reefing

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.

Five Cent Return

Description unavailable (Photo credit: B Tal)

I don’t love to grocery shop. This is unfortunate, because here in Manhattan, it’s something that needs to be done frequently. Any and everything you buy has to be carried home, and most of us don’t have large refrigerators, freezers, or storage space for stocking up. Add in the knowledge that you can walk outside and hit any number of stores within a few blocks, and there isn’t the same pressure to remember everything you need in one shot.

The cost of groceries here, outrageous. I know this is so because when we’ve gone on vacation and shopped for groceries at stores geared towards ripping off tourists, while the other customers are grumbling I’m skipping through the aisles, filling the cart and trying to decide what’s practical to take home. I try to shop at Trader Joe’s as much as possible, it’s a significant savings compared to the other groceries that are much closer. But it isn’t always practical, it’s twenty four blocks away. So if I’m doing a bigger shop, great! Worth the cost of the cab ride home, still saving. But if I only have twenty minutes to get there, shop, and come home, don’t need much, or I need things they don’t carry (like regular white or brown rice), it doesn’t make sense.

Grocery Store #1 (Photo credit: wgdavis)

I trek to Whole Foods for rice and flour (cheapest in the area, I buy it from their bulk containers, they have enough of a turnover that it’s always fresh) and soy milk for Flower Child (yes, their brand of soy milk is the absolute lowest price). For the certain basics or when I’m running out, I go to one of the two cheapest groceries in the area. Both conveniently located within three blocks of my apartment. They don’t look like the artsy photo above. Dark, dingy, cleanliness is questionable, the cashiers are surly, don’t even think of asking for help from a stocker for something you can’t reach, aisles are crazy narrow–any number of which are usually blocked by boxes waited to be unloaded–and if you’re smart, you’ll check expiration dates of everything before bringing anything home.

I just ran to one of the two “inexpensive” stores this morning. If you’re curious, a gallon of low fat, non-organic milk is $4.89 there, a half gallon is $2.99. A gallon of store brand distilled water for top-offs for the reef tank,* $1.19. Honey-Nut Cheerios, 12.9 oz box, $5.39. Navel (not organic) oranges, .99 each. One loaf of sliced wheat bread, $4.19. A 10 oz “brick” of Cafe Bustelo–about as far from fancy coffee as you can get, $4.69. To be fair, Bustelo goes on sale regularly. Five years ago the sales were two bricks for $5, two years ago it became 2 for $6, now it’s 2 for $7. I have to make a new batch of doggie gumbo tomorrow, so I bought a pound of cheapo ground beef, $3.63, and a pound of ground chicken, $4.29.

Getting the picture? Chasing in four different directions for the cheapest prices, reasonable quality (yanno, fresh and none of those free pets that skitter across the counter as you unload), calculating, carrying, it’s exhausting. Screw cooking, between the financial, physical, and stress tolls I don’t even want to eat.

Over twenty years ago, I had a friend who theorized the nickel deposit on bottles was instated in NY as a way for the homeless to get money to feed themselves. Was he onto something? I don’t know, don’t remember his entire argument, but he was one of those people who could argue anything and have you believe he was brilliant. But while I do see plenty of homeless grabbing cans and bottles out of the corner trash cans, the real business of it is with the senior citizens. On days when the recycling bags get put out on the street for pickup, I find seniors by every large apartment building, filling carts and Hefty bags with empty bottles. These are not days you want to find yourself in a hurry at the aforementioned less expensive grocery stores, because you’ll be on line forever, waiting for the elderly gentleman ahead of you to have each bottle and can checked and tallied before he can turn around and shop. Think about my little shopping list above, that’s a lot of nickels; many, many bottles to carry. Individual, older people trying to feed themselves off of a fixed income, not organized groups with a vehicle to get to the big redemption center.

