Tank birthday, 47+ years

Paul B · Jan 24, 2017

We have this door in our bathroom that is for a closet/medicine cabinet/laundry shoot. The thing is 7' high and rounded. I designed this bathroom many years ago and I don't like straight walls, doors or women. So the door weighs about 150lbs, give or take 100lbs. The outside of it is white laminate.

A few months ago the cabinet hinges started to croak as the door is very heavy. It also has shelves built into it which I think my wife stores bowling balls or rocks on. The hinges gradually sagged to where it was hitting the bottom of the cabinet and wouldn't close all the way.

I found four hinges in my workshop that were the same design, from the same manufacturer but these were much larger and I figured I would install them. (I could build a Space Shuttle with the stuff in my workshop, a really small cheap Space Shuttle.)

I remove one of the center hinges and try to fit in the larger hinge which fits into the hole in the door, but the holes in the back end of course don't line up because these are larger but being smart, I had a drill with me. I drill the holes in the cabinet to match the hinge and install the thing.

Now I try to close the door, but being this hinge is much larger, the door won't close because it has a larger swing so I have change all the hinges. No problem (I built many cabinets so this is simple)

I get my drill, screw drivers, pliers, screws and anything else I may need because after I start this, I can't let go of the door because if at least two of the hinges are not on, the door will crash on the floor breaking off a large piece of it. And this door probably cost $1,000.00 today. (about the same as a two gallon Nano tank) It would be real hard to duplicate being it is round.

The bathroom floor of course is tile, 12" white, very slippery tiles. So I take a kitchen chair which has wooden legs and bring it into the bathroom. A ladder wouldn't fit in there so I need the chair to stand on.

I gently remove the top hinge while I am holding the weight of the door with my right arm. Now I take the new hinge and stick it in and drill the holes with my bad arm (I had a shoulder operation and it is not 100% yet but good enough for this simple job)

I have to hold the hinge, drill the holes, put in the screw and screw it in, all with my left hand, and this has to be done with the door almost closed, so I have to reach about 3' in to the dark closet while I am on the chair holding the weight of the door. I can barely reach it. No problem.

As I push the drill to make the hole, the chair slips backward on the tiles forcing me to grab the shelf. The shelf with all the hardware on it. Most of the hardware bounces into the laundry shoot at the bottom of the cabinet. Luckily, I was still holding the weight of the door and the bowling balls, or barbells so it didn't break.

But now, I can't close the door so it is hanging on the bottom hinges, I can't get down because the chair is to far back and even though I am jumping to edge it closer, it keeps moving backward. I have no screws to temporarily secure the door and I have to pee.

Luckily for me, I also brought a tool with me that would allow me to remedy this situation, my cell phone. So I call my neighbor. His wife is my fish sitter so they know how to get into my house. Ring......Ring.....Ring....Ring...."The person you have called is not available". (Of course not)

OK, so I call his wife. Ring...Ring...Ring...She is also not available. Like Duh

So I gradually start inching down as I use my fingers to "walk" up the door and hold it's weight. This is when I realized I should have removed the bowling balls from the shelves.

I am almost down and my fingers are aching from the weight when my phone rings. It's my neighbor. I tell him real fast, "get over here".

He finds his wife who knows how to get in my house and comes over just in time to give me this horrified look and take the weight off the door.

Now with someone holding the weight, it is a snap.

The large spring near the top hinge is to "help" take the weight of the rocks and other heavy things my wife feels is necessary to store on a cabinet door.

Rybren · Jan 24, 2017

Tell your wife to take up 5-pin bowling. The balls are much smaller and lighter.

Paul B · Jan 24, 2017

mcarroll · Jan 27, 2017

Great story!

Paul B · Jan 30, 2017

I have not seen my garden eel and probably won't, but my clingfish is still alive and well. It grew about twice it's size and he is a very big eater but you have to target feed him right up to his nose. Very lazy fish and I don't think he will ever look an inch for his own food. But he will eat all you give him up close. He gets clams every day.
The garden eel is probably alive and well living under the UG filter but I have not really looked for him. Everything else is doing fine. The large, old Bangai actually seems to be getting younger. A few months ago I thought he was going to croak because he is past his lifespan and he had cataracts. Now his eyes are crystal clear and he is still a big eater. Their lifespan is only about 3 years. He spawned many times and lost his main squeeze a while ago. My copperband has this black mark on his side but I think it's lightening up and seems to be disappearing.
This is what it was a month ago, I will try to get a new picture when I get time.

And this is target feeding the clingfish when he was younger.

mcarroll · Jan 30, 2017

Great vid of him!

Paul B · Jan 31, 2017

Thanks, he eats a lot but chews very slow

Chasmodes · Jan 31, 2017

I once had a clingfish that I caught in the Chesapeake Bay many years ago. He'd come to the surface to eat, sticking to the glass. If I put my hand in there, he'd either bite it or sit on it and wait for food. It was one of the coolest fish that I ever had. I can't wait to get another one! Thanks for sharing the video of your clingfish. Hope that your garden eel works out OK.

