Paul B's thread

[Paul B]

I just came back from the Doctors office. I had shoulder surgery 3 weeks ago so I had to go for the follow up appointment.

I didn't see the doctor, I assume he was playing golf but I did see the physicians assistant which was good because she was a Supermodel. She took out the stitches on the four places where the guy dug holes in my shoulder and we talked a while being I had five shoulder surgeries already and I liked her boots. I worked construction all my life so I wore out some of my parts. The Dr. put two bolts, anchors or toggle bolts in the bone but he had trouble doing that because all the good real estate was already taken from the last 4 times I had this done. The tendon was to thin, probably from lifting Supermodels up on my shoulder so he had to take a piece of something to re inforce it. I am not sure if he used a sliver of muscle or a piece from the sole of my shoe but in 6 months I will be cured as long as I only lift very skinny Supermodels and only buy light fish like bluestripe pipefish and clown gobies, no groupers.

I still have to wear a sling for a month and go to physical therapy. I went to the therapy place after the Doctor to make an appointment. I like physical therapy because they also have Supermodels working there and I know them from the last surgeries I had. They also have good candy on the desk and a Siamese fighting fish that we spend time talking about. Next door is a bakery and coffee shop so what's not to like?

In between the doctor and the physical therapy I noticed that a new LFS opened up. I went in just to be nosy and the guy recognized me from one of these forums. He showed me how he feeds the fish using flake food. To me that is a no no and I explained to him what I think he should feed. He never heard of blackworms, or much else so I explained it to him. The guy actually hugged me and kept asking me to come back. I probably will as the owner is a very nice guy and I hope he makes it as it is a tough business.

 

[Paul B]

I want to talk about quarantining, or not quarantining. I get in trouble for my opinion for this all the time and that is one reason I don't post on that big forum any more. People have the wrong idea and for some reason very few people grasp the concept. Quarantining if fine, if that is what you want to do, go for it as it is one way to run a tank. But if you don't want to quarantine, there are things you should do or you will lose your tank to disease. You can't just have a normal tank that you set up a year or two ago and decide to not quarantine. There is a process that goes along with it just like there is a process that goes along with quarantining and if you do it wrong, you will lose your fish and condemn the system you are using.
First and foremost your fish need to get into excellent shape, which we should strive for no matter what system we use. It takes about two months to get most fish into excellent shape if it is done correctly. I know it takes about 7 weeks with damsels so I am guessing on other fish.
Just because they are swimming around looking at you while whistling doesn't mean they are in great shape. If they are not spawning or making spawning gestures, they are not healthy no matter what their doctor says.
To do this we need to eliminate the dry, sterile foods like flakes, pellets and freeze dried anything. Use them in an emergency or if you go on vacation and you need to put it in a feeder but never as a way to feed fish every day. If you want to use dry foods, "keep quarantining". I mean that. ( yes, even expensive dry foods)

I wrote many articles about this so I won't go into the scientific research on it.
Next get some fresh frozen foods or the absolutely best, live blackworms. By fresh frozen I mean get something like clams that you can buy live (not if you live in Arizona). Buy the biggest live clams you can. Chowder clams here in New York can weigh a couple of pounds. Partially open the clam and insert something inside like a nail. This will make it easier to open the thing after it is frozen. It takes 2 days to freeze a big clam.
Open the clam and shave off paper thin slices with a knife. Make a dent like you would do in chocolate and slice off ribbons of clam. I supplement the clam with frozen Mysis, LRS food and live worms.

This diet, "every day" will get your fish into spawning condition. That won't necessarily make them immune especially if they have been in your tank for a long time or were quarantined for 72 days.
I think the best thing to do if you are really worried about disease is to keep your quarantine tank and put the new fish in there when you get them. Set up that tank with hiding places of rock, not pvc. Give them hiding places and light it as you would a regular fish tank. Feed them the diet I stated and observe the fish for a week or two but do not medicate with anything. If you see one or two spots on the fish, I also would not medicate as that is usually normal. Of course if the fish gets a bunch of spots, starts shaking and texting SOS there is something wrong and you would have to replace the rock with PVC and use copper.
I personally would use copper "and" a diatom filter as that would clean the fish of any parasites in a couple of days.

