up so I go lay on the bed.

My tongue gets bigger. OOOOOooooooNNooooooo. I'm gonna die and Humble won't be able to come here to take my fish. But if he does he will quarantine them in tree stump remover and they will get nightmares.

I look up symptoms of Corona Virus and a big tongue. A rash are about the only things that the virus "doesn't " cause.

So We call my Doctor on the slim chance that he can see me. Here in New York nothing is open, you can't even open a clam.

But the nurse, who I know answered and she said, as long as you don't have Corona Virus symptoms, the Doctor will see you.
Of course If I had Corona Virus symptoms the doctor won't see me and I will have to go to a fortune teller or Lady GaGa concert.

I go there and the guy immediately sees the rash, takes blood, looks in my mouth, listens to my heart and lungs and doesn't have the slightest idea what is wrong with me but says he is getting a lot of patients now that have this from eating meat.

(I have learned that unless you have an arrow sticking out of your head or a crow bar stuck in your nether regions, they won't really know what the diagnosis is)

I almost never eat meat and didn't eat any in a week or so. He gives me a prescription for Prednisone.

Meantime Our Daughter is freeking out because she doesn't want me to go out of the house. It would be hard for the doctor to take blood through my computer screen unless I got really close to it and maybe stuck a USB cable in my arm.

So, I am still alive but the Bennedril is still making me walk like Uncle Festus from the Adams Family.

We think we figured it out. The new blanket my wife put on the bed was the only thing different we did. We bought it last year and one of my hobbies is removing those tags that say "Don't remove under penalty of the law"
So I am not sure where it came from.
 
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That sounds less than fun. Maybe your wife is so eager to get you out of the house that she tried the old “poison oak in your long underwear” trick? I’m starting a new tank in the fall and I’m sold on your fish heath methods. Not so much that I think quarantine is the worst, as much as that I don’t find it practical to quarantine every single wet thing that goes in the tank and then if you’re not doing that then why bother.
So what I’m considering is setting up a smallish tank in the basement with rock and algae and low light to put new arrivals into to get them comfy and onto quality live foods before they go into the dt. Do you think that’s worthwhile or do you espouse straight into prime time?
Would love to hear your thoughts.
 
I had an allergic reaction to an antibiotic a few years ago that had sulfa in it and the swelling and rash was localized to one particular spot that is hidden by clothing (won't say anymore) but I had to have a very large dose of prednisone (which turns me into a jerk) and a lot of benadryl but the one thing the doctor said that stuck in my mind was that the allergic reaction would happen in the same localized spot and would be worse so needless to say no sulfa medications for me ever ever ever again :eek:

Allergic reactions are so much fun!!!
 
Patrick I do think quarantine in almost any sense is one of the worst things we could do as it stresses the fish which causes disease. If you can quarantine something in a tank as large as your main tank and have it filled with live rock, I think it would be fine, but no one is going to do that. I find, with me anyway, that any pests I may get seem to starve themselves out and I have never had to remove any and disease is a non issue.
But some live food and mostly frozen foods are a must with no dry foods unless it is an emergency or you are on vacation.

I believe fish need some living gut bacteria occasionally, maybe once week or more and you can get that from live worms or fresh seafood like clams. Commercial frozen foods are great but I like to add some living bacteria that I know is alive.

afboundguy I don't ever remember having an allergic reaction to anything, but theres always a first time.
It is just about all gone now and last night wasn't to bad.
 
I've always done pretty much what Paul does I never quarantine my fish and I never treat with copper. There is no copper in the ocean to my knowledge. When a new fish goes in the tank and the original inhabitants break out with ich the fish with parasites all go to my cleaner wrasse and my cleaner shrimp to get cleaned. I believe all fish carry parasites and when they get stressed as when a new fish arrives the parasites show up. After short time they all calm down and things go back to normal Just my humble opinion.Never lost a fish to ich. I've done it this way since 1987
 
I don't ever remember having an allergic reaction to anything, but theres always a first time.
It is just about all gone now and last night wasn't to bad.

I had never had an allergic reaction either so I was incredibly concerned and had no idea what was going on. Needless to say afbounguy's better 1/2 was very disturbed when I came back into the bedroom in my birthday suit freaking out!!!

 
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