Tank birthday, 40 years

Today and tomorrow I will have the kids and Grand Kids here so I can't do anything except pick up things and clean. They are slobs.

WEll,,,messy anyway.

WE also have a lot of dinner invites and friends coming over to stay overnight so it has been very busy. In between I work on this pretty big project I am building in the Master Bath and working on removing sponge encrusted sponge from my tank.

My latest idea on that is I will try to remove as much of that rock as I can and cut the corals off. Then put it all in vats outside where it is 30 degrees. That should kill the sponge (I hope) but it will also kill most other things but not the bacteria. (I also hope) I will supply tiny down coats for the pods.

Yesterday I bought another 40 gallon vat (I have 3) but I need one more to hold all the rock, corals, fish and water, old and new. I would love to remove all the rock and fish to stir up the gravel, then remove all that filthy water and immediately add new ASW.

This is going to be a huge job for one old Geezer because I also have to keep that water warm and aerated while I do all the cleaning and filtering.

If all that goes well I will put back all the clean rock and fish, then glue back the corals but I will lose quite a few of them along with anemones.

Hopefully I will find all the fish but that is a concern because some of them hide in small holes in the rock and some are under the gravel. I also hope to remove any bristle worms especially large Godzilla ones.

Good Morning. On my walk in the cold and dark this morning I was thinking about passwords.
I hate anything with passwords because they never work for old people and are just made for Millennials or pre schoolers. My Grand Daughter who is 10 has no problems.

And has anyone noticed that they have to keep getting more complicated and longer. For instance. Lets say my password for something was "duh". Simple and it worked great.

Then my bank, AOL account, Google, Amazon or one of my Geezer apps tells me my password is to short. So I made it "duhh".
After a few weeks they say it needs to have at least one number in it. OK "duhh1". Now it needs at least one capital letter.
OK "Duhh1". A little while later it needs to have at least eight characters. So I change it to "Duhh1234". Of course I have to write this all down because I barely remembered the original "duh".

This was fine for a year or so but now it needs to also have at least one symbol. Ok "Duhh1234&". Now no one will steal that. But it still isn't good enough. In 2021 they told me it also has to have at least one "Native American letter". Now the Native Americans didn't have a written language so after you type in Duhh1234&" you have to say out loud a Native American word. Something like Kemosabe, which meant friend to the Lone Ranger.
If you are under 60, Google him.

So for a few months I type in "Duhh1234& and yell out the word Kemosabe". Now in 2023 it still isn't safe enough and I had to add two Egyption Hieroglyphs and the Latin word for Platypus.

Yesterday I get an E mail from my bank saying my password has been compromised.

This year will be our 50th Wedding anniversary so we were going to take one of those Mississippi Riverboat cruises. Just the two of us. I don't want to go to Europe with all their problems. We have been to about all the Caribbean, Tahitian, and Hawaiian Islands and there isn't really many places I want to go to.

Flying now is a real horror and my wife has to go in a wheelchair in an airport. They get you through customs faster but for her on the plane is difficult so we don't want to go on a commercial airliner now.

So she tells our Daughter and after they went through all kinds of "litigation" about where to go we are now taking the kids and Grand Kids on a cruise to Bermuda. We have been on that cruise and I really don't like big cruise ships but this one is not that huge. It leaves from New Jersey and we can drive to the ship.

We have been on 4 or 5 of those huge ships and the last time we went on a really big cruise ship I was praying for a torpedo to sink us. Those floating cities with 6000 people on them are horrible. There is a reason they are so cheap. Coming from New York I don't like crowds and go on vacation to get away from them. I also don't need a midnight buffet or join a beer belly contest.

Now we are spoiled and will only go on the Windstar Cruise which has about 100 people and it also has sails.

But getting back to Bermuda, last night my wife gets another idea.

Now we are also going to renew our Wedding Vows. We need a church, priest and all that. Or the Captain can do it.
(I am also a Licensed Captain but it would be silly and awkward for me to do it)

Our 10 year old Grand Daughter will be the Maid of Honor. Our 9 year old Grand Son will be the ring bearer and he will also give my wife to me and my Son N Law is my Best man.

This should be fun, and interesting.

I removed about a quarter of the rock on one side of my tank to try to remove as much sponge as I can


I cut the corals off the rocks and put them back in the tank. The rocks I removed, about 10lbs I scraped as much sponge off as I could and used a stainless steel brush on the really encrusted stuff. I didn't use fresh water so I didn't kill any microscope life. This is one piece.

That skinny piece is a DIY piece and I will have to bleach that as it was completely covered in sponge and it needs a bunch of repair anyway. Some of the cement fell off exposing the PVC and it bothers me so I will repair that.

All the "cleaned" rock I removed I have outside in a closed vat in the dark and cold. It will get into the 30s tonight so I hope that will kill most of the sponge. If that works, I will do it to all the sponge covered rock.

Now I will suck out the detritus in the gravel on that side of the tank using a diatom filter. I will try to do this a quarter of the tank at a time. Then when it is all finished, I will remove all the rock into big vats and immediately put it back in with a new aquascape because that can't be done piecemeal. Then I will glue back all the corals that are left as they will be removed and put temporarily held in a bucket.

Then I will change the water with mostly ASW to see if any of the remaining sponge spores die. Wish me luck.

In 3 weeks the tank will have lasted for 52 years. I am not 100% sure it will make it but this cleaning needs to be done.
Even if the tank didn't have an encrusting sponge problem I like to do this about every 5 years anyway just to re aquascape and clean out the gravel over the UG filter which I will not be removing...Hopefully.