Random Discussion

[WhistlingBadger]

Gerbils are delightful, curious, active, and peaceful (they turn into hunters if you throw them a grasshopper). They also don't drink a ton of water so they are very non stinky if you keep their cages clean. You can get one, a male-female pair if you want babies, or raise a pair of females together.

Hamsters are nasty, awful demon rodents.

But my favorite rodent pet is a rat. I haven't had good luck with the "natural" colored ones; the various white breeds are better. Get a good one, get it young, and spend a ton of time with it, which is pretty easy since you can take them almost anywhere. Mine used to ride on my shoulder in summer and in the armpit of my coat or inside my hat in winter. He would sit on my lap and let me rub his belly while I watched TV. And the lady I bought him for told me that any food that's healthy for a person is healthy for a rat. So I never once bought food for him; I'd just give him a little bit of whatever I was having. Perfect pet for a perpetually broke college student.

 

[Back in the fold]

I don't even want to ask what happened-

No . No , you don’t .

 

[WhistlingBadger]

I just came across an interesting definition for wisdom (from an ancient Greek lexicon) : Inner perspective regulating outward behavior.

 

[JackGulley]

My water lettuce is dying even though it’s right next to the light. Perhaps I will need to splurge for that fluval light, after all.

 

[Back in the fold]

Is there any old timer here who remembers ever having seen an inside filter that hung from the aquarium rim and worked with a combination of a siphon and outlet and air ? You had to prime the thing to get it going which was very difficult and if the water level fell or the floss got too gunky it stopped working . No motor just air and siphon action .

 

[MaloK]

I think I remember these as UGF mutants from a planet that water is lighter than air. The action of gravity was inverted or somethin'

 

[gwand]

I want to visit all 50 states before I get too old to travel. I have been to most states but I have not visited Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Idaho, North or South Dakota. September 26 I will fly to Kansas City with my wife and rent a car. We will visit parts of Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma - the three most boring states. But a bucket list is a bucket list. Next time we will visit the Dakotas and Idaho. Feel free to suggest sights to see in these states.

 

[jaylach]

Is there any old timer here who remembers ever having seen an inside filter that hung from the aquarium rim and worked with a combination of a siphon and outlet and air ? You had to prime the thing to get it going which was very difficult and if the water level fell or the floss got too gunky it stopped working . No motor just air and siphon action .

The closest that I can remember from your description is the old corner filters that were just an air driven box with carbon on the bottom and floss above. If the floss got too dirty it would not allow air flow and the filter would stop.

There is no filter that does not have a pump motor. Even under gravel filtration has a pump motor. You have to consider a 'motor' as something that causes movement in relation to input.. With under gravel filtration it is the air going up the air risers that act as the motor driving the water flow pump.

I think I remember these as UGF mutants from a planet that water is lighter than air. The action of gravity was inverted or somethin'

Nope, these systems were actually connected to an alternate reality through a thread put out from an aquatic worm hole. It was the worm hole's affect on the space time continuum that made it seem that gravity was inverted. Actually gravity remained the same as it was really space and time that was inverted, not gravity. The thing that is amazing about all this is that it can appear that gravity is reversed even though it isn't. How this works is that the inversion of the space time continuum in an aquatic environment means that reality can run in reverse making it seem that gravity has been reversed when it really has not.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

I want to visit all 50 states before I get too old to travel. I have been to most states but I have not visited Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Idaho, North or South Dakota. September 26 I will fly to Kansas City with my wife and rent a car. We will visit parts of Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma - the three most boring states. But a bucket list is a bucket list. Next time we will visit the Dakotas and Idaho. Feel free to suggest sights to see in these states.

I'll agree with you on Kansas...Eastern Oklahoma and northern Arkansas--the edges of the Ozarks--are pretty, rolling hills, nice lakes, and dense forest. The Cowboy Hall of Fame in Okie City is pretty cool and worth a day. I've never been to North Dakota, at least not that I remember. Seems like there's beauty anywhere, but some places you have to look a lot harder to find it.

Hard to go wrong with Idaho. The west slope of the Tetons, Swan Valley, Spokane, and the Coer D'Alene area are gorgeous, if a bit touristy. I'd love to spend a few days in Spokane; just a really nice city (edit: Even though it's actually in Washington. Duh). Around 25 years ago I took a boat tour of Lake Coer D'Alene, and it was beautiful.

In South Dakota, the Black Hills are really nice. I'm especially partial to Wind Cave National Park. It might even be fairly uncrowded by the end of September, and there are some really nice campgrounds in the area. The nearby town of Hot Springs is kind of cool, with its mammoth fossil dig, a great ice cream place, and a really beautiful public library if you find yourself in need of a quiet place to chill out for a while. I'm a strong believer in the value of public libraries during long road trips.

 

[MaloK]

Nope, these systems were actually connected to an alternate reality through a thread put out from an aquatic worm hole. It was the worm hole's affect on the space time continuum that made it seem that gravity was inverted. Actually gravity remained the same as it was really space and time that was inverted, not gravity. The thing that is amazing about all this is that it can appear that gravity is reversed even though it isn't. How this works is that the inversion of the space time continuum in an aquatic environment means that reality can run in reverse making it seem that gravity has been reversed when it really has not.

Yessssssssssssssss you got it. But... But.... But....

How do they get that wormhole opened to that the reversed gravity alternate reality that is actually not reverted ???

And... And... And...... That would mean a torsion in the continuum inversion on aquatic environment ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

We must be giving in depolarized quantum aquatics realms right there !!!!