Remember, I never have to do this part because my fish don't get sick and yours probably won't either. I am talking about a healthy "looking" fish you buy from a LFS. That fish was probably in the ocean 2 weeks ago and has some sort of immunity in it's system. Our goal is to nurture that immunity, not suppress it, with the proper food and very low stress.
We want the fish immune, not sterile and to do this we need to get food into it along with "live" bacteria at every meal.
After a couple of months your fish should start to spawn (if you have fish that will spawn). Even fish that are not paired will start to clean a nest, bite you when you put your hand in there and chase other fish away.

If you do all this and if your fish are now in spawning condition, you can now add fish from an LFS without being concerned about parasites as now parasites should continue to boost the fishes immune system.
I have been running my tank like this for decades and I may have invented this system (along with the internet, unless that was Brian Williams) It works, I can prove it works and if you don't like the idea of this, keep quarantining as there is nothing wrong with that as long as you can quarantine everything and never want to use anything natural from the sea. Most inland people need to do that anyway.
Now you can write an article saying I am advocating Russian Roulette and don't know a fish from a duck billed platypus.

 

[Paul B]

Lets talk about detritus. If you feel detritus is bad, don't read this. You can still see re runs of The Brady Bunch which will be much more interesting, I think Mrs, Brady has bunions this week.

I like detritus. My tank runs on detritus (and worms) Of course I use a reverse undergravel filter. State of the art in my head. If you don't use a reverse undergravel filter your fish probably hate you, but they will get over it.

My UG filter stores a lot of detritus and that's what I want It to do. Yes, I realize much of the stuff I post is exactly opposite what everyone reads about but if you don't want to watch, or never heard of the Brady Bunch, you can still catch Kathy Lee with whomever she is hosting with today.

Detritus is organic left overs. It is composed of pod shells, bacteria, dust, and the shells of the Mysis you feed your fish. Of course it has other stuff in it like the end products of poop and whatever the Pilgrims tossed overboard.

If you feed mainly flakes and pellets your fish are most likely sick, or will be sick so you need not worry about this stuff.

I use detritus for a few things. It helps my UG filter reduce wastes by restricting the water flow through my gravel thus limiting oxygen flow and increasing anerobic bacteria. (I think anyway as I can't see the bacteria and they are not talking) but what else I use it for is to feed corals. I have a bunch of wrasses that quickly dig into my gravel. I also have mating fireclowns that constantly dig deep holes with their tails. These things create huge detritus storms that the pumps swirl around the tank. The corals were designed, probably by Briant Gumbal, to eat this stuff. It's organic and can be further broken down into it's basic chemicals by corals.

Almost every day (when I am not entertaining a Supermodel, in my head anyway) I take one of my many baster things and blow around the gravel especially in the corners producing huge "dust" clouds. I suck this up and distribute it over the corals and especially the gorgonians, some of which are very old.

Now that you have nothing else to do you can read all the threads about how bad detritus is and reverse undegravel filters. If you read about a tank that has no detritus and undergravel filter, and is older than mine, send me a self addressed stamped envelope and I will steam off the stamp so I can re use it and throw away the letter.

 

[Flame Angel]

FYI-Mrs. Brady (Florence Henderson) passed away over the holiday weekend.

 

[Paul B]

Yes, I know she did which is probably what made me think about that show.
It was actually a good show and I liked Florence Henderson. RIP.

