Unorthodox ways to do things

[Paul B]

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.

[Rybren]

My most unorthodox thing is to read your posts and not stare at you (or my computer screen) in a funny way.

[Paul B]

Well then start stareing because they will get wierder. I thought everyone did this stuff. :beer:

[jimmyj7090]

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...... :)

[Paul B]

I have no idea where you got that idea from :smokin:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/Budcanandcopperband.jpg

[jimmyj7090]

Ahh, you must have been ispired by the same person :D

[Paul B]

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.

[usefulidiot213]

Holy Crap....

[jacob.morgan78]

So... in other words... you're saying I should put bleach in my healthy tank? :)

[Paul B]

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:

[insanefishguy]

^only if it smells bad!

[insanefishguy]

Haha... I guess I read to slow.

[jacob.morgan78]

I was being sarcastic :-) I know that Paul B is allowed to do things a little differently!

Much respect!

[Paul B]

I was being sarcastic

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:

[aandfsoccr04]

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.

[Paul B]

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:

[billsreef]

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.

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 :)

[whipsaw]

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!

[billsreef]

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!

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.

[whipsaw]

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.

[Paul B]

He kept corals too
Bil, I don't remember that. He doesn't mention it in his book, I still have it and will have to look at what he says about corals. It has been years since I looked at it.
"The salt water aquarium for the home"
I know he mentioned Lee Chin Eng a lot and he kept corals.

[TheHoove]

Not sure that it classifies as unorthodox, But I mix my salt with a paint mixer in a cordless drill, then use it immediately. Been doing to that way for 8 years.

[doctorgori]

Not sure that it classifies as unorthodox, But I mix my salt with a paint mixer in a cordless drill, then use it immediately. Been doing to that way for 8 years.

Clear is "clear" right?....I recall I got flamed like the mutha when I said I simply dumped my ASW in a bucket and ran a powerhead until it was clear then used it immediatley; chlorine and all ...I've never admitted it since, but I still do and haven't noticed one modicum of ill effects ....this is of course doing less than a %25 H2O change

edited to add: I use RO so no chlorine issues but I still have no nevermind about it for FW

[billsreef]

Bil, I don't remember that. He doesn't mention it in his book, I still have it and will have to look at what he says about corals. It has been years since I looked at it.
"The salt water aquarium for the home"
I know he mentioned Lee Chin Eng a lot and he kept corals.

I don't recall seeing him mention much of corals outside of that one book. The rest of his writings concentrated on fish.

[TheHoove]

Clear is "clear" right?....I recall I got flamed like the mutha when I said I simply dumped my ASW in a bucket and ran a powerhead until it was clear then used it immediatley; chlorine and all ...I've never admitted it since, but I still do and haven't noticed one modicum of ill effects ....this is of course doing less than a %25 H2O change

edited to add: I use RO so no chlorine issues but I still have no nevermind about it for FW

I even went the first 6 years on tap water and dechlor. 2 years ago i finally joined the masses with rodi. But then im fortunate. My tap water going into my ro unit is about 14dts. But the paint mixer i think isz way better and faster than powerheads. If i run it near the surface it also arieats as it mixes. And dont mix with the drill on high...watger eruupts ike a volcanov out of the bucket!

[Paul B]

Unorthodox feeding methods
Again, I thought everyone did this stuff. OK maybe not but it was always common sense to me.:strange:
Like I said there was not always commercially available stuff to feed our animals. The hobby of keeping the animals started first, then the hobby about feeding and careing for them came about. This is about food that is maybe not available to everyone.:confused:
At one time or another I have kept everything available in the hobby except manta rays, I always wanted one of those.:fish2:
Before we kept reefs many of us kept predator tanks. I liked triggers, lionfish, moray eels, puffers and especially anglerfish.
These guys are not especially difficult to feed but many specimins will only eat live food. :fish2:
I could always get goldfish and guppies but it was always thought you should not feed these freshwater prey to saltwater fish.
In the summer I can collect saltwater fish for food but I don't like chopping through ice to collect saltwater fish in the winter so I came up with something that in my mind anyway I thought was better.
Most predators love guppies and goldfish and they are cheap so I had a tank with these fish in it and just before I fed them to my fish I injected them in their belly with fish oil. You knew I was going to get fish oil in this post someplace, didn't you?:hmm3:
Fish oil like cod liver oil is of course from salt water fish and very healthy for our fish. I figured if I injected this oil into a prey fish my predator fish would get the benefit of the salt water oil. It worked and whenever I have one of those fish that will only eat live fish, I fill the guppy or goldfish up with salt water fish oil. (I take the stuff myself every day)
I also inject live grass shrimp with oil but I don't think this is needed, I do it just because I can and I think the extra oil helps.
This also has another benefit but not so much for the guppy. The prey fish does not swim too well after this enhancement so the predator can catch it easier. Now don't be a Sissy, these are feeder fish that are going to be fed to fish anyway. I eat fish every day along with shrimp, clams, oysters and squid and I never really thought how that animal suffered before I ate it. I don't eat red meat so I don't hurt cows so it evens out.
Besides those shrimp you are feeding your fish were also happily swimming around minding their own business.
Another thing that some may find a little odd is feeding Plaster of Paris to fish. Don't re read that, I did say Plaster of Paris, the stuff your walls are made out of. OK not just plaster the way it comes out of the box. I do something to it first.
And I only do this for special fish like moorish Idols and maybe angelfish. Plaster of Paris is just calcium, you can eat the stuff, (but don't)
I also did not invent this but it was used many years ago, before we forgot some basics.
When I keep moorish Idols or any fish I want to get extra calcium into I do this. I mix a little Plaster of Paris and when it starts to set, I can ad whatever I want like banannas. Moorish Idols love banannas, I have no Idea why. I also add some vitamins and greens like nori, maybe a little flake food and fish oil.
The natural diet for Moorish Idols is sponge and in the sea that is al I have ever seen them eat. I found a sponge in New York that grows only on floating wooden docks and Idols love the stuff. They practically jump out of the water for it, but sometimes I ran out of this and needed something to fill in.
This Plaster thing, wnen set becomes the same consistancy as sponge and moorish Idols along with some other fish love the stuff. I never tasted it myself. The Plaster gives the fish needed calcium, the texture fools the fish and I can add whatever I think will benefit the fish.:beer:
I am able to keep moorish Idols for a while longer than many hobbiests do and that is, I think because I have spent some time diving with them trying to learn their secrets. In the sea I never say them eat plaster but that is only because Home Depot doesn't deliver to Tahiti.
I am sure everyone on here knows how to force feed a puffer that does not want to eat. But just in case, you just grab him, being careful not to get bit and being a puffer, he will try to puff up. So you then stick the food in his mouth with a toothpick. They don't puke too well so usually the food will stay down, but not always. Fish also don't have tongues for anyone who never looked in their mouths. Thats probably why they can't speak well.