Paul B · Feb 2, 2017

My wife loves lobster and last night she taught a CCD class at the Catholic school so I made her a nice lobster dinner. On these forums most people call these a clean up crew, but here we call them dinner. I know how people feel about killing one of these for dinner but I didn't want to wait for him to die of old age, so I carefully brought him into my living room and put him on a chair. I put a piece of string next to him. Then I turned on Rap music and left the room. When I came back, he hung himself.

Chasmodes · Feb 2, 2017

Paul B · Feb 3, 2017

I took my wife here for dinner last night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oheka_Castle
Our daughter gave that to us for my wife's birthday. It is the second largest private residence in the US. (my house is the third

) It was on 443 acres (I have a few less) and was one of the first fireproof buildings in NY, maybe the country.
The place has 127 rooms but most of them do not have reef tanks. There are 32 guest rooms and I assume Supermodels rent there. Megyn Kelly was married there but not to me. There have been 100 attempts for arsonists to burn the place down while it was empty for 4 years, but that is what "Fire Proof" means, you can't burn it down. We met the owner, very nice guy. He was shot in the head in 2014 in the parking lot but obviously survived and seems fine.
The place is a historical residence as I assume the owner would need a really long vacuum hose to vacuum 127 rooms so he has help. Maybe one of two of the Supermodels help him out.

gettaReef · Feb 3, 2017

Cool! A very famous house, and (wow!) such a crazy history. Lol I like how it was used as a retreat for New York's sanitation workers in the 30's! Great info from your Wikipedia link. I'm super jealous; staying in a room there is now on my bucket list. And there HAS to be at least one aquarium in all those rooms....

Paul B · Feb 3, 2017

I don't know about aquariums but I think it is quite pricy to stay there. We are going to get our Daughter and husband an overnight there, after I find out the price of course. I don't want to buy the place.
Today we went to Connecticut to a wrecking place. I bought $100.00 worth of brass Steampunk "junk" to complete making some stuff.

Brew12 · Feb 3, 2017

Paul B said:
I don't know about aquariums but I think it is quite pricy to stay there. We are going to get our Daughter and husband an overnight there, after I find out the price of course. I don't want to buy the place.
Today we went to Connecticut to a wrecking place. I bought $100.00 worth of brass Steampunk "junk" to complete making some stuff.

Looks like rooms start at $395/night. Thought it would be much higher.

Paul B · Feb 3, 2017

Those are probably the closets.

Paul B · Feb 8, 2017

Because of all the steampunk stuff I am building, and trying to do my taxes I have been severely neglecting my tank. It still has water in it and I can see through the glass but if I listen carefully I can hear the hermit crabs yelling at me. They are mad because I have been feeding them cake and doughnuts. The algae scrubber needs another weed whacking and one LED died so I had to jump it out so the rest of them would work, but that's not a big deal. If another one of them croaks, I will solder in both of them. The water cooled LED light is working well and I did use old LEDs to build it so it is normal for a couple of them to die. Everything looks great, still spawning so not much maintenance needed. I should add some calcium and alk though. I don't keep track of that and have no schedule. It doesn't seem to matter but I go by the look of the corals. They are smiling so I am not worried.
Tomorrow we are getting a foot of snow and my shoulder is healed enough that I can do my own snow blowing. As long as I don't have to lift the snow blower over my head, I will be fine.

My starter wife and I have ben married about 45 years and we were talking over dinner and I was telling her how, as a kid we would make linoleum guns with rubber bands and when we got a hole in our shoes, we put linoleum in there. (She didn't believe me so I made a linoleum gun in about 3 minutes and shot her with it.) I think most people in those days did that as we didn't have much money so we kept our shoes as long as we could. (My Dad died when I was 10) Of course, eventually the hole in our shoe would get to big so our foot would stick out and linoleum wouldn't work so you had to get shoes. For some reason shoes didn't last to long but we played and worked hard, not like today when the most destructive thing that happens to shoes is when you drop your cell phone on them. We rode bicycles or roller skated and we didn't have those Dorothy Hamill skates. We had the ones you clamp to your shoes. The soles on our shoes were rotten so the skates fell off, when the clamps didn't work we used string to tie them on.
We also collected daphnia, mosquito larvae and tadpoles in the swamps to feed our fish. We didn't have boots so we just went in with our shoes and the next day put them out in the sun to dry (and fall apart)
We also made rafts to get out in those swamps but we weren't good at making rafts so we would always sink.

When we were probably 6 we dug an underground fort in a lot. We covered it with tree limbs and plywood. When we got older, we forgot about it and trees grew over it. Eventually Contractors were building a Supermarket there and the guy backed up a bulldozer over it, the thing collapsed and the machine fell into the hole backwards. The shovel part was almost ticking straight up out of the ground. The guy climbed out cursing. They had to get a crane to get it out. The good old days.

