Coral Reefs

I Got It Bad

My toes want to be in that surf.

While nothing is official yet (which means plenty of room for something to go wrong) it’s looking likely we will get the larger apartment. Please don’t shout hooray and tempt the fates yet.

Wonderful news, right? Of course it is. What I’ve wanted forever, right? Of course. But there’s that part of me that keeps whispering, “suckerrrrrr!” Because getting and moving into the bigger apartment moves my dream of living by the beach from the category of infinitesimal to bwahahahaha. Which in turn leads me to I want a big tank again.

I miss reefing. I miss Sadie the fire shrimp and Gloria the glorious yellow tang. I miss my electric blue crocea clam and my florescent green hydnophora colony. I miss stinking of low tide and vinegar from doing tank maintenance. I miss playing God in a glass box, having my own little slice of the ocean. And I really miss having a big tank. I’ve been thinking this for a few months. Several months. OK, since the first time I heard the larger apartment was a possibility. Hearing Big Senile Dog’s diagnosis of kidney failure turned the thought into a rumination. (There’s a limit to how many creatures with significant needs I can take care of at once, and setting up a new tank is a lot of work.)

The other day I was at a friend’s house. Her tank is currently a mess, choked with cyanobacteria. I stared into those waving reddish snot flags and thought, “I miss my tank.” Yeah, I got it bad. My hands were itching to get into that water. Bizarre, because the skin on my hands and arms is in better condition than it’s been in for years because I’ve been tankless for a while. If I had been able to find her turkey baster I would have started doing some manual removal for her.

Part of what made keeping up with a big tank unmanageable would be much easier in the larger apartment. Because there’s an extra half bath, I could set up an RO/DI unit, mix my own saltwater and not have to buy and lug distilled or RO/DI water from the local fish store. Or be begging Husband or boys to pick it up for me.

My tanks have always been my beach house, my fantasy measured in gallons. At this point in my tsunami of downward mobility, I’m thinking eighty gallons sounds about right.

reef life 1 (Photo credit: Raven_Denmark)

Mrs Fringe Would Like To Be

Hawaii Beach House (Photo credit: imgdive)

here. No, this isn’t another weather complaint. Ok, maybe it’s a little bit of a weather complaint, but it’s actually a nice day in NY–for February. Sunny and forty five degrees. But really, I think it’s about the life I wish I were living.

It’s funny, because the life I am living is one many others want. Parts of it. New York City. Manhattan. Rent controlled apartment in a high rise building. Proximity to theater, music, art. And when I imagine life in Hawaii, I can see a lot of overlap. Multicultural living. Waking up to sights others dream of. Crazy high cost of living. Crowds. Tourists. Public transportation and walking making more sense than a car for daily life. Roaches big enough to put a leash on.

New York is like a mirage for so many. Generations keep coming. But for every 3 who come, 2 leave. It isn’t what they thought it would be. The competition is too steep, too massive, the snow is too black, the apartment is too cramped, the rent is too damned high. I imagine the same is true in Hawaii. Well, not the black snow, but the fantasy of what life will be like compared to the reality of bills and laundry and dirty dishes.

But in Hawaii you have this.

Big Island, Punaluu Beach Park (Photo credit: Wikipedia

What will it take for me to make peace with where I am? I don’t know. What would it take for me to get there? More money than I’m ever likely to have. Husband willing to go. Nerd Child and Man Child willing to trade their home base. More money.

For years I kept a reef tank, my beach house of dreams in a glass box. Recently I broke it down, the cost of upkeep too much right now. Much as I loved my tank and critters, and I expect I will set it up again eventually, it isn’t much of a substitute for this.

A Needlefish is being cleaned by Rainbow cleaner wrasse, Labroides phthirophagus. on a reef in Hawaii at cleaning station (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There isn’t a whole lot of me in Christina, my main character of Astonishing. Except towards the end, when she’s dreaming of black sand beaches. Yet I didn’t send her there. Why? I don’t know. It would have been a different story, she would have been a different character.

Are you where you thought you’d be, Fringelings? Where you want to be?

**I don’t know why the spacing is so funky today. My mind must be somewhere else. On a beach. Or underwater with a school of yellow tang.