[dweathers]

This is so interesting to hear about your practices. Keep them coming please.

[jacob.morgan78]

wow. that is awesome... you should go ahead and write a book!

Thank You!

[Paul B]

you should go ahead and write a book!


Jacob I started to write a book in the 70s but my ideas kept becoming out of date.
I still have it with my drawings.
Maybe someday I will write something on the older practices and the history of how we came about with all of this stuff.

[Sk8r]

Scary stuff. ;)
I did one bit of surgery (freshwater)---had a veiltailed angel get chewed, massively, not even side fins left; I arranged a bubbler to agitate the water extremely so that he was bounced off the bottom with his poor stubs of fins, and after a few days, (he was still struggling to swim, as he breathed) he began getting a little growth. The side fins grew out normally, except the right was always folded; and when the tail started to grow back, it was going to be totally bunched and a detriment to him. I got a razor, laid the poor fellow on a board, and sighted carefully to clear the peduncle and have only straight tissue. I cut off the twisted growth to new fin, medicated, and put him back in: I was feeding him off a toothpick, to be sure he could eat; but by then, nothing stopped him. That fish lived for years and years, with a pretty straight tail---just a little ripple in it.

[doctorgori]

^^^ that took nerve....

...Moorish Idols ...I kept a trio for like a year I think...I wanna say I fed them Formula II .... they are fast growers

[miwoodar]

bleach

I was recently involved in a thread about cleaning rock with bleach and muriatic acid that went astray. After a few stupid back and forths with a guy making wacky assertions I threw my hands up and actually deleted my posts. His comments didn't have basis in either tradition or in the literature.

Paul, I want to hear more. I bet you have a properly-tattered copy of the Marine Aquarium Reference laying around somehwere, yes?

[Paul B]

I got a bunch of them

You mean you guys dont do this stuff? ( How do you keep anything alive?
What would you have done before the internet, that was invented, when? Like last tuesday. The world existed a little while before computers. When you had to think on your own. Figure things out. experiment.
learn, cry. It was all exciting and not just look it up on Google and do what every one else does.
The hobby is bordering on boreing now, everything is done for us. There is no need to experiment.
No, let me try this and see if it blows up.
No, let me see how many pennies I have to add to cure ich.
No, how rotten can my pump get and still be able to put my hand in the water without getting electrocuted?
No, OMG it's eye popped out.
The temperature is 92! is that bad?

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/scan0012.jpg

[miwoodar]

http://i759.photobucket.com/albums/xx237/EccentricaG/golfclap.gif


It's not boring for me. I'm still on the verge of blowing things up. :D

[Gorgok]

Wait, you are supposed to let water sit after mixing it? I mainly use NSW to fix my salinity from my skimmer being a little wet, but i just eyeball the mix, use a wooden spoon to stir it for about a minute, then add it once i see its clear. I actually changed salts because the one i used before wouldn't clear up in a minute, and it annoyed me that it took so long....

[Sk8r]

Back when, cities used chlorine to treat water and you could get rid of it by allowing water to sit in a warm spot. The chlorine would bubble out of solution, making bubbles over all the surfaces, you whack the container a few times to shake it up to the surface and wait until it'd stopped bubbling, usually 24 hours. Then it was safe to use. Nowadays cities use chloramine, a chlorine compound that won't come out of solution. There was a period of unfortunate incidents as hobbyists who'd gotten their info from mum tried letting water with chloramine sit that way.

When I started out, aged about 6 and in charge of my own tank, we had Metaframe tanks whose joints were sealed with a tarlike substance, and capped with a longish triangular metal corner frame and rim. If you got a leak, you emptied the tank and either pressed in more tar, or, later, shot in a nasty black plastic substance. For years, filtration was a small plastic box with two tubes, one for the airline in, one for the flow out. You filled the bottom of the box with carbon, the top with white filter floss. I use something similar in my koi pond in the worst of algae season: it's called a pot filter. You put a submersible pump in a bucket, put filter medium and a rock atop, and sink it. Works like a charm.

[Rybren]

When I started out, aged about 6 and in charge of my own tank, we had Metaframe tanks whose joints were sealed with a tarlike substance, and capped with a longish triangular metal corner frame and rim. If you got a leak, you emptied the tank and either pressed in more tar, or, later, shot in a nasty black plastic substance. For years, filtration was a small plastic box with two tubes, one for the airline in, one for the flow out. You filled the bottom of the box with carbon, the top with white filter floss. I use something similar in my koi pond in the worst of algae season: it's called a pot filter. You put a submersible pump in a bucket, put filter medium and a rock atop, and sink it. Works like a charm.

