I love cruises. I love the excitement from three months before I even arrive at the terminal. I love packing for the adventure...I love not knowing what each day will bring. I love that I am pampered, treated as though I was the most important person aboard that ship. I would like to correlate this to my life....

The Preparation:

I spend hours determining what I will need...even what others will need. I put everything into a pile and then start sorting. Two scents...

I had an epiphany today. It started out badly, as I spent the twelve hours prior to 8am under observation at RGH for PVC's (premature ventricular contractions). With an artificial aortic valve, it's 50/50 on whether the episode turns into a heart attack or not. Luckily, no, honestly, I did a lot of praying, with some meds and fluids, they were able to bring my blood pressure down with a follow up on Thursday with my cardiologist. But that wasn't the ephiphany cultivator. I drove myself to the...

Q: Should I quarantine all fish?

A: Yes. Four weeks is a good window for observation of disease and parasites. All newly acquired fish will benefit from 4 weeks of time by themselves in the quarantine tank to recover from shipping/handling stress and to acclimate to your feeding regime.

Q: What about corals, inverts, algae, and live rock?

A: Whle I feel that the risk is very low unless they are coming from an infected tank, you can set up a separate QT...

Why put lime in your ATO?
It's called 'dripping kalk', from the German word for lime. It's appropriate for anyone with clams or stony coral, ie, a tank that sucks up calcium faster than weekly water changes can supply it.

This is why stony coral keeping is a lot easier than people think it is---easy, as in, "very little work"...as in, "actually far less work than keeping a FOWLR."

First you need an ATO [automatic topoff]. Everyone does who...

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