 

[Paul B]

These guys eat suspended detritus and will be difficult to feed in a sterile tank. They were the same size last week but the one on the right just shed.
I usually have some of these porcelain crabs, but I want maybe ten more

 

[Paul B]

Today I tried to move stuff around in my tank to fit the gorgonians in better and of course I broke some stuff and had to re glue it. I am working with one arm (due to shoulder operation) and I have to put on two gloves to prevent the male fireclown from biting my hand off. The two gloves is the secret and he doesn't hurt much through those gloves. If I put my bare hand in there near his stomping grounds I would have to tie a tourniquet around my elbow so I don't bleed to death.

He thinks he is a barracuda.



I moved some stuff from the right side to the left side and vise versa, but I am having trouble with some SPS that I can't get where I want so I will have to wait until I can put both arms in the tank.



I am totally embarrassed this year because I am a big Christmas guy (my birthday is on Christmas day and I have been playing Santa for over 40 years)

We bought a small "fake" Christmas tree. I "hate" artificial trees, I mean, I really hate them. But this year I can't carry a real tree or put it up so we got this thing really cheap so we can throw it out next year.

I also noticed it was made in China so I am having a hard time looking at it and I can't wait until the Holiday is over so I can throw it out.

This is the first time in my life I put something like this up and I would never buy something from China.

Our Grand Kids are coming over and I really needed a tree. I just hope they forget this is a fake tree and next year I will go overboard with decorating.



Even outside my house I couldn't put out my home made, really cool, very big train, plane and Jack in the Box that I always display.

This is very embarrassing and I have to go and hide my head in mud.

 

[Flame Angel]

Too bad you do not live down the street.

PM me your street address. I may have friends in the area that could help if you are interested.

 

[Paul B]

Thanks Flame Angel, I appreciate that, but I will muddle through. It is a challenge doing this stuff with one hand. I cleaned my algae scrubber with my shop vac. That was interesting, and sloppy. I have good friends that I can conniver into helping me if I really get stuck.

 

[s_kelley]

Ya, wish you were local a bunch of us would come help you out! Hopefully you are back up and 100% before we know it!

 

[Paul B]

I will get there. Last year I had the same operation with the same problem. Maybe next year I won't break or tear anything.

 

[Paul B]

I just looked under my tank and see that I have to add two more leg supports as two legs are badly rusted. It will have to wait a while because of the shoulder surgery.



This material I used to construct this stand about 40 years ago is called "Kindorf". It is a structural support we use for virtually everything in construction indoors and out. It can also be used to support street signs so it is very corrosion resistant and galvanized. For anyone using regular iron or painted steel, get ready for the rust as steel has no sense of humor around salt water. It started rusting after about 15 years.

 

[Paul B]

I already posted this someplace and I figured I would also put it here where no one will see it so I won't get yelled at because I am to old and just wouldn't care.