At night, in these stores, you find what Man Child calls the shuffle of shame. On line to buy a forgotten gallon of milk, you often find yourself behind two seniors cashing in bottles, three finance-looking or professional people who are embarrassed to find themselves in this grocery store (but it’s a dollar cheaper for that box of Cheerios here than in the cleaner, higher end grocery stores), and a stinky guy buying dish detergent. But sometimes you also find one of those New York moments. The elderly woman who’s come back with her shopping cart, straight to the sighing, texting cashier ahead of everyone else on line. And the cashier rolls her eyes, holds out her hand, and takes the jar of applesauce from the woman, pops the seal and hands it back, so the senior can go home and eat it. She couldn’t open it by herself in her apartment, and needed a little help.

Beverage container redemption center (Photo credit: Hobo Matt)

*Reef tanks use salt water. Water evaporates, salt doesn’t, so you have to “top off” the tank with fresh water. Because these are very delicate critters, tap water can’t be used. Most reefers buy and run an RO/DI water filter, so they can use tap. With a very tiny kitchen, and even tinier (1) bathroom, I can’t tie up a faucet or use the space needed to run these filters, so I buy distilled.

Can I Bleed Those Pipes For You?

Editions Archipoche (Photo credit: dpcom.fr)

Caretaker vs Caregiver

You know how there are some words that are easy to confuse on the tongue–you intend to say one but the other comes out? I don’t have many, but the above are mine. Technically (at least, according to Dictionary.com) they’re synonyms. But really, not so much.

Caretaker usually refers to someone who takes care of things, like houses. Or cemeteries. When I hear caretaker in its more accepted context, I think of gothic women-in-peril novels, cover art showing the sweet young maiden running in terror against the howling wind, back of hand to forehead, while the creepy mansion looms over her. Is that he-ro going to save her in time? Oops, just the foolish caretaker, bearing yet another obscure message.

Caregiver, on the other hand…yup, that’s me. Taking care of people and critters. Every day. All day. And let’s face it, most honest long term caregivers will tell you the pay sucks and the benefits are even worse. Yeah, I know, there are some who don’t feel this way, no matter how many years the caregiving extends they feel it’s a noble calling. Vaya con Dios, that isn’t me.

English: Kkoktu figure of a Caregiver. Korea, 18th century. On display at the Spurlock Museum, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I like taking care of “mine,” doing the best I can to make sure all are as well as possible, even throw in some smiles. But time off would be divine. Time to take care of no one.

And no, I don’t mean take care of myself, either. I mean luxuriate in being a sloth for however long it takes to feel rested. Caregiving that doesn’t end, or doesn’t change within the “normal” time frames feels a lot like being the caretaker of a decrepit, leaky-creaky mansion, complete with its own graveyard. Slap some duct tape over the bathroom pipe, and then the dormer window in the attic blows out.

This being life, what do I do? I choose to add more caregiving to the schedule. I have a reef tank. Always something to be monitored, cleaned, checked, work to be done, no matter the size of the tank. A little over a year ago, I added Little Incredibly Dumb Dog. Sure, I love all these critters, they bring moments of peace and warm fuzzies, but they are living beings who need to be taken care of. Why? What drives me to do these things? And I’m not the only one, I know plenty of other caregivers who make similar choices. Why do you do it?

Even when dreaming about home ownership, do I imagine a neat, new house? No. I fantasize about one of those lovely period homes with the creaky stairs and rattling windows. I may be an idiot, but I’m not dumb, I understand those charming houses filled with character involve endless projects and repairs. Am I a handy gal? Nope. I’m not naturally artistic or mechanical, nor do I have any experience with home repairs.

And the one thing I do that has nothing to do with taking care of anyone else? Writing, of course. That beautiful calling to hunch over the keyboard and open a vein.

Shallow Grave (Photo credit: jcoterhals)

30 Days and 30 Nights

late night writing (Photo credit: professor megan)

of literary abandon. So says the wisdom of NaNoWriMo. Sounds like an orgy with pens and laptops.

No, I’m not participating, never have. I think about it, most years. Usually on October 30th, and again on November 7th or so. Then I do the math–50,000 words by midnight November 30th divided by how many days? feel nauseous, and shelve the thought for the following year.

