confusion

One of my fish has disappeared, again. They do this from time to time. I never see the bodies anymore. Haven’t in years. There is too much in the tank to ever see a body, they just disappear.

I have never written about my tank in my journal, mostly because from the time I started this journal it has been in my parent’s basement while I finished school and looked for a job. It is still there—the difference now is that so am I. Since I have never talked about it, and I have nothing better to talk about now, I’ll explain my tank, my own personal fish fetish.

First of all, it’s not really a fish tank though that is what most people would call it. It is really a Reef Tank. Meaning that while it has fish in it the main attraction, at least to me, is the “other” stuff. The coral, shrimp, starfish, crabs and other more exotic life in the tank are what I like. There are some fish that I like in it, mostly ones that are small, and live in the rocks.

My tank has been up for five years now. It’s 75-gallons of salt-water with a 20-gallon sump tank, 88 pounds of live rock (rock from the reefs around Fiji) and 100 pounds of crushed coral to cover the bottom. This all adds up to roughly half a ton of water and rock. There are also a bunch of pumps to move water around and a huge light fixture which houses 4, 55-watt Power Compact lights—each light puts out 4 times the light of a regular 4-foot florescent. 2 lights are white, and two are blue, because blue light penetrates water better if you remember your physics class you will remember why.

Most fish tanks have some kind of mechanical filter on them, they tend to hang on the back of the tank and, in one way or another pass water through charcoal and mesh and other filtering material. The only external form of filtration on my tank is a Protein Skimmer, a device to take help take solid waste out of the water—the solid waste is dissolved and the protein skimmer used tiny air bubbles to float it out. Ever been to the beach early in the morning and seen the foam at the tips of the waves as they crash into the sand? Same thing, just nature’s immense version of it. The protein skimmer is really just a clever system of pipes and air tubes. A pump pushes water into the large vertical tube where it mixes with tiny air bubbles. As the air pushes to the top it passes through a bottleneck. Solid matter gets trapped on the top of the rising bubbles forming foam (more physics and a little chemistry!)

Inside the tank the real filtration takes place, see the protein skimmer takes out the solid matter that’s in a certain size range, but bigger stuff falls to the bottom and deteriorates and really small stuff just passes through the skimmer and breaks down. What happens to it all when it breaks down? I won’t bore you with the details—you’ve already had them once, back in biology class, it’s called the nitrogen cycle, look it up. Bottom line, nasty chemicals build up and must be broken down so the fish do not die from the toxicity. This is what the hundred pounds of crushed coral and eighty-eight pounds of live rock come into play. See the reason for the live rock, the reason it’s called live rock, is because of the stuff living in it. Most importantly, the bacteria living in it.

This bacterium builds up in the rock and the crushed coral over time, and its job is to break the nasty chemicals down into not so nasty chemicals, thus making the water good for the fish and corals. The bacteria are good at this that once the tank is established there is very little cleaning required. In fact a well-established reef tank needs less cleaning than most goldfish tanks. Every couple of weeks I stir up the crushed coral and take about ten gallons of water out of the tank and replace it with ten gallons of clean salt-water. Other than that the only thing is to feed the fish and coral (oh yes, you have to feed them too, they don’t live totally off light—they need calcium and a few other things) and I also spend a few minutes cleaning the algae off the glass once a week. Of course there are lots of little problems that come up over time, but if you do the maintenance very rarely does anything serious happen. Mostly a fish gets sick now or then, which is usually a sign that you need more maintenance or did something wrong. And every time you put a new fish, coral, or other in the tank things can go wrong—they die from being moved, they fight with what’s in the tank already. It’s the growing pains of a tank.

My tank has had its share of growing pains; sudden coral die offs—I lost half my coral in one week and never found out why. Fish jumping out—I gave up on Diamond Watchman gobies after four jumped out in less than three months, and the first one was in the tank for six months before he jumped out! Then there are aggressive fish, three of my oldest fish seam to want to beat up any new ones I put in the tank.

Right now I am a little short on coral, never really recovered from the die off as I was at college at the time and not there to buy coral. I have some nice coral, but need more. As for fish, the new ones seam to die off but the old ones never do. I have one fish that has been in the tank since the beginning—five years ago! Four more that are more than three years old. I have a starfish that has been there for almost five years and a oyster that is almost as old.

The biggest problem now is that I am board. Every time I put something new in it dies, or it is just a replacement for something that died. The fun of a reef tank is in setting it up and stocking it, sitting in front of it for hours looking at the things you just put in it, every fish, every coral, every crab or snail is different and unique and getting to know then is the fun. I would take everything out and start over, but I don’t have the money. When I get a job and a place to live I have to take the tank with me. I think I will just take it down, give the fish to the fish store and sell the tank. Then when I am settled into a new place I’ll start over, from the ground up so I can get to know new fish and coral, new crabs and snails.