I was just perusing this forum and the amount of "sick" fish threads is mind boggling. I really hate to see so many beautiful fish that we take from the sea and allow them to die. It should not happen.
Of course if you read any of these many pages of this thread I feel it is "all" because we are failing to get our fish immune from even the simplest diseases.
Of course I am going to try to propose a plan. My entire thing is about fish health and I have been a sponge sucking up information about this while I am looking at my fish, and they are looking back. The reason I want to get into this a little now is because in a couple of days I had some shoulder surgery (for the fifth time) and I have to type with my feet so I want to start this. The other reason is that I have been sitting here looking at my fish and noticing that virtually all of them just look extremely healthy as they always do. On a very healthy fish you can clearly see a fluorescent looking sheen on every scale. Each spine on every fin should also be perfect and most fish have vibrant, shimmering colors on their fins. We all know there should be no torn fins, spots, Tattoos or bar codes. Healthy fish sometimes do hide but that is a species thing and all fish should be eating and eating with gusto like I do when I am eating linguini and clams like I had last night.
Also, very important if you have any paired damsels, wrasses, pipefish, gobies, cardinals, dragonettes and a few others, they should be pregnant or they just laid eggs and your fish should "never" get sick. So, those things, to me are the criteria of a healthy fish.
Now I am going to hear, "Yeah, but we can't do that because it is to hard". Yes you can as it is very easy and probably cheaper than what you are now doing. (I am sure you are also losing fish before their normal lifespan)
I think that unless you are a Noob you can easily do this so Noobs go and watch Kelly Ripa. Maybe she put on a couple of ounces. It will also be much easier if you have a running, tank. I didn't say cycled because that is a silly thing. There is no such thing as a just cycled tank. We hear all the time things like "my tank finished cycling last night at 2:15 so I added 17 pieces of SPS, a dogfaced puffer, ribbon eel and a Moorish Idol because he was eating brine shrimp and they are all laying on the bottom, texting and breathing hard while the SPS looks like Emu poop".
The truth is if you cycled your tank with a dead or bowlegged shrimp, then your ammonia readings went to zero, that means your tank has enough bacteria in it to process one bowlegged shrimp and nothing more.
A tank continues to "cycle" through out it's entire lifespan as bacteria grow and die according to the load. I added an orange spotter filefish to my tank 3 weeks ago so the tank had to grow enough bacteria to process the wastes from that one fish.
Anyway. If I had a "cycled" natural tank with a little age on it, (and hopefully a little algae) I would buy a couple of fish. Not the most expensive fish I could afford to impress the Supermodel who just moved in next door, but something fairly hardy like clownfish, wrasses, bleenies etc. I would add those fish "without quarantining them". Remember this is my plan, Humble has his. Right after the fish hit the water I would feed them the proper foods. Not flakes, not pellets and God Forbid, no freeze dried anything. The absolute best first foods are live blackworms or white worms. "Live" is the key if you can get it. If you can't get it, it will still work but live is best. Along with the live food you need something that was fresh not very long ago like clams. I buy live clams, freeze them and shave off pieces. If you live in Nevada, Arizona or Tunisia, I don't know what to tell you because you need to get live bacteria into those fish and get it in there at "every meal". I am sure you can get some type of fresh (kind of ) clams in the mid west even if it is frozen. You don't want something that was frozen during the last ice age as the least time the thing was frozen, the better as we are looking for live bacteria. In Lieu of clams you can use (and I do) LRS foods which move quickly off the shelves and have bacteria in them. Never use foods that say "Irradiated to kill harmful pathogens". Leave the harmful pathogens in there. We are trying to keep our fish immune from harmful pathogens and if their immune system doesn't know what a harmful pathogen is, it won't work and your fish will die the first time they are subjected to harmful pathogens, or Rap music.
I realize the things I am saying go against everything we know about fish so if you find someone who has been doing this longer than me, listen to them. And so will I. But they may drool on you or cough up some funky looking green stuff because I "cycled" my tank with trilobites. I also realize I am not the God of fish tanks unless they have reverse undergravel filters which are state of the art.
I am trying to "teach" this stuff the best way I can while trying not to sound like a know it all, (Although I feel I know it all )
If you think I am nuts, senile, amnesiatic, or a "know it all", go with the Noobs and watch Kelly Ripa as I think she is still on. (I actually like her but I like all pretty girls, I mean fish, I like all pretty fish)
The other reason I am trying to convey this information (and I say this a lot) is because for some reason my fish "never" get sick. My 25 year old fireclowns, mandarins, pipefish, hippo tang, copperband etc all live in my tank up to their apparent lifespan and never get sick. Why is that? IT IS BECAUSE OF THE LIVE BACTERIA IN THEIR GUT THAT THEY GET EVERY DAY. How hard is that?
OK, it is also because they have not been quarantined and are continually exposed to those harmful pathogens that are removed from all dry foods and a lot of frozen foods.
I sincerely do not want to see fish dying in anyone's tank. Mine never do and I am not that smart, just good looking.
I "think" it is due to the fact that my fish are full of live gut bacteria and are exposed to those pathogens on a regular basis. Remember the rest of the fish you are putting in this make believe tank also come with their own pathogens. We want these pathogens and the fish need them as their immune system evolved right along side them.
A fishes immune system is a huge part of a fishes biology and uses an enormous amount of it's calories. Remember the slime is a major part of it's immune system and that slime is water soluble so it constantly washes away. The fish has to constantly replace that slime because that's where most of it's antibodies are. Re-read my first post here so I don't have to type it again.
You can't turn off that immune system but you can turn off it's ability to repel parasites. A fish is well equipped to repel parasites, but only if it is exposed to them so we need a thriving parasite family living in the tank.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Don't faint, it is true. Don't you get flu, measles and tetanus shots? Why do you do that? You do that so your immune system recognizes those diseases and you don't get them.
OK I am done for now.
This is my only medication. It was made in Brooklyn and I probably got it in the 70s. It is copper and formalin, I use it if I get a fish for free from a LFS that is getting last rites and I doubt it will live ten minutes.
I can cure parasites in a day with this and quinicrine hydrochloride (I think that's how to spell that) but that is the only time I would need a medication. I also think hypo is silly as that takes a few weeks to work and a parasite can kill the fish in hours. But that's just me.