TbyZ · Feb 8, 2017

Paul B said:
On these forums most people call these a clean up crew, but here we call them dinner. I know how people feel about killing one of these for dinner but I didn't want to wait for him to die of old age, so I carefully brought him into my living room and put him on a chair. I put a piece of string next to him. Then I turned on Rap music and left the room. When I came back, he hung himself.

Paul B · Feb 9, 2017

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGG Flood!!

I hate when I have a flood, but I really hate to have a flood when we have 8" of snow on the ground and are expecting a lot more, and I really hate having a flood, with 8" of snow on the ground when I also have a Doctors appointment and I know the doctor won't be there because she is a Sissy and didn't call me to cancel and they never answer the phone so I have to "write her a letter". I also hate having a flood when the water that is on my floor is supposed to be in the tank and the hermit crabs are shaking their claws at me, "Above the water" and I don't have any salt water to put back in the tank.
This morning I went downstairs (we have a finished basement) where the tank is. I immediately knew something was wrong by the sound of the powerheads spitting a watery mist on the walls. That is usually a bad sign.
My wife was in the kitchen making coffee and I didn't tell her about the flood. The reason I am happily married for 45 years is that I never told my wife we have a fish tank.
So I get to the tank and see the five gallon bucket under the skimmer that collects the skimmer effluent overflowing all over the place. My prize, "State of the art" projector that I watch my video's on is getting soaked.

The High Tech, DIY auto shut off that is supposed to shut off the pumps when that bucket fills didn't work! Oh No. It always worked. So I jump in the water and start pulling out all the plugs. The pumps stop but the bucket is full so I dip a cup in it and slowly remove the water.
I go and look in my workshop, move all the Steampunk stuff out of the way and get to the bucket that I keep with new salt water. OMG, It's empty, just spider webs.
My wife yells "COFFEE is READY" I don't answer. Instead I go to my RO/DI and drain it into a bucket, throw some salt in it and fill a gallon bottle with hot water to float in there to warm it up as it is freezing and corals don't have a sense of humor when you douse them in ice water. I test the salinity, Way off the chart. OK, that will have to do as I don't have any more RO water to add. I didn't let the fish see my swing arm hydrometer but it is probably so far off that maybe the salinity is fine. After five minutes I figure the water is warm enough and I dump in the water. Wife yells COFFEE is GETTING COLD. I make up an excuse but mumble it so she doesn't know what I said.
You can see the bucket under my skimmer that normally takes 2 months to fill.

I run to the closet and pull out 6 or 7 towels to throw on the floor trying to soak up an inch of water. They immediately get soaked and I need more. "WHEN ARE YOU COMING UP FOR COFFEE". I YELL, I am taking a shower. Only a small lie because I was all wet. I get more towels. Now I look in the tank to see if anything is complaining that the water I added was way to cold and so salty that when I dropped a pencil in the bucket, it stood up. No problem because I run a revrse undergravel filter and that allows you to do anything you want. Well almost, I mean I can't drop a dead moose in the tank, but almost anything else and it will be fine.
I just turned around to see if the fish were still alive. The yellow wrasses are spawning so I assume they are fine.

Now I go to see why my auto shut off didn't work. It is basically a GFCI that the pumps are plugged into. A pair of wires go from that GFCI into the bucket so that when salt water hits those wires, the GFCI trips shutting off the pumps. I test it and see that the GFCI did in fact trip, but the pumps were still going. OMG. The GFCI croaked. In all my years as an electrician I have never seen one of those fail in the on position. They usually just don't work.
So I change the GFCI, turn it all back on and get ready to shovel snow. "I THREW OUT THE COFFEE"

Turbo's Aquatics · Feb 9, 2017

Oh man!

Chasmodes · Feb 9, 2017

Bummer. I know the feeling Paul, except my flood today wasn't from a fish tank.

I was getting ready for work, nearly out the door, and I heard a weird noise downstairs, so I went down to check it out and found an inch of water on my floor. My oil furnace dumped a bunch of water on the floor overnight. So, I started trying to soak it up with towels but gave up, pulled out the shop vac, and filled it 3 1/2 times. I'm beat now from not only that, but moving stuff and furniture out of the way so I could get it all. Since then, I was dumping the 5 gallon bucket about once per hour. Now the repair guy is here. I'm on a "gold" maintenance plan, so at least the cost of the repairs and parts are totally covered. It sucks that I had to use leave today for something like this rather than a fishing trip, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

After the repair guy leaves, I'm going to take some ibuprofen and take a nap!!! I never did figure out what made the noise. It's a good thing that I did otherwise I'd have a swimming pool downstairs. That would stink, except if it attracted supermodels.

Good luck getting your flood cleaned up and your tank back in order, and also with the snow blowing!