I don’t know the whole story behind the history of NaNoWriMo other than it’s grown exponentially and started by a small group out in California, but this I know–whoever conceived this brain child cannot possibly have been responsible for cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

I would like to do it one year, though not in November. I think February sounds right. It’s a boring month, no major holidays, guaranteed to be foul outside here in NY, making me want to hide inside my laptop, perfect. Sure it’s a short month, but what the hell. 28 days and 28 nights of literary abandon sounds so much more manageable anyway. I’m pretty sure the NYC Dept of Ed is going to take away the February break this year since the kids were off all of last week, so I’ll get to incorporate all the fun of getting Flower Child to and from school each day. I’ll even give it a cute name. PerNoWriFeb. Personal Novel Writing February. Catchy, isn’t it?

I’ve got the perfect manuscript to work on, the romance in progress. I think romance lends itself to this type of writing frenzy. Keep the momentum building, move it forward, get the hero and heroine to the happily ever after before anyone starts to sag. Add in the whole Valentine’s Day kitsch and both reader and writer hearts can remain intact. Please don’t tell me you’re supposed to start fresh, a new manuscript.

Depiction of Queen Scheherazade telling her stories to King Shahryar in The Arabian Nights. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I get to be king in Fringeland, and queen of PerNoWriFeb so I’m making the rules.

None of this will come to pass. By the time my days are free enough to put this much time and focus on writing, my fingers will be too arthritic to tap on the keyboard. But I think about it. The same way I think about a beach house, a second bathroom, and a space of my own. And a dishwasher. And a washer and dryer. Oh wait. I’m getting off track aren’t I? Especially in this month of November, when I’m supposed to be thinking of something I’m grateful for each day. When did that start, anyway?

For personal space there’s no answer other than retreating into my mind. I’m pretty good at that. Mebbe too good, it could put me over the border of quirky and into the land of looney. Second bathroom? Definitely no answer to that one, unless I develop a fondness for chamber pots. Beach house? That’s what my nano tank is for. Limping along, having a little problem holding my calcium and alk levels steady at the moment, the front panel is in desperate need of a good cleaning, but still, it’s alive and mine.

Mrs Fringe is not Mary Sunshine. Seeing so many who have lost so much from Hurricane Sandy doesn’t make me happy with life as it is, but I do feel grateful that me and mine are safe and warm, and I excel at putting blinders on and chugging along. So maybe 1785.71 words per day won’t be possible in PerNoWriFeb, but I can shoot for working on the manuscript every single day that month.

Pom Pom Crab, my favorite critter in the tank. She’s survived several disasters, and every time I think she must be dead, haven’t spotted her in weeks, she pops up again, shaking her pom poms at every imagined threat and proving that some creatures are much tougher than they appear to be.

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!

Feeling Quiet

So I’ll add some new tank and critter pics, instead of blabbing.

Full Tank Shot

Torch Coral, LPS

: New friend, the pink streak wrasse

Pocillopora, sps coral

Squeee!!!

I’m excited. This Friday night there will be a midnight sale/event at a (somewhat) local fish store. This is a big, annual event that I’ve been trying to get to for several years, but haven’t yet gone. So far, so good for this year.

I have a little cash put aside for this, hoping to buy a fish (if the one I want is still there when I get there), and a frag or two. For the uninitiated, frags are small branches, heads, or polyps of living coral colonies that can be purchased, traded, or gifted to grow in a new tank. Like, my tank

Bird’s Nest frag, Small Polyp Stony coral

Green Polyps, “softie”

Equally exciting is the prospect of meeting up with a reefing friend (or 2 or 3) who I’ve known online for several years, but because the stars haven’t aligned, we’ve yet to meet in person.

I need to write a wish list of corals/critters, so I don’t get overexcited and spend all my dollars within the first 10 feet of the store. Cash only, that’s my rule in order to stick to the budget. I’d love to push the boundaries, blow the budget, and go crazy coral shopping. But I won’t. Yes, yes, I’ve embraced my not-so-inner nerd. It’s also important to keep in mind which corals will live peacefully next to each other, particularly so in a nano tank, otherwise it’s a set up for yet another tank crash.

Before anything else, I’ve got to do a big water change and some general maintenance beforehand, and have fresh, clean saltwater on hand in case of excessive sliming from new corals. Many corals, particularly SPS, slime after being rehomed, fragged, or just generally pissed off at being in different water with slightly different parameters.