 

[Paul B]

I wrote this article about sponges if anyone is interested.
http://www.saltwatersmarts.com/sponges-everywhere-saltwater-reef-aquarium-6889/

 

[CAPSLOCK]

Paul, thank you for linking the sponge article. Do you have specific species of sponges that you would aim for OR that you would recommend avoiding?

 

[Paul B]

No I don't but that blue sponge that grows wild in my tank seems to be very hardy and grows fast, I keep giving pieces of it away. I don't remember how long I have it because I can't remember not having it. Those red sponges in the pictures are cool but you need to keep them in the shade or algae grows all over them.
Any sponge will filter water.

 

[Paul B]

Now I am cured enough that I think I can clean my algae scrubber. I can just about raise my left arm high enough to dis connect the thing and take it off.. It is really clogged and needs attention because if I don't do it soon,it will start to squirt water on the walls.

I just want to make sure I can put the thing back together because that is what feeds my Reverse UG filter.

It's a busy part of the year now for me and every one else with all the parties and such, but some things we need to do eventually. I don't test, change much water or have controllers or dosers to deal with so I will find the time.

I have not changed any water for quite a while but that will have to wait until after New Years day.

I am also feeding the corals yeast. I don't know if it will do anything but maybe they will rise.

 

[Paul B]

I went to the guy who operated on my shoulder this morning. I went into the small room they put you in before they see you and the physicians helper Supermodel checked out my shoulder. Then the Dr. came in and everything is great. I can even go swimming, as long as I don't do the crawl stroke. I can do that side thing where I will look like I can swim like an algae bleenie.
In a few months, I will be as good as new.
Today I am working on my new Steampunk Lamp. This one has a gate valve that turns it on and off, very cool if I ever finish it.


I went to an LFS after the doctor to see if they had any more porcelain crabs but they didn't get them in yet. I love those things and want a bunch more. I couldn't buy any crabs so I got some food.
I didn't change water since before Thanksgiving and it will take a few more weeks before I do. I am not allowed to lift heavy stuff yet. My fish don't care because even if I didn't have shoulder surgery, I probably would not have changed water yet.
Everything in my tank is looking good and they are all still pregnant. Those Bluestripe pipefish seem to just constantly spawn which is OK with me.
One of my Bangai's died a while ago from old age (their lifespan is only about 3 years) and I thought the other one would go soon, but he must have found some vitamins because he looks better than ever. When he goes I want to get another pair of something but I can't decide what that will be. I don't do tangs and angels because I want something interesting, odd, unusual, rare and cool. I also want something that can spawn in a tank.
If you have any ideas, let me know.

 

[CAPSLOCK]

Have you seen the little white spotted pygmy filefish? Captive bred from ORA I believe.

 

[Paul B]

No, I have not. I will check it out and if it fits, I will ask my LFS to get me a couple.