Bonus Photo Post

As I’ve mentioned, the pom pom crab is my favorite critter in the tank. He came out for a rare appearance a little while ago, staying visible long enough for me to grab the camera and take a couple of shots. Not long enough to shut the pumps so I could get clearer shots, though, sorry.

Just a crab and his return pump

Normally he stays hidden, coming out once or twice a month to grab food. It’s rare for him to venture this far from his home, hidden in the live rock.

Pink streaked wrasse, on the hunt

In danger of being swept over the overflow.

And Then There Was One

Too sexy for the catwalk

Last night when I shut the tank lights, I had two sexy shrimp doing the can can on their favorite rock. This afternoon, when I put the lights on, I still had two, but one was a dried out spotted blob, on the wrong side of the mesh screen covering the top of the tank. Stupid shrimp. I hoped it was just a molt, propelled out of the tank by the newly powerful pumps, but with inspection, there seemed to be some meat inside. Self sacrifice for Good Friday? The photo above is the one that’s left.

Bummer.

Mrs Fringe Has Cooties

Not exactly me, but my tank.

This morning I woke up determined to be productive. I would write. I would give Little Incredibly Dumb Dog a haircut and bath! I would clean the kitchen and make dinner. I wrote. In the scene I worked on, there was a little tank talk. Which made me look over at my poor, neglected little tank. Really neglected. As in, I don’t quite remember the last time I cleaned the viewing panels, or did a water change. Bad Mama.

Today became Spring Cleaning, Part I. I hear some people wash their windows when they’re Spring Cleaning. Pfft. I’m a reefer. Tank maintenance, it is. First I unplugged everything and took out the pumps.

Pump 1, soaking in a vinegar bath. A toothbrush is one of my favorite tank tools.

A bit of coralline algae on the directional head of a pump. This is a good, wanted encrusting algae. Comes in lovely shades of purple, red, green, pink, and white.

Husband drove me to the store, so I could pick up premixed saltwater and some Chemipure Elite. Read the label, it cures everything. I think the EPA should invest in some for the next time there’s an oil spill. Basically, it’s a mix of charcoal and ferric oxide, to lower nutrient levels, phosphates, silica, and other bad things you don’t want measurable amounts of in your tank. Because if you have too much of these, you get cooties.

Look through the forest of green hair algae, and you’ll see a patch of red slime algae covering the middle rock. Red slime isn’t really an algae at all, it’s cyanobacteria.

Next, time to begin the long and tedious process of scraping algae from the viewing panels. Coralline algae is beneficial to the overall health of the tank, but not when there’s so much you can’t see through the glass/acrylic. Toothbrush to the rescue again, along with an old credit card for scraping without scratching the acrylic. I’ll be honest, I didn’t get it all clean, plenty of patches of algae still around, but it’s much better.

Some sheets of cyano were covering the remnants of a zoanthid colony, I think some of them will recover. Pretties! To my shock, my mini carpet anemone is still alive. Unfortunately, it’s rolled itself into a ball, and wedged itself between two rocks in a way that I couldn’t get to it without shredding my hands. Maybe it will come out now.

Another pest uncovered today

Vermatid snail tubes (if you look close, you can also see a tiny feather duster to the left of the tubes)

I’ve now got about a gajillion vermatid snails and their tubes all over the tank. All over the rocks, growing from the sand bed, I even scraped tubes off of the pumps. By themselves, they aren’t specifically harmful. They aren’t poisonous, and don’t bite. But those little tubes are sharp as hell, making it hard to work in the tank, and they cast fine threads out of the tubes to catch whatever bits they can to eat. When there are so many of them, those little webs and threads irritate the corals.

After scraping and stirring everything up, I changed out about four gallons of water, a little less than half of the total water volume of the tank. Threw the chemipure and a couple of pieces of poly-filter into the back chambers of the tank. The sexy shrimp were the first critters to venture out. Couldn’t get a shot of them, they’re too jumpy today. Found a new yellow sponge growing along the bottom of one of my rocks. I’m going to keep an eye on it, I had one pop up like that in my last tank, it smothered a delicate coral. Then the wrasse came out of hiding.

