Swimming Decorator crab

Maybe a little blue there.

That silicone is doing a herculean job!

Do I smell a little bit of jealousy there? Paul, that looks amazing after 41 years. Have you changed anything in your tank in that time?

Have you changed anything in your tank in that time?

Have I changed anything in 41 years. I would imagine so. But the gravel and some of the rock is original. Maybe some of the original New York water is still in there, who knows. Remember in the 70s there was no live rock and tanks were decorated with dead coral skeletons like you can see in the picture. Eventually I collected all my rock by SCUBA diving and I also made a lot of it.
My original Blue devils spawned in there every few weeks for 7 years. This is the male over his nest of eggs


And you can see the eggs here in a barnacle shell.


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It started like this, then in 1980 I moved to a larger home and transfered everything to the 100 gallon present tank.
I also look exactly the same, same hair, same physique, same watch, same everything.

These were my first pair of breeding shrimp, I think this was about 1978 or 80 something

That's awesome man!

Congratulations on 41, Paul!!

Congrats Paul

Amazing, I remember reading you thread on RC when i started 7 years ago.

I had to re design slightly my algae trough. The LEDs I had over it just were not bright enough so I got a strip of LEDs that are about twice as bright. When I had MH lights the trough used to get the spill light but the LEDs are more directional so I had to add supplimental light to the trough because it was only growing red and brown algae. Now hopefully It will grow green hair algae. I also re designed the way the water enters the trough from the skimmer. I used to have unacceptable splashing that used to make salt creep all over the place. Now I have multiple layers of plastic screening around the skimmer outflow and now there is no splashing and no bubbling which burst and splash on the lights and rear wall.

This acropora has grown at least three times it's size in a year and I can't clean the glass in front of it any longer. Whenever I go near it I accidently break off pieces so I have frags of the thing all over the place. Now I am going to try to move it to a larger space and move the giant mushroom in that place to where the acropora is now. I wonder how many frags I am going to have because there is no room to move it so I have to lift it out of the tank to re locate it.

After moving this all over the tank, getting bit to death and breaking a few pieces off this and other corals, I realize there is no room for this acropora. I temporarilly put it on this rock but it is just about out of the water and not sitting well. When I get time I need to do a major rock move. Of course I just re-aquascaped and removed a bunch of rock, but it is time again.

Today I decided to clean the algae out of my algae trough. There was just too much algae and the water was having a hard tiime getting through. The thing has a plastic window screen in it that I normally just roll up, then brush off the algae in the sink and put it back in but this time it was just too much of a job. The screen was covered in those hard tube worms and bubble algae. There was also just too many amphipods in it to save. I swirled the screen in some salt water and collected as many amphipods as I could and threw them back in the tank. Then I threw out the screen and installed a new one. I don't like to do that because I like a coating of algae on it and algae takes a long time to grow on a new screen.
I also like to smear a coating of cement on the screen because algae grows very fast on cement but I didn't have time to prepare a screen so I just put in a new one. Now it will take a good 3 weeks before algae grows significantly on it.
I may make a cement covered screen in the meantime for next time.
Today I will go to my marina to "play" with my boat and I will collect a bunch of amphipods to replace the ones I lost.
Have a great day

I took a new picture

I'd like to see the picture, but it's pretty small. Got a link to a wider one we can scroll through? I have to say, I'm impressed with the silicone job of this tank, assuming it is the same one you've had for 41 years.

How do I make it larger? I have no idea, I uploaded it from photobucket.
I got a video

When I tried to view it, it was 797 x 199 tall. I suppose if it was 400 tall, it would be about 1600 wide and thus more easily viewed.

Are you using LED lighting now? It looks that way from the video.

Yes I use LEDs. I guess I could enlarge it in photoshop, correct?