Beautiful drive. Jane will have pix…
Snow on all the mountains. We collected rocks from Oregon, Nevada, Eastern California, Donner Pass (CA) and had an absolutely spectacular convention (ConDor in San Diego, CA), in which we were royally treated. I have returned with version 2 of the convention crud, but suspect it’s actually from Jane’s sister-in-law, who hosted us for 3 days on our visit to San Francisco. She gave us a beautiful bonsai, and Jane had already bought one from a roadside stand, so our faithful Forester was laden with cats, rocks, and small shrubberies, not to mention the beautiful mossy rocks we got in Oregon. A few of our rocks took both of us to carry. And oh, we were glad to have our own beds last night. I didn’t get much sleep—was too congested, and got up in the firm conviction it most be near dawn—took some Dayquil. Wrong. A glance at the clock said 1230 am. But I’m vertical…a little bruised. I hooked a foot on some boxes in the mudroom and fell 3 steps onto the tiled floor—but here’s where figure skating makes you canny: I surfed the collapsing boxes until I fetched up against the outside doorway and Jane’s figure skates. You’re ‘used’ to falling—so instead of panicking, I calculatedly kept my hands out front, rolled onto the solid part of my hip going forward, and think I may have gathered just a small bruise from it all. It hurt. Jane came running from the drive to pick me up, because I was kind of wedged in, and a little shaken, but I think I’m quite fine. The convention crud is another matter, but hey, we had a great time getting it!
Thanks for hanging in, all! We’d estimated when we set up CC that the chances we’d all be out of town at once for any prolonged time were nil…but guess when Lynn scheduled a cruise and we scheduled a 4000 mile trip with a convention and a family visit!
Welcome home!!!
*breathes BIG sigh of relief!!*
I’ll bet! The tank looks great—we’ll be paying attention to that. I probably will pull the plug on the autotopoff and run the salinity up a bit—because I have kalk (lime) in the topoff I’m not sure if I dare just add salt to the lot. I’ll find out.
Explanation: we left OSG with a balky heater AND a cranky main pump. Not only was the heater not heating up to its level, the main pump went out, and OSG had had NO info about detecting that situation. It’s a magnetic drive, so when it encounters an obstacle like a suicidal snail, it decouples the impeller (the little fan-device that spins round and round and drives water up the line) and continues to run. So it protects its guts from burnout, but it sounds as if it’s still going. The only way to tell is if the water level indicator is too HIGH, when we’d only told OSG look out for it being too LOW (fill the autotopoff reservoir). In this case, no heated water was getting delivered to the tank upstairs—in fact no water at all was getting delivered upstairs, so the sump had no circulating action, and a pretty low temperature; and the tank upstairs had no heat except from the lights that cycle on and off on a timer…a potent heat source, but not enough. The tank had gotten down to 65 degrees (lethality for marine tropic creatures is 62), and was getting no oxygen. We lost a couple of fish more sensitive to oxygen deprivation than the others, and let me tell you, if OSG had not been smart enough to start checking things and observant enough to give me (over the phone) a list of what’s-unusual’s (to use Catlin’s term) we would have come home to toxic soup. Once a really big fish or coral dies, it overwhelms the worms and bacteria that normally take care of such demises, and that starts a cascade of deaths that only make it worse. Last of all, the bacteria die, and then you have a really gross, smelly mess that has to go through a 4-8 week process of cleanup before anything can live in there.
So thank you, OSG. It was one heck of a potential disaster which didn’t happen!
Carolyn, while I think of it: remember that I told you that this past Friday’s specific gravity was 1.025? That day, when I looked back in your little black book, the last SpGr I took in 3/2009 was the same reading: 1.025 — and there was no pump crisis then. So, something else must be going on, other than what you speculated 2 days ago. Just something for you to consider.
Also — I’m not sure if I mentioned this to you, but remember when we were initially trouble-shooting & I told you the old Stealth heater was “warm”? Then, shortly after the new heater was plugged in, that it was “lots warmer” compared to the old heater? Well, just before I departed that day, I rechecked & the new Stealth heater was downright HOT — I’m not sure if I told you that. I never did detect any glowing lights on either heater.
You also give me far too much credit. You *know* that I was TOTALLY panic-stricken & hadn’t even started to check things out when I phoned STAT with the awful news about a cold tank, tightly retracted corals, & 2 fish belly-up on the bottom.
The only thing I knew at that point was the tank temp was 65-67 when it had been fine at 77 degrees only 22 hours before. I didn’t even know how the tank was heated when I phoned you — I thought possibly there was a heater in the upper tank & was desperately searching for a (non-existent) unplugged cord as I was speed-dialing you.
Last Wednesday was a NIGHTMARE.
What happened re the salinity was this. The tank is normally at 1.025 salinity. BUT when the pump stopped working, it raised the sump water level by 2″ or a little less. This prevents the ATO (automatic topoff pump) from delivering fresh water to the system, because the float switch is pushed to ‘off’ by the water rise.