I left to go walk a dog, then came home and walked my dogs. Shut the pumps again and threw a little food in the tank. The pom pom crab ventured out.

I stink. Literally. I smell like a blend of vinegar, low tide. and dead snail. My back hurts from lifting and carrying water. My hands feel a bit chewed up from all the scrapes of the vermatid snail tubes. Looking into the tank, I can now see how much work still needs to be down, and all the coral losses from these last several months of neglect. Somehow, though, I feel excellent. If I can get my back to loosen up, I’ll even make dinner.

Limerick Tuesday

Limerick – MÓR Disco, Every Tuesday (Photo credit: infomatique)

Yes, yes there is such a thing as Limerick Tuesday.

It’s the fourth Tuesday in February, when I want to post something, but I’m too dazed to write something deep or clever. Why am I dazed, you ask? It’s the effects from the overwhelming stench in the cab I took with Flower Child when I picked her up from school. She was tired, there was some type of brouhaha happening on Broadway that resulted in many police cars whizzing past with lights and sirens going. Seemed like the perfect day to splurge on a cab. I’m pretty sure that cabdriver must have had a pico reef hidden in the trunk, because that was the gut clenching, every muscle recoiling smell of dead sea critter.

Luckily, I already made some progress on the WIP today, so I’ll just give the update in limerick.

There was a young lady called Frag Hag

Who lived in a magical grab bag

But one day her reef

Gave her such grief

Her virtue; Twas lost to a scumbag!

Jester’s sceptre (Photo credit: sleepymyf)

Elegance

Elegance coral 2 (Photo credit: afagen)

No, this isn’t the type of elegance I’m talking about today, but this is one hot coral. I haven’t been having much success with LPS coral in my little tank, so I won’t add it to my wish list just yet. Yeah, I’m pretty weird, thinking about elegance this was what popped to the forefront of my mind. But I chose this particular photo because it has that little asterina star on the glass. Those things seem so cute. But the truth is if you see one in your tank, you’ve likely got dozens, and they breed faster than a bunny on speed. Then you have a nuisance that will irritate pricey and prized corals.

I think that’s me. When it comes to style, I have to make an effort, which I often don’t. Come on, how long should I take to get dressed and do my hair to drop the girl off at school and come home to clean the bathroom, or go out to dogwalk? But sometimes I do. It’s fun and it feels good, nothing says “I can do this” more than a kick ass pair of shoes with the right outfit. So when I do make the effort, sometimes I hit it, and sometimes I don’t, but even when I do, it’s never perfect. There will be one little something that tips the scales from I’m rocking it to oh shit, I’m still carrying my dog walking bag. Which then leads me to notice the dog hair I didn’t get off my skirt, the smudge of mascara under my right eye, the eek! of questioning if I used deodorant under both arms.

Taking Flower Child to school this morning, I saw a young woman running for the bus. Tall, slim, and cute, she was wearing clunky wooden heeled sandals, and a too long nightgown looking brown maxi-dress, with a faux-fur gray sweater on top. Oy. On my way back home, I saw another woman running across the street for a cab. Black suit, ivory turtleneck underneath, and black patent leather stilleto pumps. I was more than impressed by how well she was able to run, though I’m guessing it produced more jiggle than she generally shoots for.

The Patent Leather Kid (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What made one work and the other not? I don’t know. One thing I love about the city is that women never seem to be limited by what’s “in.” Personal style is encouraged, influenced by many factors, and expressed through textures, lengths, fabrics, and accessories. Fun to watch, and a bonus in that it makes coming up with the beginning of a character sketch pretty easy.

I’m not talking about the women who are so stunning it doesn’t matter what they are or are not wearing. It’s the women who have whatever the it factor is that allows them to look like the definition of fabulousity no matter what their age, style or dress size is. The difference between wtf -is-she-wearing and wow-I-wish-I-could-pull-that-off.

Is it studying old episodes of What Not To Wear? Reading fashion magazines? Being the victor when battling for that dress at the annual Barney’s sale?

I don’t think so. I honestly think it comes from within. Part of it being a good eye, knowing what lines will work with your lines, and much of it is confidence.