Had the same tank, same filters, and even made the same pond filter.

I also started out at about 6 years old and learned a very important lesson in my very first week - NEVER place an aquarium next to a dart board.

[jacob.morgan78]

Jacob I started to write a book in the 70s but my ideas kept becoming out of date.
I still have it with my drawings.
Maybe someday I will write something on the older practices and the history of how we came about with all of this stuff.

I very much wish I could motivate you more to do this. You have such great stuff to share! If anyone knows a publicist, send them this way!

[syrinx]

Back when, cities used chlorine to treat water and you could get rid of it by allowing water to sit in a warm spot. The chlorine would bubble out of solution, making bubbles over all the surfaces, you whack the container a few times to shake it up to the surface and wait until it'd stopped bubbling, usually 24 hours. Then it was safe to use. Nowadays cities use chloramine, a chlorine compound that won't come out of solution. There was a period of unfortunate incidents as hobbyists who'd gotten their info from mum tried letting water with chloramine sit that way.

When I started out, aged about 6 and in charge of my own tank, we had Metaframe tanks whose joints were sealed with a tarlike substance, and capped with a longish triangular metal corner frame and rim. If you got a leak, you emptied the tank and either pressed in more tar, or, later, shot in a nasty black plastic substance. For years, filtration was a small plastic box with two tubes, one for the airline in, one for the flow out. You filled the bottom of the box with carbon, the top with white filter floss. I use something similar in my koi pond in the worst of algae season: it's called a pot filter. You put a submersible pump in a bucket, put filter medium and a rock atop, and sink it. Works like a charm.

I take care of one of those metaframe tanks to this day! It is a 40 breeder with matching chrome hood and striplight.

[Dr Colliebreath]

Glad I found this thread. I started around 6 also. I recall people looking at me funny when I was trying to cure a fish of swim bladder problems.

Surely you have used Tums for calcium and Alka Seltzer to aerate the water, no?

[Paul B]

SK8R, that black stuff is asphaltium varnish. Terrable stuff. But it beat chewing gum.
The very first tanks in Victorian England were mostly wood or metal and they were sealed by ship builders because they knew how to seal ships.
The bottoms were slate up to a couple of decades ago because the houses were not heated and they used to put oil lamps under the tank to warm it. Whale oil lamps.

[jubjub47]

Someone mentioned the use of peroxide earlier in the thread. I just wanted to say that the company I work for uses peroxide religiously on fish only tanks. If dosed properly and often enough it will keep algae growth to nearly inexistent. If you overdose it will drop the ph too much and cause the tank to cloud.

[billsreef]

I was so happy when the switch to silicon sealant was made. I hated digging out that old black stuff and resealing tanks every few years :D


Someone mentioned the use of peroxide earlier in the thread. I just wanted to say that the company I work for uses peroxide religiously on fish only tanks. If dosed properly and often enough it will keep algae growth to nearly inexistent. If you overdose it will drop the ph too much and cause the tank to cloud.

The peroxide doesn't drop the pH, the overdose simply kills stuff.

[Paul B]

I hated digging out that old black stuff and resealing tanks every few years



And scraping the rust off the angle iron corners and re painting.

[billsreef]

And scraping the rust off the angle iron corners and re painting.

I was happily forgetting about that until you reminded me :lol:

[KafudaFish]

Got home at midnight last night, opened the front door and could hear my PH sucking air.
Great.

About half a gallon was on the floor.

I grabbed a gallon jug, turned on the warm tap water, added half a cup of salt, shook it for a minute, poured it in and went to bed.

[Paul B]

Thats exactly what I would have done and did on a few ocasions.

[doctorgori]

When I started out, aged about 6 and in charge of my own tank, we had Metaframe tanks whose joints were sealed with a tarlike substance, and capped with a longish triangular metal corner frame and rim. If you got a leak, you emptied the tank and either pressed in more tar, or, later, shot in a nasty black plastic substance. For years, filtration was a small plastic box with two tubes, one for the airline in, one for the flow out.

ha ha...brings back warm & fuzzy memories ....

my 1st tank was a Metaframe 5gal in 1967 ...those filters were called "bubbleup" corner filters /// Hartz made the charcoal and glass wool, I'm guesing the pump was either a metaframe or "silent Giant" ....

[jacob.morgan78]

SK8R, that black stuff is asphaltium varnish. Terrable stuff. But it beat chewing gum.
The very first tanks in Victorian England were mostly wood or metal and they were sealed by ship builders because they knew how to seal ships.
The bottoms were slate up to a couple of decades ago because the houses were not heated and they used to put oil lamps under the tank to warm it. Whale oil lamps.

And scraping the rust off the angle iron corners and re painting.

I was happily forgetting about that until you reminded me :lol:


What is it going to be like in 30 more years? I wonder what we're doing now that will seem silly then?

[josephv]

What is it going to be like in 30 more years? I wonder what we're doing now that will seem silly then?

Ill bet water changes will become a thing of the past. I think they are a little over rated now.

[Paul B]

What is it going to be like in 30 more years? I wonder what we're doing now that will seem silly then?



In 30 years computer monitors will be mounted right into fish tanks so you can post on these forums while you are looking at your fish.
Also instead of taking pictures, everyone will be able to see your tank as you type.
(as well as you in your underwear, but lets not dwell on that) :eek:

[TampaSnooker]

Actually, the fish will have cyborg implants that they install in China. The factory is right down the road from the place where they tatoo kissing gouramis and parrot cichlids. They will communicate directly with your controller and you will just have to hit "OK" authorize some Jetson's gizmo to fix it. We won't even be getting our hands wet in 30 years.

