Moontanman

I partially set up my 75 gallon aquarium today, I used 40 pounds of black sand, Tahitian Moon Sand, about 1 inch over the bottom of the tank. I filled the tank with well water run through a regular home water softener. The water, as usual had a very strong odor of HS, I added a quart of regular H2O2 and the odor dissipated. i added one cup of marine aquarium salt and 1/2 cup of calcium chloride to compensate for the extreme softness of the water. I am aerating the water for 24 hours before adding filtration or fish. I'll put up a you tube video of the fish in their new home in a few days... I'll add some sacrificial fish for 24 hours before adding the paddlefish....

You are thinking of quartz which has a specific gravity of 2.65, dry sand has a sp of 1.6, wet sand is 1.9 http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_specific_gravity_of_sand What is the specific gravity of the materials you suggested if they are in sugar sized sand particles? The black aquarium sand is at least twice as dense as silica sand by my estimate. The black aquarium sand is sold as Tahitian Moon Sand, i my doubts about it coming from Tahiti or the Moon, volcanic sand can be black but it should have a similar specific gravity to silica sand...

I like black sand in my aquariums, it is not only expensive but it has about 1/2 the volume by weight than white sand. the black sand cannot contain metals because it's safe to use with marine invertebrates which are very sensitive to metal poisoning. White sand is primarily SiO2, what is black sand made of? I may have found the answer to this.... Slica sand "SiO2" specific gravity 1.6 Ilmenite Sand "TiO2, Fe2O3, Cr2O3, MnO" specific gravity 4.6 Works for me....

I think humans eventually evolve into beings so powerful they merge into a hive mind and become God, at the end of time they go back in time and create the universe so they can evolve, deny God's existence, and evolve into God..... and so it goes, what goes around eventually comes around...

Actually you did not, you asserted special knowledge, with no evidence to support it, that you knew that the Catholic version of God is in fact the one true God, the Earth Mother Gaea is just as supportable as the Creator of the universe as your trinity..... as is any number of ideas about the nature of or even the lack there of God.

Thor! No way, only a Goddess can give birth to the Universe, the very idea of a male supreme being is blasphemy! it's not nice to deny Mother Nature! I don't know why the image failed to show.... Possibly the faeries and elves objected Seriously, why didn't the image show up?

This is nothing but pure proselytizing, isn't this against the rules even in the religious forum?

Most cephalopods are annual, they live breed and die in a year or less, nautilus are the only relatively long lived cephalopods i know of and no one really knows how long they live but they do live through more than one breeding cycle. Even the Giant octopus lives only a couple of years and the really large squids are equally short lived. There was a known species of octopus that lived through more than one breeding cycle but it is thought to be extinct now, it lived off the coast of Mexico and no specimens have been seen in more than a couple decades. Turtles are long lived, CharonY's estimate is about right, the great whales are though to have long lives as well as do elephants but even the longest lived animals do not live much longer than humans. I can see practical immortality, where the body lives on until some accident kills you. i once saw some studies that showed at the current rate of accidental death almost all humans would be killed by something other than old age well before they hit 200 years old and no one would be expected to live past 500 or so, those numbers maybe off somewhat it's been many years since i read that, but the point is that even if disease and old age were conquered death would still take us well before we reached 1000 years or more just from falling in the bathtub if nothing else.... here is a more accurate estimate of the age of animals, the bowhead whale suprised me big time... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long-living_organisms

I don't miss him at all but the people who do must mirror the woman that was on teh news last night, her son was coming home from Iraq and the reporter asked her if she would be willing to send him all over again if she had the choice and she answered, "Yes! We have to fight for our freedom!" what a dumb ass

Rigney, the ozone layer does not trap anything in, it keeps UV radiation out, the Earths gravity is what keeps our atmosphere in.

Emilio, it's not up to me to prove you wrong, you must provide proof of your assertions, so far all you have provided is rhetoric. Simple repeating claims over and over is not proof, provide some proof or forever hold your peace.... BTW I have shown evidence that what you are asserting is false, you have chosen to ignore it.... You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink...

I mean the link to the glaciers created the oceans thing.

So where is the link?

Rigney, do you have a link to that?

In a heart beat, wanna pic? Actually being a life long nudist I have found that the novelty of nudity wears off in about ten minutes...

Emilio, even though your idea of evolution is indeed not the way it works there are rare instances of abrupt speciation, i provided a list of several of them in the link i provided which you obviously did not read.

No Emilio, that is how you think it works, your assertion not only holds zero value in this conversation it is demonstratively false, numerous times evidence of your misconception has been given, simply asserting bullshit over and over will never make it more than bullshit.....