Did you know that the US government pays farmers to not grow food? Or to plow it under? And if for some reason a crop is not worth much at harvest time many farmers will leave it in the field to rot and then plow it over? Does any of this sound ludicrous to you? I know that farming is an unforgiving and hard profession—my grandfather is a farmer—eking out a living is very hard. To keep prices up the government pays some farmers not to grow or harvest certain crops thereby keeping the supply inline with demand and keeping the price high enough to support the farmers.

These farm subsidies and supply control measures ensure that the farmers can make a living and that there will be people to do the hard work and provide food for the rest of us here in the US. But when we consider the whole world, I can find no way to justify letting food rot in the ground or not planting all the land that is available. (Except as crop rotation and fallow ground techniques demand to keep the ground fertile) The famines in Asia and Africa, the refugees who have fled their homes and therefore their food sources, they need food and we let it rot in the field. Rather than pay farmers not to plant or to leave food to rot, this food should be taken by the government and donated to UN or other relief agencies. The government could continue to restrict the supply and pay farmers, thereby keeping them from bankruptcy but take the food and put it to use. Rather than farmers leaving their crops in the field to rot because it cost more to harvest than it is worth, the government should step in and say, “we will pay for you to harvest he food and then take it and give it to people who need it.” This food could save many lives around the world.

With nothing to do… Well that’s not quite true. I played around with confusion for a while again, but not really anything to look at. The most important thing I did today was a phone interview. The interview was for Appian Consulting in Tyson’s Corner.

I don’t think I did to well in the interview—not good at interviews to begin with and not a good phone person, I just don’t know what to say when I cannot see the person I am talking to. The company sounds nice, a little more formal than I would like, but nothing that would kill anyone. Location is good, smack in the middle of Tyson’s Corner. The job itself sounds nice too—work of various projects over time using different technologies, exactly what I want. Maybe they will call to set up a real interview sometime.

Speaking of calling and interviews… The people I interviewed with over a week ago have not called me and they have not replied to my email. How rude! I don’t know, maybe it’s me, I got the cold shoulder from Biap for a month before I could track down someone and find out what was going on. I can understand it once but if it happens again then I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe I need more deodorant or a couple of extra Tic Tac’s… something!

In other news: this is the “does C██████ still read this,” section. I went out to lunch with C██████ on Sunday. Just a kind of general catch up thing. Looked at some pictures and talked about the news, the world, fake meat, et al. Now lets see if she replies to this entry or, better yet, updates her VERY out of date journal…

I stayed up all night the past two nights playing with my website. It’s been over a year since I put the site up and it has come a long way, but there is still a lot further to go to get to where I want it to be. I will make some more changes over the next few days if I get the chance. Let me know what you think of the colors and stuff.

If anyone wants to know more technical info on the update—like why I took all the table tags out or how the css works now, then email me and I will send you an explanation of it all.

Ok, I’m going to go to bed now. Tomorrow I will post something more meaningful… or maybe later today since it’s almost seven in the morning and I have not been to bed yet.

Listening to Lou Dobbs the other day talk about the speakers at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and their America bashing reminded me of a speech. This speech was given by Gordon Sinclair way back in 1973. Though the events he talks about may not be current, the ideas are;

“The Americans”
by Gordon Sinclair

The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least-appreciated people in all the earth.

As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtse. Who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did.

They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Misssissippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.

When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.

When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States that hurries into help… Managua Nicaragua is one of the most recent examples. So far this spring, 59 American communities have been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped.

The Marshall Plan .. the Truman Policy .. all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent war-mongering Americans.

I’d like to see one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes.

Come on… let’s hear it! Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar or the Douglas 107? If so, why don’t they fly them? Why do all international lines except Russia fly American planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or women on the moon?

You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times … and safely home again. You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everyone to look at. Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, most of them … unless they are breaking Canadian laws .. are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here.

When the Americans get out of this bind … as they will… who could blame them if they said ‘the hell with the rest of the world’. Let someone else buy the Israel bonds, Let someone else build or repair foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won’t shake apart in earthquakes.

When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name to you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble.

Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don’t think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.

Our neighbours have faced it alone and I am one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles.

I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians. And finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th Annual meeting in New Orleans this morning that it was broke.

This year’s disasters .. with the year less than half-over… has taken it all and nobody…but nobody… has helped.

There is much wrong with America, America is the source of much that is wrong in the world and America needs to take more responsibility for those things, work to fix them. But the bashing of America by other countries will not further this, it will only inflame the people of America and deafen their ears to the voices of the rest of the world. For much of America’s history it has helped to blaze trails—democracy and industry most notably. We have made many mistakes along the way and these mistakes have lead to many of the problems that these people are talking about, but many countries have benefited from our experience and will for a long time to come. America is not perfect—far from it and we need to do much to correct the wrongs we have inflicted on the world, but the world needs to back off and encourage us to make amends, not demand it, most of the world owes America that much.