I met a guy who swore by using brass fittings in the drain water's flow as a means of controlling ich. He'd been keeping a nurse shark like that in an 8' horse trough for some time. The riccordeas he was selling me didn't like it too much, but they came back quickly enough once in better water.

Also, I met another guy who owned a bait shop. Despite being right on the water, he used a synthetic mix in his shrimp and pinfish tanks that was mostly water softener salt. Not sure, but I think that's potassium chloride? His mortality was no worse than other bait shops that used nsw. The shrimp are a bit more sensitive. For those who don't know pinfish, they are decended from vampires and can be quite tricky to kill - unless a cobia or grouper is swimming by and he will gladly do it for you...

About the peroxide - that one first came to my attention from one of the guys at Living Color that I met at MACNA last year. That's how they keep their fake coral inserts looking so brand new all the time. What's the minimum and maximum dosage? 10% mix of standard store bought 3% is about the maximum strength that I can get away with to clean up zoa frags. (and half hour at that strength is a tad too much...)

Then there's this guy who was killing aiptasia and majanos with electricity...

Great thread.

[Paul B]

Then there's this guy who was killing aiptasia and majanos with electricity...


OMG, that would be me. But in the future we may use gamma radiation to kill them or some other nuclear waste. I love the Idea of microbots that we could unleash in the tank to wrestle with any unwanted organism.

[jacob.morgan78]

I'm sorry if I changed the tone of your thread. I want to hear more unorthodox things you do!

[Paul B]

Jacob, you didn't change the tone of the thread, it had no tone.
Over the years I think I did a few things that most people think is odd for some reason. To me my tank is supposed to be like a part of a reef or at least a part of the sea so I add whatever I find in the sea that I feel will either enhance the feeling or at least be interesting. We all know what a real reef is supposed to look like but if you see enough of them you may get bored. Thats why I add some things that I feel "enhance" it.
After so many years I have had every coral, fish and aquascape and I don't want to get bored so whenever I am at the sea, which is almost every day in the summer, I search tide pools and drag my net through the shallow water. Besides shrimp I find bottles, crabs, snails, cans, chains and various flotsam and jetsom that I find interesting. Much of it of course I can't put in the tank but if I feel I can coat it in some type of acrylic resin or if I think it can live in the tank, I take it home. I don't take anymore hermit crabs or horseshoe crabs because I know they will not live, but snails, shrimp and codium seaweed I bring home. Codium is cool seaweed and is very common on the east end of Long Island where I live. The stuff lives about 5 months in a tropical tank.
The local mud snails and shrimp live forever and are free. I can collect enough snails to fill a 50 gallon bucket easily and I can collect enough shrimp in 5 minutes to fill a 5 gallon bucket, with no water, just shrimp.
I also collect tiny anemones and amphipods.
Those things are just for interest but the most important thing IMO is bacteria. I collect a little mud every time I go just for the bacterial diversity. Is it needed?
I have no Idea. Is it good for the tank? I have no clue. But to me it seems to work.
I don't know of anyone else who does that, but it is what it is.

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/Codium007.jpg

1/4" rock anemone

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/Anemone1.png

Rock crab (very cool)

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/Localtank008.jpg

Grass shrimp. (even cooler)

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/Project17.png

Old bald guy collecting in a tide pool

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/Project6.png

[billsreef]

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/Anemone1.png

These anemones are actually an invasive species in LI waters. They get those nice stripes when under bright light, and are practically translucent in low light areas. Practically indestructible also. Had some infesting the plumbing of an old aquaculture system in one lab. Tore that system down to relocate it, the piping spent several weeks with no water running through it, and they survived to reach plaque proportions within a couple of months :eek1:

[doctorgori]

this is a excellent thread

[Paul B]

These anemones are actually an invasive species in LI waters.

Bill, we always get these wierd invasive species. Why can't we get an invasive species of Super models? :spin2:

[billsreef]

Bill, we always get these wierd invasive species. Why can't we get an invasive species of Super models? :spin2:

I haven't found an invasion like that down here either :( :lol:

Though I did see a temporary migration of models on a photo shoot a number of years ago. Using the docks and beach in New Suffolk for swimsuit shoot...in late October :D

[miwoodar]

I haven't found an invasion like that down here either :( :lol:

Though I did see a temporary migration of models on a photo shoot a number of years ago. Using the docks and beach in New Suffolk for swimsuit shoot...in late October :D

Were they trying to sell raisins?

I want to live near an ocean someday!

[Paul B]

Thats the main reason I have a boat. They are always bringing models down to the boats to take pictures for magazines. I try not to look though.
Once when I was working in Manhattan I was on the sidewalk at the GM Building on Fifth Ave.
One of those open top tour buses stopped in front of me and the most beautiful girl I have ever seen stood up on the top. So as I was looking, another one popped up, then another. Like Wow. They were the Miss Universe contestants arriving for a photo shoot all decked out. I had to call my company to tell them I was going to be very late for whatever it was I was supposed to do.

You got to do what you got to do.
I also was the foreman on the New York Playboy Club and Penthouse Magazine, but lets not dwell on that. :thumbsup:

[ackee]

Bob Straughan definitely collected live corals. I remember seeing them in his store on Rickenbacker Causeway. There wasn't anything he didn't try, it seemed. He was a great guy, adventurous, with an eye for the ladies. I was a teenage undergraduate at the time, back in the very early 60s. He wrote several books, and was an adventurer of sorts. I think Dick Boyd worked for him at one point, but my memories now tend to merge, overlap, and do strange things. I remember Bob with real fondness. I learned a few things from him, especially about collecting and figuring things out for myself. Florida was a paradise in those faraway days, when the Eath's population was only about 3 billion, Florida bay's were crystal clear, and John D. MacDonald was just starting to chronicle the adventures of Travis. Though my academic field was literary history, I developed a love affair with tropical seas that has never faded.