How many examples do you need? Species? Genera? Kingdoms? I know of at least one new species of fish that has been seen to emerge but it would take some effort on my part to provide you with evidence that would almost certainly discount so i will provide this, so far all you have done is run you fingers across the key board. Show us something to back up your claims.... now either put up or shut up. http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/2009/02/macroevolution-examples-and-evidence.html

The talk went quite well, thanks for asking, my audience was enthralled by the live paddlefish I brought as a prop. Most of the disagreements center around commercial exploitation of paddlefish but some are about paddlefish behavior. Paddlefish behavior is not well known, much of it is based on assumptions rather than observation. The main problem is between paddlefish ranchers and bass fishermen, bass fishermen think the paddlefish compete with largemouth bass for food so they oppose stocking paddlefish in lakes and reservoirs even though in many cases this would just be restoring paddlefish to their native range. The bass fishermen have millions of dollars to help them influence the state governments since they pay fees and licenses. paddlefish ranchers are relatively poor and have little influence. sadly the behavior i have observed backs up the bass fishermen who I think have far too much influence on what fish are stocked where, to the extent that large mouth bass are often stocked far outside their native range to satisfy the fishermen while oppose paddlefish being repatriated to their natural range. I have doubts about paddlefish being an effect predator of small fish or even competing with small forage fish for plankton since paddlefish are pelagic and would seldom feed in the enclosed spaces baby fish or forage fish feed. So far my observation of paddlefish eating other fish is explosive in this small arena, also i have yet to observe other assumed paddlefish behaviors like using their paddle to stir up the bottom sediment so they can feed on small bethnic crustaceans. They avoid the bottom almost absolutely staying in the mid to upper regions of the water. i think my observations of paddlefish eating other fish might be an artifact of confinement but it is difficult to really be sure. My own observation seems to indicate the paddle is used for more than sensory input and is probably used to create lift when the fish opens it's huge mouth to filter feed to keep from nose diving from the drag created by the open mouth. i have also observed they quickly catch on to being confined and do not beat themselves to death against the sides of their container as "common knowledge" has always claimed. I have also seen aggressive/domination type behavior that mirrors the warning behavior of sharks when they encounter each other. Only one marine biologist showed up for my talk but he was impressed by my observations and is setting up a large aquarium so he can try and observe them as well. I will be donating one to him and three more to the local state run public aquarium at Fort Fisher NC. I almost have the 75 gallon tank set up for the other four i intend to keep for further observation... I also have so ideas about the similarity of the electro-sensory mechanisms of the paddle and the sensors of sharks.

There are many different species of stingray, most are no more closely related than a human is to a cow, Dasyatis sabina is a distinct species of stingray in the genus Dasyatis, the freshwater version is not yet a distinct species but it is moving in that direction since the main population cannot live out their entire lives in freshwater, there are many genus of stingray, some so far removed they have no more in common with each other than a human has with a platypus, your assertion that a stingray is a stingray shows your total ignorance of the subject of species, speciation, evolution and what it means.... Please point out any false claims i have made and I will either retract them or show you they are correct, don't just make claims of my lack of veracity.... Emilio, tell me what Dasyatis sabina would have to become for you to consider it new species? I'd really like to know your thoughts on this....

This Saturday August 21 is the third annual "Go Topless Day"! Will you participate? http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-will-you-take-it-all-off-on-topless-saturday/

This makes no sense what so ever.... BTW there are several different species of lungfish but you have already stated you do not believe species mean anything... There are lots of fish too, again you make no point what so ever... The lung fish alive today are obviously not ancestors of anything, you are assuming things that have no real basis in reality and lungs did not spring into existence with the complex structures you seem to demand, ZAP! is not part of evolution... This is totally false, it is entirely possible for a group of animals to split off from the main group and become a new species over time with both species still living but as i said you have already asserted that you don't believe in species. A stingray is a stingray.... is your own words and is totally false.... Why would you say this, what makes you believe such tripe? This is taken completely out of context, species is an artifact of human design that allows us to keep track of different animals, all species are just the latest version of that animal. No, instinct has evolved with animals that exhibit certain behaviors surviving and the ones who do not not surviving, the instinct is part of the natural behaviors of the animal it does not have to be learned or thought about. Only in the minds of people who desperately need to believe in something that is a total lie. No, no animal sprung up with lungs from an animal with no lungs, behaviors/instincts evolved along with the animals as they needed them. The tendency to gasp for air evolved from the natural tendency of fish to try and breath while out of water. I don't see any point in trying to explain this but primitive fish gulp air to neutralize their buoyancy, this is where swim bladders and eventually lungs came from the instinct to gulp air came before lungs not after. Evolution usually occurs from modifying adaptations or behaviors that already exist for another purpose. YEC=DNKSFS

The electric eel much like other electric fish fire their electrical organ continuously at a low level, only ramping up the field when it wants to shock a fish or other creature. The organ generates electricity as needed all the time, an electric eel can fire at a level powerful enough to kill over a hundred times with out running out of energy, it's continuous navigational field is firing all the time.... the individual firings are so close together they sound like a buzz when converted to sound waves.... the buzz generally never stops it just speeds up and slows down....

I think experiments would have to be done to confirm or deny your belief and I am pretty sure they have been done, the field can be measured or even heard by converting it to sound, the amperage is as important as the voltage and electric fish can indeed generate muscle contractions from a distance for sure...

Good question, I have always looked at it from the stand point of an electrical field and when the lines of the field are cut by prey or an enemy the eel ramps up the field and this results in extreme muscle contractions in the victim. When an elephant-nose fish, mormyrid, uses it's electricity as a means of aggression it flicks it's trunk in the direction of the object of it's aggression and the victim jumps like it's been shocked, almost like it is generating an electrical wave. I know that electric catfish can make you tingle or simply shock you causing muscle contractions, I've never been shocked by an electric eel.... I'm quite certain no ions are released into the water... But the fewer ions in the water, salts, the more current is necessary to generate the field, electric marine rays only generate a 100 volts or so but can knock you for a loop... electric eels live in water that can be quite soft and has few ions so it has to generate a much stronger field. The field of electric fish can be converted to sound by a simple device and each fish has it's own sound, a peculiar buzzing to rapid fire clicks...