This also means that the top tank is getting no topoff during the same period, and is under hot lights. So its salinity is rising due to evaporation. The salinity in the bottom tank is also evaporating because of the (moderate) heat…a rate which slows as the heater fails. You installed the new heater, which worked, and accelerated evaporation in the sump. But the main pump was NOT circulating water to the sump. So it was continuing to rise in salinity. The bottom tank (sump) was also continuing to rise in salinity, but at a different rate (different heating), and faster than the upstairs (display) tank
Once the Iwaki (main) pump cut on, it mixed the two water supplies—BUT the first thing it did was lower the sump drastically as it began to fill the missing 5″ of the upstairs tank. Once the sump water level dropped, the ATO cut on and began to pour fresh water into the sump, which was mixing with the upstairs tank as fast as it could come in. Got the picture? So the TOTAL evaporation topoff may have been less than the amount the over-excited ATO poured in before the levels equalized due to the Iwaki sending water upstairs. When you checked the water day before yesterday it read 1.023, but because evaporation went on, curing the slight overfill, while the water level continued to keep the ATO shut down, that was an accurate reading—but because the overall water level continued to drop due to evaporation, the salinity continued to rise. Today, Sunday, it’s verging on 1.024 but not quite there, and rather than futz with putting salt into the ATO or putting the ATO pump into a bucket of salt water for a few hours, I decided to give the float switch a shove to change the ‘set’ level fractionally, which will have the same effect, just altering the ‘set’ line in the sump. You know well what happens to cells (particularly kidney cells) when there’s a different salinity on one side of the cell wall than the other, which is why you want to limit salinity change to .001 per 30 minutes or longer if possible.
For the uninitiated, this is why it’s hard to acclimate a marine creature to a tank: once you open the shipping bag, the water starts changing ph rapidly, and getting out of the 7.9 to 8.3 range can be fatal, so you daren’t take too long about it. But changing salinity by dripping in fresh or salt water faster than .001 points of salinity per half hour can damage kidneys so badly the fish dies within the week, too. The safest course is to plop newly arrived fish into a tank set at the ARRIVING salinity, and adjust it over 4 weeks of observation (for parasites) to reach the DISPLAY salinity gradually, so it can be transferred over to the display tank without stress. And snails and crabs are even fussier. Fish can ‘sweat’. Shelled creatures can’t. Most fish are shipped at 1.021 as they’re kept at the dealers’ (to prevent ich, a common parasite); corals are shipped at 1.024, as coral parasites are different, and corals don’t like that lighter salinity. So you can pretty well move corals quickly in; inverts are likely to be at 1.024. And your fish need to be slowly shifted into a higher salinity.
Should you wonder, the ocean varies a bit (rainstorms, evaporation in shallows, currents, etc) but hovers around 1.024 in the tropics, with a ph of about 7.9.
And being ecologically conscious, I keep only corals which are aquacultured—grown for sale; or from another hobbyist. I do not approve of taking the ‘mother’ coral from the wild, and do not think the sale of ‘colonies’ should be permitted: just the ‘frags’ or broken off bits, which grow quite readily once established, a normal method of coral reproduction (it has several), which leaves the ‘mother’ coral safely as a part of the living reef.
“Reef tanks are not for the faint of heart!”
Welcome back, ladies! 😀 After hearing all this I think I’m going to stick with goldfish. 😆 Looking forward to pics and stories. 😆
“She gave us a beautiful bonsai, and Jane had already bought one from a roadside stand, so our faithful Forester was laden with cats, rocks, and small shrubberies,”
Stopped at Harris Ranch, did you?
Phil Brown
Heh-heh. You got it. Not at the ranch, but at the gas station across the bridge.
Now, I had already wanted to get Jane a bonsai after the demise of the not-well-set-up one she lost last fall. So I was already antennae-up when we passed the large permanent bonsai sign near Harris Ranch…but we needed gas.
Jane and I then had an argument with our GPS, Cyber Sally, who wanted to send us on a concentric loop toward the interstate, where we’d come in. I said no, Jane said listen to Sally, and then, spotting the bonsai dealer with his truck, I got emphatic and told Jane straight ahead. Which brought us to the bonsai truck, and to more money than we’d planned to spend, but it’s certainly a pretty plant, and we know how to take care of one, honest!
We totally missed Harris Ranch, but we’d found Farrell’s Ice Cream parlor in Santa Clarita…just happened to have an ice cream craving just as we passed, the GPS gave us a list of names, and Jane, who grew up with Farrell’s before its near-demise (down to two stores in Hawaii and one in California: they now also have one in Mission Viejo) yelled: “Farrell’s?!!!”
So off we went. We indulged in a Pig’s Trough between the two of us, with 2 bananas, Three Musketeers ice cream, coffee ice cream, mint oreo, and buttered pecan, with whipped cream (real) and of course not a single calorie in the mix.
But Jane got the bonsai she’d wanted so, and now we have 2, one more for me to fuss with.
Pig’s Trough! My fave! I had forgotten all about those!
So sorry about the fish that tanked!(go ahead and groan,the pun was intentional). The drive thru
Donner’s Pass is spectacular and my favorite way
across the Sierra’s. It has,however,been known to
throw a snowy fit even in summer. It’s better known as “Blizzards R Us”.
So glad that you are back,if a little beat up!
Hey, Welcome back you guys! 🙂
Welcome back. I’m glad to hear skating trains one to fall. Modern dance does too. I got hit by a pickup in 2005, apparetly flew through the air and landed on the side of the road. I have no memory of this; had head injury and a really deep bruise on my right side, but I know my head injury was not worse because I knew how to fall and put it into practice. I do ok when I slip on ice, too. These skills are valuable, especially as we age.
Welcome back, glad the fish survived your absence. And glad you survived the trip.
Really good to know that you are all safe and sound; I had begun to consider whether aliens had abducted you.
Actually, now I come to think about it, if I had a choice as to which human should be nominated to represent humanity in a first encounter with an alien species it would be you…
Glad you got home safe and sound, and awfully thrilled that you liked our little convention. I think it’s one of the more drama-free con experiences I’ve attended in or out of SoCal. Your bruising echoes one I got Thursday night when I tripped on a crack in the sidewalk and took a header. It was one of those falls that seemed to go in slow motion, and did a sort of roll – I think ancient judo training kicked in there. Came out with a skinned knee and a slightly twisted ankle. *sigh* Am more than ready to be well and uninjured for more a few consecutive days…
So glad! And glad to meet everybody!
We hope to be back—don’t know it’ll be next year, but we loved the con, and plan to do it again!