[perpetual98]

Ill bet water changes will become a thing of the past. I think they are a little over rated now.

That reminds me... A few years ago I had a 120g tank at work. I used to have two at home and we were moving so I took one to work so that I could transfer the home one to the new place with minimal interruptions to tank life. The tank ended up staying at work for a couple years and we never set up a tank at home. Money was tight and I didn't have cash to fix stuff that broke (like the IceCap 660 ballast that took a dumper) and before something big broke I decided to sell it.

All the time I had it at work just being topped off with RO/DI with probably zero water changes the last 18 months, it turned into just a beautiful tank. Almost the entire back wall and top 1/3 of the rock was covered in (in my opinion) beautiful GSP that flowed in the current, and the bottom was dominated by mushrooms. I would scrape mushrooms off of the glass when I was scraping coraline and they would go where they pleased. I probably sold the tank with 1000 purple/blue stripe mushrooms that all originated from one mushroom that was a hitchhiker smaller than a pencil eraser on some LR I bought years prior from the LFS when I was setting up a tank when I got into reefkeeping.

[Paul B]

I am running out of un orthodox things to post about but I think just about everything I do is unorthodox and when someone comes to look at my tank, they seem kind of surprised. Everyone notices the bottles. I like old coral encrusted bottles (and chains)
Old rusty chains to me just remind me of the sea. Here in NY I am a boater and there are rusty chains all over the place in marina's and in shallow water. They came from ancient barges or tug boats, sunken shops or debris from bridge construction. Who says a reef tank has to be just fish and corals? I, myself never want to have a tank like everyone has, that would be boreing. I know I can keep animals alive, of course that is the first priority, but the next priority is to make it interesting.
I collected all of my rock in the Caribbean and Hawaii but after a number of years I wanted something new so I started to build rock. Eventually I developed the method I use now which is bent gnarly PVC pipe covered in cement. This produces a hollow rock that could be any interesting shape and being hollow offers increased area for bacteria to colonize. You also can't buy these interesting shaped rocks because it breaks in transit and we are left with roundish, boreing rocks. I never liked boreing.
I also collected most of the bottles in the sea but some of them are modern bottles that I "enhanced" by sandpapering them, then breaking them and glueing most of it back together. Then I smear on some cement and maybe some dead corals and barnacles. Those bottles look like they came off of Columbus ship. I guess it is un orthodox but I have always done it.
I would love to put a real anchor in the tank. The ones I have for my boat are about a foot and a half long but they are galvanized and I don't want to put that in but if I can find one an old one that is just iron, I will coat it with acrylic resin and re do the reef around it with it's associated chain. I think that would be interesting.
The most interesting tank I ever saw was many years ago in Manhattan in Aquarium Stock Company which was a huge aquarium store. In those days it was only freshwater and they had a large discus tank of about 300 gallons. In it was a real old toilet bowl, kind of broken along with all the associated plumbing and construction debris. It drew most of the oohs and aahs because of it's oddity. It sounds awful but it was anything but. :fun5:
Before and after "rock"

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/Rock.jpg

One of my older "rocks"
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/Rock001.jpg
Structures like this supports my entire reef off the substrait.

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/IMG_1165.jpg

Making a bottle

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/IMG_1106.jpg

More PVC, hollow "rock"
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/IMG_1009.jpg

Another home made bottle

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/Bottle-1.jpg

How old is this bottle? Not very

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/Redalgae017.jpg

I had to include this

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/Budcanandcopperband.jpg

[dixiedog]

Bill, we always get these wierd invasive species. Why can't we get an invasive species of Super models? :spin2:


With my luck, they'd all be of the hermaphroditic variety. :o

[lgray13]

This is an awesome thread!!

[Paul B]

I am glad you like it. :wavehand:

I am in the process of re designing my blackworm keeper. I am having a problem convincing the worms to stay where I want them. There is no screen small enough to keep worms out. They go through baby brine shrimp screen like it is a revolving door. It has to be done with water currects instead of screening. I almost have it perfected.

[dixiedog]

It is definitely a great thread!

Paul B, you are like Edison, Curie, Lister and MacGuyver all rolled into one. Maybe with some Yoda thrown in. :D

[Paul B]

Thanks, I am a little taller than Joda, but we have the same hair style. But my real Idol is Justin Beeber :wildone:
I don't know how all of you guys top off your water but being I started this thread I will get into it a little the way I do it.
I guess you figured out that I like to build and modify things. My top off system is totally automatic and I only have to touch it every year or so.
I hung this (blue) bucket from the ceiling in my workshop so it is higher than my reef. The water flows to the RO unit through an electric valve. As long as the valve is energized, water flows. From the RO unit below the bucket, it flows to the acrylic DI to the left of the bucket. From there it enters the bucket. As the bucket fills, it raises the float which is a film container connected to that pink string. The string is connected to an old thermostat mercury switch so that when the water rises, the float rises lifting the mercury switch which shuts off power to the electric valve and the water to the RO stops. The bucket stays filled.
There is also a tube coming out near the top of the bucket in case this arrangement fails and the overflow would go down a drain, but that has never happened.
There is a PVC hose running from the bottom of the bucket, over my ceiling about 25' to another acrylic container on the tank with more DI resins and from there to a float switch on the tank.
This arrangement is designed to only supply water to the tank at about a drop every 3 seconds. The tank normally only needs a drop every five seconds so in the event the float switch gets stuck (which also has never happened) it would take a few days before the tank would overflow and it would only overflow a few drops an hour.
Under the tank is a DIY overflow safety switch which consists of a wire from a GFCI receptacle. The pumps on the tank are plugged into that GFCI so if there is a leak, the GFCI would trip off, shutting down the pumps.
I am sure everyone on here uses the same system.