I have a neighbor who always looks elegant. And when I say always, I mean even when staking a claim for the most efficient dryer in the laundry room. She isn’t young, she isn’t particularly tall, she isn’t slim. But she is always styling.

Lautrec the tattooed woman 1894 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Way Over Yonder

For someone who isn’t going anywhere, I spend a lot of time thinking about where I’d like to be.

Hawaii (Photo credit: jmauerer)

I’ve never been to Hawaii, so it’s pure fantasy to say I’d like to live there. But I know I love warm weather, and sun, and the beach. I’d have to give up my mixed reef tank, it’s illegal to buy most corals there, but I could have an excellent softie tank, with some beautiful fish. Besides, I’d be able to see the corals in the ocean. Wouldn’t that be something? Unfortunately, I’d also love to live somewhere I could afford a little house and groceries, with a good school system for Flower Child, so Hawaii isn’t a likely scenario.

So many beautiful places to fantasize about, even limiting my game of “let’s pretend” to America. Sometimes I think about going north, have you been to Vermont? Awesome sharp cheddar, real maple syrup, elderberry wine! It’s stunning; peaceful, sunny, and many parts are affordable.

Vermont (Photo credit: Dougtone)

I love to read the descriptions and study the photographs posted by my online friends who live in various parts of the country. I envy their gardens, their scenery, their reasonable cost of living, and their space. Then I keep reading. And hear about raccoons and deer and bear, and beavers and possums and snakes. *** I had to pause here, because my shudders made it impossible to work the keyboard.

Yes, it’s true, Mrs Fringe is a weenie. I’m willing to brave underwater creepy crawlies, willing to brave the subways, I’ll even, on occasion if need be, brave the tourists in Times Square. But rabies and lyme disease and giardia? Oh my!

When I was a kid, I thought I was an animal lover. I loved dogs, I even the loved the gazillion stray cats that lived in the neighborhood. My parents told me I was an animal lover. There were plenty of breadcrumbs, if I had thought to follow the trail. I hated the chickens at the live poultry place on McDonald Ave. But they were there to be killed, plucked, and taken home for Sunday dinner, the F train roaring and clanking above, so I didn’t think of them as nature. I also didn’t think of them as dinner, I think I stopped eating chicken by the time I was eight. I hated the zoo. But this was before the days when zoos became humane, who could love the scrawny, flea bitten lion tearing into a hunk of bloody raw meat in his cage? I loved the track. I loved Black Beauty. Very exciting. Beautiful animals, those thoroughbred horses. From a distance. Up close, they’re really, really big. Scary. I was an adult before I found myself next to a cow. They’re huge! And they stink. I know how to hold my breath on a steamy day in August when walking down the subway steps, so the waves of funk and urine don’t penetrate. But farm animals? There is no holding your breath for that stench. Pfft, clean smell of manure…I don’t think so.

Thinking back, again, they weren’t so much breadcrumbs on a trail as bright yellow strips of divider on an interstate highway.

Are you living where you want? If you could move, where would you go?

For all my fantasy time, I’m not sure where I want to end up. But I don’t want to be here.

Theater District/Times Square

Dear Sexies,

Thor amboinensis/Sexy Shrimp

So cute, so delicate, seeing you both dance, wiggling your tails in time with the wave maker. I love to watch you, not so much swimmers as graceful leapers, like watching a dancer sail across the stage. The natural symbiotic relationship between you and the mini carpet anemone always in evidence, as you each grab for a pellet or a juicy piece of cyclopeeze, bringing it back to the your nem to feed host and hostess. I keep you well fed, so you don’t pick at the skirts of my zoas, or annoy the yumas until they expose their guts.

At this moment, I want to plunge my hand in the tank and let my fingers press into your little exoskeletons until you pop, sexy shrimp guts to feed the nem instead of mysis shrimp. Why? Because you keep grabbing for my new kenya tree frags, trying to bring them to the anemone.

Kenya Tree Frag

The internets gods were frowning at me this morning, it took three hours to get a connection to come online. Fine, I figured I could use some time to stare into the tank and center my thoughts. Frags are not food for you, Mr and Mrs Sexy!