Time to drag myself out of my underwater fantasy. Flower Child is awake and hungry, the dogs are waiting to be walked, and if I don’t start my workout, it isn’t going to happen.

English: A variety of corals form an outcrop on Flynn Reef, part of the Great Barrier Reef near Cairns, Queensland, Australia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is It Appropriate to Mourn a Glass Box?

And would someone please play taps for me?

A bugler plays “Taps” during the funeral of Caspar W. Weinberger, 15th secretary of defense, at his final resting place in Arlington National Cemetery Arlington, Va. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am a reefer. For the uninitiated, reefer is the terminology used for a coral reef ~~addict~~ hobbyist. In a way, even if another definition for reefer comes to your mind, you wouldn’t be completely wrong. It is intoxicating. There is sublime beauty in planning, building, growing, and maintaining a coral reef. There is the obvious, and not to be underestimated, beauty of the fish, live rock, algaes,corals, and assorted critters. There is the chemistry of the water, the additives, the salt used, and the creatures. There is the plumbing, the skimmer, the type of lighting used, manipulation of color for said lighting. From the very first addition of live rock to begin your “cycle,” called scaping, to the first explosion of diatom algae (ugly brown dust), the first pod (reef bugs) population explosion, and up, you’re hosting and growing a complete ecosystem.

And it begins with choosing a tank. Your glass box. Days and nights spent choosing each piece of equipment, planning livestock purchases, learning good husbandry skills, agonizing over the inevitable first loss of life–whether it’s an escaped snail, a carpet surfing fish, or a coral that couldn’t survive in its new environment. My tank is my frustration and my peace, my beach house dream downsized to the reality of broke in Manhattan.

Reefing can be an exorbitantly expensive hobby, but with planning, patience, and good fish freak friends willing to share frags, it can be done on a budget. I bought my first tank and system used, from a local reefer who was “upgrading” to a larger, sleeker, system. He had bought it used a couple of years earlier, so when I got the tank it was third hand at a minimum. Sure there were prettier, fancier systems out there; but (at the time) I could afford this one, which made it perfect. 45 gallon display tank, questionable black metal stand, a 10 gallon sump I immediately switched for a twenty gallon during Petco’s dollar-a-gallon sale, no frills T5 lighting. Yes, perfect. A living chemistry experiment in my living room. I reached out, made other reefing friends, made mistakes, I learned. Hours and hours staring into the tank with a magnifying glass, calling out to Man Child, Nerd Child, and Flower Child to come look when I saw zoanthid pooping, or my snails spawning. I enjoyed success and growth for a few years.

I even fought off the tang police.

Then, a neighbor got bed bugs. All the apartments surrounding the one that was infested has to be treated. I did the best I could, shut pumps, lights out, covered the tank…but the poison got into the system. And so, I experienced my first of what is known in the hobby as a tank crash. My incredible pipe organ– sick, montipora colonies–rapid tissue necrosis, red bubble tip anemone– gone, pocillopora colony–withered; the list went on of corals I had grown out from tiny frags to thriving colonies. I tried nursing the tank along, many generous reefing friends gave frags and colonies, but I was never able to recapture the glory days of this tank. At the same time, our budget got tighter, and I just couldn’t do what needed to be done in order to revive and maintain 65 gallons’ worth of system.

Again, my fish buddies came to the rescue; one sold me a dynamite little all in one 8.8 gallon acrylic tank,pumps and plumbing included for a ridiculously low price, another sold me a sexy as all get out LED light and fixture. I’ve restocked and recrashed, and added 12 dimensions to my patience.

I prefer to think of it as I downsized to an upgrade, rather than I downgraded.

A life long, non-reefing friend had become intrigued, in the meantime. How can you not? Science, beauty, playing God with your own glass box. So, I passed the old system to her, and she has been learning through trial and error, like the rest of us, for over a year now.

Yesterday, she called me. The tank is leaking. Sniffle. A potential disaster that can’t be ignored, she’s going to buy a new tank today, upgrading to a rimless 75 gallon.

OK, one more for my fallen soldier.