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/RODI005.jpg

Float switch

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/urchsearch/RODI004.jpg

[KafudaFish]

Now that you mention it, that is so not like I do mine.

I lost my water bottle with a hole in the bottom so I just fill up a container every morning and evening and top off until the water reaches the plastic lip.

I do have my own low water warning system though because the MJ will inject air into the tank if it gets too low.

It can even wake me up in the middle of the night.

[bprinehart]

Paul- Thank you so much for sharing all of your experiences. I'm a WAMAS member, and every time I see you've chimed in on a thread I read it too. I think there's a lot to be said for "unorthodox" practices. And, quite a lot to be learned from those have come before us. At one time, most fields of medicine were quite unorthodox as well. See how far that has come?

[TheHoove]

I would love to put a real anchor in the tank. The ones I have for my boat are about a foot and a half long but they are galvanized and I don't want to put that in but if I can find one an old one that is just iron, I will coat it with acrylic resin and re do the reef around it with it's associated chain. I think that would be interesting.



I stole you bottle idea....And Ive been thinking about going to the hardware store and getting some plastic chain. It would look tacky for a couple months until the coraline took over. Then no one would know. As to the anchor, Ive seem fake ones like wall hangings, or maybe make a casting of a real one and mold a fake one out of something inert? I would love to simulate the broken up side of a ship wreck. Holes for fish to swim in and out of, corals growing on it. Maybe molded out of plaster or something to look like wood. Hmmm.

[Paul B]

I'm a WAMAS member, and every time I see you've chimed in on a thread I read it too.

Brian, thanks, I spoke at WAMAS last year about the history of the hobby.

TheHoove I made my chains out of acrylic rods and now they are covered in coraline so they look natural. The only problem with plastic hardware chain is that it is too perfect and is either black or white. I think it may also float but I am not sure. I have thought about it also. Occasionally I use real, old rusty chain that I coat in fiberglass resin but the coating does not last too long. I am not worried about iron much but I don't want too much of it in there. I also could cast an anchor out of something But I would rather put in a real one. It is just an idea of mine.
As for iron, I once had a 2 gallon tank that I just kept grass shrimp and mud snails in along with amphipods. In this tank I also had a large "Rock" that I collected with the amphipods. The "rock" took up most of the tank and it was in there for almost a year. After the year I noticed that there was a red covering on the bottom of the tank and realized the "rock" was a large iron fitting from a ship that had corroded beyond recognition. They were the healthiest looking shrimp and amphipods I have ever seen and it did not bother the snails. That was about a 5 pound piece of rusty iron in 2 gallons of salt water for 10 months, how toxic could it be?
I never tested it on corals or fish but that is next. I know what everyone thinks about metal, but not all metal is created alike. I like to find out things myself and not rely on 2nd 3rd and 20th hand accounts.

[billsreef]

Paul, black chain would be perfect. Heavy anchor chains on ships is often painted black.

[Paul B]

Heavy anchor chains on ships is often painted black.


Bill, must be good paint.

[doctorgori]

bump (this thread was/is a good read)

[TampaSnooker]

Here's one: 75 gal tank, 4 x T5, main pump pushing 300 gph. No skimmer, no other flow. 20 gal w/c monthly.

Full coral coverage on rocks - my only surviving Z. sociatus colony, protopalys, asst zoas, anthellia prefilters, FL rics to 6" per adult single, over a dozen fish including a couple big, fat and happy ones to irritate the tang police, breeding ocellaris and one Acro that managed to grow as a hitchhiker into a respectable 4" colony.

The pic is from a year and a half ago. I'm sharing this one because the tank is severely underpowered and very overfed with spirulina flake. The low light has never allowed algae to prosper and the emphasis on nutrient loving species has allowed what is now full coverage. I do not have a current FTS. One way I've discovered to slow down active or aggressive fish that roam is overfeeding. Given that it's turkey week, we can all relate. Yes, overfeeding and obesity shortens our lives and theirs, but perhaps there is room for a tradeoff, given that a fat fish in our care never has to worry about a meal and probably never has to consider predators. I'm going to ponder that as I go get a new beer...

http://i830.photobucket.com/albums/zz222/tampasnooker/kennedyDSCN0548.jpg

[Theomi]

Clear is "clear" right?....I recall I got flamed like the mutha when I said I simply dumped my ASW in a bucket and ran a powerhead until it was clear then used it immediatley; chlorine and all ...I've never admitted it since, but I still do and haven't noticed one modicum of ill effects ....this is of course doing less than a %25 H2O change

edited to add: I use RO so no chlorine issues but I still have no nevermind about it for FW

I´ve always done that, did not know it was bad lol :spin2:
Great thread Paul, i always enjoy reading your stuff :beer:

[Paul B]

I´ve always done that, did not know it was bad lol

I am mixing some water now, I filled a 20 gallon bucket and stir it with a wooden stick while I dump in salt. I will stir it again later and check the salt (and the temp) then throw it in my tank. Always did it like that, no one complained yet.
Is there any other way? :spin2:

This stuff is so easy and so many people make it much more complicated than it is. It isn't rocket science. I have never lost a fish by mixing salt and as soon as it is disolved (and the temp is the same) I use it. If you keep it an hour or a decade it is not going to change much as long as it is disolved.
Some people get so scientific using things like refractometers to get the salinity of the new water exactly like the tank water. Of course it has to be the same but not to the extent that some of us go to. Trust me, the fish don't care and the corals never complained either. I have had my share of fish and corals over the years to not worry about this stuff. It is supposed to be fun and not a source of worry. :headwally:

Reading some posts about additives also makes me laugh. Some people spend astronomical amounts of money on this stuff that is not needed.
And then keep fiddling with the pH. My pH is the same as it has been since the 70s with no help from me and I never adjusted it. I use home made calcium and alkinity which costs me about $6.00 a year.
All the other stuff also stays the same. For some reason I don't have to add Vodka, miracle mud, phosphate remover and all this other stuff that I can't pronounce or spell. I wonder why it doesn't change in my tank?
I don't know, maybe it's me.:confused:
But I would rather take that money and go to Hawaii. :smokin:
It is true that I don't have the best tank on here, by far. But it is also not the worst. :fish2:

[atreis]

Oh good grief. I don't pre-mix it. When I do my water change I always remove the same amount of water (3% of total system volume), and measure the salinity in the first container full. I know from experience roughly how much salt I'll need to get it to where I want it. I remove the water, let the ATF start replacing it, and poor the correct amount of salt straight into the overflow so it can dissolve and disperse through the sump while the ATF finishes the water replacement.

I've been doing this for 3 years and keep SPS (acro and others), closed brains, anemones (LTA and RBTA), and more, with great success. (No fish, coral, or anemone deaths at all for over a year now, and only two deaths in the last two and a half years.) I tried this with my previous tank years ago, and discovered that so long as the water change is smallish (around 5% or less) and the salt is added someplace where it can dissolve independent of most of the tank (like the overflow) nothing seems to even notice.

I just do water changes weekly instead of monthly to compensate for them being smallish.

[atreis]

Oops ... double post

[Agu]

My newest tank 24X24X12 has less than 10 pounds of live rock in the display, but that's not what's unorthodox (there's about 30 pounds of live rock in the sump).

The sand bed is less than 3/4" deep. During water changes I siphon out the top layer of sand and replace it. Sometimes a whole section of sand is removed and replaced. Tank is only a few months old but every time I remove sand it's gross, smelly and disgusting. Old sand is cleaned,dried and recycled.


I know people are going to recommend going bare bottom but I just don't like the look.

[jacob.morgan78]

Is it true that people have peed in their aquarium to help it cycle?

[billsreef]

Is it true that people have peed in their aquarium to help it cycle?

I do know a couple of people that claimed to do this.

[Paul B]

There are easier ways to add ammonia. Besides, my tank is too high

[Dyraxe]

There are easier ways to add ammonia. Besides, my tank is too high

Just stand farther back and eat some asparagus for a nice pungent effect. :lolspin:

[Agu]

Is it true that people have peed in their aquarium to help it cycle?

Not an uncommon practice in the freshwater side of the hobby. But they don't pee, they urinate in their tanks, it's more scientific sounding ;) .

[spamreefnew]

if you think about it,,,pee is just plant food....

[SpencerG]

Great thread! Paul, I too take some bottom mud/sand whenever I go to the beach every few months, along with some of that great Gulf NSW. BP put some additives in there I don't care for much, but it's pretty clean again down here. Anyhow, really enjoying this thread. Any unorthodox ways of fragging corals?

[Paul B]

No, just the standard way. All I do is drill a hole in a piece of coral rock and push it in or I epoxy it .

[Eric the half-bee]

Paul and fellow RCers, I'm enjoying this thread. The history and experience is priceless. I've found as well how much my posse tolerates swings in salinity. My skimmer has gotten crazy more than a few times and totally done it's job dumping much wet skimmate. My ATO does it's job as well. I've seen my salinity drop to 42 ppt in a day and none of my animals appear stressed or worse for the wear. I simply add more salt over a few hours to bring it back to 53. Thankfully, my animals do well despite my intervention or lack thereof.

[dallasg]

Jacob I started to write a book in the 70s but my ideas kept becoming out of date.
I still have it with my drawings.
Maybe someday I will write something on the older practices and the history of how we came about with all of this stuff.

i would stand inline for a copy

[jacob.morgan78]

i would stand inline for a copy

me too!

[rogersb]

Paul and fellow RCers, I'm enjoying this thread. The history and experience is priceless. I've found as well how much my posse tolerates swings in salinity. My skimmer has gotten crazy more than a few times and totally done it's job dumping much wet skimmate. My ATO does it's job as well. I've seen my salinity drop to 42 ppt in a day and none of my animals appear stressed or worse for the wear. I simply add more salt over a few hours to bring it back to 53. Thankfully, my animals do well despite my intervention or lack thereof.

Are those numbers backward or are you doing some sort of hypersalinity?

[Eric the half-bee]

Are those numbers backward or are you doing some sort of hypersalinity?

Nope, I used the wrong values. I meant to write 53 mS and 42 mS. My goof.

[SpencerG]

My neighbor was chargrilling some oysters one time a few years ago, and I got a fresh one from him that I put in the sump. It had been iced down but recovered and opened up a bit. It lived for a couple of days, but I think the icing took its toll. That or my system not being adequate for it.

I've taken snails and hermit crabs, even a sand dollar, and put them in the tank. The snails have done fine, though on occasion have eaten an astrea or two. The hermit crabs get too big and crabby.

Anyway, I relate all this because it is unorthodox by today's standards, but maybe not in the past.

[suds1421]

Double post

[suds1421]

I'm not really started in the reef side yet, but I am looking to get going....

On the fresh side I top up all my tanks with straight tap water. It probably kills off some of the bacteria but I've never had a problem doing that.

Also, in all my tanks I go down to the local river and pick out rocks for them, I also dig up about a pint of sand and add it to the sand bed.

Does it help? I dunno, but I don't understand why the freshies don't do the live sand/rock that the salties do. My tanks are doing great and every time I add a rock from the "wild river" my fish pick at it for a week so I know there's something on their they like.