You'll notice some fish will swim upside down at the moment... But it's only temporary

* Warning* If we are going to start talking * like that...
We should start another thread, maybe...
Like a never ending story thread...
But responding a funny incremental stupidly to
another more jacked one is a national sport in Canada...
As a Britain colony we are able to cope with the flow
quite well and are pretty able to compel further
retaliations. And as a good lumberjack I don't call
"timber !" too soon when a tree is falling. This might
come from My deep roots of rural ancestry, That
have been somewhat upgraded to a kind of proletarian
status with a sudden heritage lately... None the less this
instability all comes from Start Trek unreliable information
and miss guidance that brought me to this current tilting
point... *Warning*. Nobody read the small prints anyway.

 

[fishorama]

We had an old Supreme? HOB but not internal. It had siphon tubes that were too big of a diameter for me to be able to start them. My husband's thumbs are bigger, so he had to do it. It came with a used tank & had 1 "easy starting" (Ha!) siphon that you had to shake vigorously to get it to work...sometimes. It had some kind of motor inside to return the water. He says it was in a tight place inside the box, he couldn't get out to clean. I don't remember that part but he said my thinner fingers could fit. I'm remembering it different. Like a plate that water flowed under & a gravity return or maybe a motor? A major PITA teamwork ordeal. That was back when we were too poor to buy better new equipment.

We had the dreaded clamp on heaters back then. Those that if you bumped them there was no telling if they'd cook the tank or quit working. Heaters are much better but still the weakest part of our hobby IMO.

As for travel, my dad's family was from Arkansas & OK. We drove through those & Kansas to other places, AFAIR. My dad took my older brother on a "guys trip" to see where his grandparents etc. lived. My great & grandpa worked in the coal mines.

We did a driving out west trip when I was 5. I remember the Badlands because I was to take my little sister to the nearby bathroom. Suddenly she dropped her pants...& sat on a cactus to pee. I was of course reprimanded & had to watch while my mom tweezed out cactus spines from her butt. Yellowstone was home to Yogi Bear (ok, Jellystone). We even saw 2 bear cubs from what was probably not a safe distance. Elk on the mountains but no buffalo or bighorn sheep.

I have a close cousin in ID. We had visited a different aunt & fam on our great out west trip. But as an adult we've been twice. They used to live on the Clearwater River. We went to a fish hatchery & up into the mountains & had huckleberry ice cream, great stuff! Lots of Lewis & Clark site pull outs along the way, more than we could stop for. There was a small but interesting Native American museum on the way to Lewiston. Lewiston smelled like icky cabbage from the paper mills. We had to get deep fried steak (I can't remember what it was called) but it's an ID thing. It sounded gross but was quite tasty!!

Then they moved to a resort-y place near the Canada border. Live music almost every night in summer! A wine bar, a beer tasting place, ice cream shop & several restaurants. A couple overlooked the lake. We were there too early in the season for lake cruising or zip lining but that might have been fun. We went to C'd'A 1 afternoon, nice but not quite our thing in our very limited visit.

Spokane is actually Washington, lol. My cousin goes for bands & some healthcare stuff there. We stayed at a crappy motel on our way to visit them. We didn't see anything of the city beside a drive-by. Maybe next time!

The wind caves sound very cool! Near us now, we have a small group of them on our local mountain. Neat stuff, you should check them out if you can.

 

[Back in the fold]

@jaylach I get what you’re saying about no filter has no motor but I am referring to an electrical motor which all power filters have today . This old thing I’m talking about was more air assisted . This thing was from back in the late 60’s early 70’s when there were a lot of small independent manufacturers making lots of things that never caught on . Maybe I’ll try contacting ZooMed’s Museum of Pet History and see if he knows anything . For some reason or other the memory of this contraption is haunting me .

 

[GaryE]

I made an air driven variant on those inefficient old siphon filters. I took an airdriven box filter (which I use a lot of) and extended the pipe so the bubble and water ejected fell into an above the surface trough structure, flowed through media and fell back into the tank via drilled holes. It gave a slow, steady trickle filtration, and supported good bioloads of growing fry.

Like 90% of my fishroom filtration, the motor was my linear piston air pumps, but the filter didn't have a motor in it. It's a variant on my recycled plastic bottle filters.

Travel? I haven't visited a lot of the US. But Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota was a great place to experience. The goodlands around it were boring, but the Badlands were great.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Spokane is actually Washington, lol.

Sheesh, you're right.

 

[JackGulley]

Interesting reflections between the internet’s advice on fish stores vs actually working at one.

I think the mantra of “don’t trust anything the employee tells you” overall does more good than harm. But that doesn’t mean it’s literally true. Fish store employees aren’t evil, and, at least at an actual LFS, are themselves almost definitely fish hobbyists (petsmart might be different). We just aren’t a replacement for doing your own research. I think the sentiment has an overall positive effect since it teaches people to be discerning.

The other observation is monster fish. Yes, we sell common plecos. But what surprised me was that so far, I haven’t encountered a single person who wanted a common pleco who didn’t a) know how big they get and b) have a tank big enough for one. I don’t like things like Jack Dempseys, Oscars, common plecos when they’re sold in a petsmart that doesn’t sell a tank big enough for them. But working at a store that caters to hobbyists, there are plenty of customers with big tanks to warrant selling these fish. I would say more than have of our regular customers have 75+ gallons at least, and many have ponds. Everybody that has pointed at a common pleco has had an employee warn them how big they get, and everyone either responded with either “oh ok I won’t get that” or “yeah I know I have a plan”.