[Paul B]

My neighbor was chargrilling some oysters one time a few years ago,

I feed my fish and corals fresh clams. I would feed them fresh oysters but I like oysters too much for me to give them to my fish :)
I also love to eat clams so many times I eat the clams and the fish get mussels. Of course I also like mussels so pretty soon the fish will be on a vegetarian diet. :spin2:

Dont get me started on calamari. Actually I am hungry, time to go to the seafood market. :fish2:

[SpencerG]

That's good!

I forgot to type that I've taken snails, hermit crabs, etc. from the coast. Oh well.

Enjoy the seafood!

[jdm18honda]

OMG, that would be me. But in the future we may use gamma radiation to kill them or some other nuclear waste. I love the Idea of microbots that we could unleash in the tank to wrestle with any unwanted organism.

the future is here
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2101768&highlight=lasers+pest+algae

[tmgrash]

What is it going to be like in 30 more years? I wonder what we're doing now that will seem silly then?

LR cooking/bleaching/killing

[Paul B]

What is it going to be like in 30 more years? I wonder what we're doing now that will seem silly then?

I don't know, my tank looks the same as it did 30 years ago, but the lights are different.

My new un orthodox thing to do is to put cement in my tank with iron filings mixed in.
I noticed that I have this wierd bubble algae growing only on my cement rocks. Randy gave me an Idea and suggested that it "may" be the iron that is attracting the algae to the cement. It could be another chemical in cemenrt but I will try iron first.
I made a slab of cement about 6 square inches and I ground up some nails with a grinder into the surface of the wet cement. I wil let it cure for a week then put it in my algae trough. The trough is there to grow algae anyway and I want to see if I can enhance that ability with iron filings.
I love this stuff.

[D. Winter]

HEY MOM!! This guy on Reef Central says I should put bleach in the tank...do you think we could have a bleach blonde naso tang?

But really, thanks for the post, its interesting to see all of the things that folks have thought of.

[billsreef]

HEY MOM!! This guy on Reef Central says I should put bleach in the tank...do you think we could have a bleach blonde naso tang?

Now you know the real secret of how Blonde Naso's came to be :D

[Paul B]

...do you think we could have a bleach blonde naso tang?



Yes, but that will also bleach it's eyelashes so you may not want to do that.

[Mike_Noren]

The second unorthodox thing is chlorine bleach treatment of sea water.
Consider using peroxide or formalin instead. Aim for 25 ppm for formalin; not quite sure what a good dosage is for peroxide. Standard disclaimers apply, of course.

[billsreef]

Consider using peroxide or formalin instead. Aim for 25 ppm for formalin; not quite sure what a good dosage is for peroxide. Standard disclaimers apply, of course.

The peroxide could work well, and is reasonably safe to use. The formalin comes with health risks for which I would reserve it's use for only things were is really the best option, such as treating certain diseases or pickling specimens for scientific work.

[Mike_Noren]

You mean that it's mildly cancerogenous? Yeah, it's a moderately nasty chemical, but it's remarkably effective at making life miserable for bacteria and protozoans, and it's got a larger margin of safety wrt damage to fish & shrimp than peroxide.

On that subject I'm experimenting with a home-made oxydator (http://www.oxydator.de/english/soechting_oxydators.html) (device which continuously doses hydrogen peroxide to the aquarium) right now.

[Mike_Noren]

You mean that it's mildly cancerogenous? Yeah, it's a moderately nasty chemical, but it's remarkably effective at making life miserable for bacteria and protozoans, and it's got a larger margin of safety wrt damage to fish & shrimp than peroxide.

On that subject I'm experimenting with a home-made oxydator (http://www.oxydator.de/english/soechting_oxydators.html) (device which continuously doses hydrogen peroxide to the aquarium) right now.

[Paul B]

Been using Clorox since the 60s, no problems and it evaporates leaving nothing toxic in the water. Clorox is just chlorine gas in water.
Thats what we all used when the hobby started to bleach dead coral

[billsreef]

You mean that it's mildly cancerogenous? Yeah, it's a moderately nasty chemical, but it's remarkably effective at making life miserable for bacteria and protozoans, and it's got a larger margin of safety wrt damage to fish & shrimp than peroxide.

On that subject I'm experimenting with a home-made oxydator (http://www.oxydator.de/english/soechting_oxydators.html) (device which continuously doses hydrogen peroxide to the aquarium) right now.

For treating a tank with life in it, as in disease treatment, I would certainly use it. For just sterilizing water before use (what the bleach gets used for) I would stick to bleach or peroxide.

[donald altman]

excuse my ignorance.. bu why not put the nail directly in the scrubber as is? LOL..

[Paul B]

excuse my ignorance.. bu why not put the nail directly in the scrubber as is? LOL..



Thats not ignorance, I do also have a nail in there. The cement with the iron filings on it has much more surface area then a nail. I also want to coat a large surface with a little iron to cover the bottom of my algae trough and I don't want to put that much iron in the tank like a piece of sheet metal. That would be kind of overdoing it.
There is very little actual iron in the cement I am using. :smokin:

[larrypoe]

I remember those old pumps :/ and the "tar tanks". the first ....idk hundred tanks...i ever had as a kid were mostly what a relative picked up for me at a flea market or junk store :fun2:

the first SW tank I ever saw was when we moved to san berdino ca in 1976...I loved those huge tanks that were everywhere in the area....then we moved back to the midwest and SW wasnt even an option here at the time.

I remember when I got my first whisper filter system :twitch: and how it was THE greatest invention I ever slapped on a tank ;) (way better than the old types)


the first, and only till a month ago, SW tank I ever had was 22 or 23yrs ago...living in the midwest limited my options for seawater........and though I dont remember the exact mix, I can tell you it was regualar table salt and epsom salts :rolleye1:


the experence was enough to keep me sticking to FW till a month or so ago....and I was AMAZED at how different things were, and how much easier to get.