tails from the elite..
 

haha, well i had so much fun today i thought i would make a thread about it.

but first let me explain a lil. today and also tomorow i am volunteering at elite aquatics because...well i love fish :P

so today i worked from 12-4, as i will tomorrow.Ofcousre i offered to do the job, colby didnt ask me too. now lets get on to the fun stuff.
im just so happy that he is giving me this experience
so i woke up all exited this morning (how couldnt i be) and waited for my dad to arrive to drive me to elite aquatics.
when he dropped me off i walked into the shop with a smile on mm face, and got to work.
first colby had me unloading 6 new boxes of liverock from Jikarta(sorry for incorrect spelling). Ofcourse i was exited because i got to hand pic the pieces that were the nicest to go on top :P
so i get to the bottom of the first box to find all sorts of life waiting for me to discover them!
there were crabs of all sorts, snails,pods, and the biggest treat..a baby mantis shrimp in almost every box! only about 6/8ths of an inch long each, yellowish green with white little speckles. now came the hard part. how do i get all these lil critters out without getting pinched, pincered, smashed, or speared?
well i found that the mantis shrimp were too chilled out from being under all the rock to realize i was picking them up, until they were in the water that is :p
i found the best method to get the rest of the guys out was to simply dump them out (there were very tiny pieces of rock too)
but just my luck, everytime i went to dump the suckers in, george the longhorned cowfish would go right infront of the box and start spitting water at me for food. lucky for me all it took was a lil nudge with my fingers to make him realize he had to move.
now when i got to about the 3rd box, there was one mantis shrimp that was a little lively. long story short, he ended of smashing my finger. thank god he was tiny otherwise it woulda felt like more than a flick :p
I had the pleasure of helping 2 very nice customers out to pick live rock while colby was helping other customers. I showed them some bad crabs to look out for (hairy, red eyes) and showed them my lil jackpot piece. it was the nicest piece in all of the boxes. they seemed to enjoy my help, and bought about 25 pounds of liverock (give or take) i think it was a job well done. Then i had the pleasure of putting the new clams into their tank. they were all small, but one freaked me out while i was taking it out of the bag by shooting a small jet of water at me. they were nice clams all in all.
Next i squeegeed and buffed all the tanks(with reef safe cleaners ofcourse). It was pretty tough work suprisingly. I actually broke a sweat:lol:

Next was the fun part. I got to feed all the fish.It gave me the chance to meet Colbys turtles for the first time what did i learn from that..big yellow cichlids dont eat as much as you expect, rainbows eat like lil devils, and some species of fish freak out so much that they jump right out of their tanks the lil bastards:lol:

I then swept up the shop, and before i new it it was 4 o'clock and my dad was there to pick me up. "darnit!" i thought. time goes by fast when you are having fun.

So today i got cut by liverock, smashed by a mantis, some bristles in my thumb from a bristleworm, and i got a lil too close for comfort to an urchin (i gotta pay more attention :p)

And surprisingly, it was one of the best days of my life so far.
and i get to do it tomorow too!
so more writing tomorow. i hope you dont mind that this is so long.

Sincerely, Evan Volk.

Sounds like you had fun!!

haha, i sure did!
and i get to go back tomorow too!!!!:biggrin:

You know, it's funny, but of all the cool things that come in with the shipment I think I'd probably be most amused by the "mysteries" at the bottom of the LR boxes!!

haha, there was deffinatly some sweet stuff!

Heh, great day by the sounds of it. :)

Sounds like you enjoyed yourself. And I'm sure Colby enjoyed having an extra set of hands around the store. Good on ya for stepping up to the plate.

Kudos

Sounds like a fun day :biggrin:

Working in LFS's is definately fun! Sounds like you had a blast! Watch out for the Rabbitfish! ;)

Oh, to be young and full of enthusiasm. Glad to hear you're enjoying yourself and I think it's a wonderful thing to do.

Competition
 

Sounds like you had some fun! Colby got clams in though! I will have to run down there and snatch them all up!
Levi

hahaha Levi I was just thinking the same thing. Or at least that I have an away mission coming on later today. :lol: Save me one or two, k? ;)

What makes you think Catherine hasn't been there yet and took them all? :razz::razz:

haha, there were still plenty of clams left today. mind you most of them are quite small (3'' long i'd say)

chapter 2:lol::i woke up again exited as ever, and ready to work. when i got to the store colby got me to feed the fish right away! sadly our new 4 purple tangs and 2 sohal tangs wouldn't eat much. after that i got to take a sponge and scrub off all the algae in the tanks.it was hard to do the guppy tank because they kept tickling my arm so i would jiggle around in my laughter. i almost had water in my armpits!
then ofcourse i realized in my vigorous scrubbing, i had spilled water down the front of the tanks and ruined my squeegee and buffing job i had done the day before. D'oh! well i got out the squeegee and buffing supplies and got back to work. while i was doing that Colbies custom man arrived to finish up a tank and start a new one. it was nice to meet the man who did such a good job on my sump. then when i was done that, colby had an idea and whipped out the mysis with garlic and some added nutrients.
We fed about 10 whole cubes to the tangs, and the tangs loved it!
thank god they were eating i thought. the garlic was because they have a bit of ick on them.
it was hilarious watching the sohal tang eat. He would open his mouth as wide as he could, and then rocket right through the mysis cloud, over and over again.
Sadly by the time i was done feeding the tangs my dad was there and i had to leave.
i was very pleased when colby asked if i would come back in easter and maybe on some weekends. ofcourse i said i would, then said my goodbyes, and i was off to go back home.

sounds to me like you've got yourself the beginings of a part time job

haha, that would be like, amazing if it did ever turn into that. but im loving the volunteer work for now so im not gonna go asking or anything.

If nothing else at least you had fun and got some good experience, which could help land a job in the future.

well i ahve to remember to keep this thread updated..

since the last time i posted ive worked again 2 times, and learned alot of new stuff.
i usualy just do the usual(feed the fish, scrub the tanks, squeegee the tanks) but Colby always incorporates something new.

since the last update he taught me the correct way to catch and bag fish.
We now have a bag filled with some water sitting in a ziploc that i have to tie up everytime i go by.
im actually getting better at it :) at first my bag looked pretty droopy and the rubber band was a bit of a tangled mess. now my bags are looking taller, not so droopy, and the rubber band looks pretty neat if i dont say so myself.

that's it for now. more to come next time i work.

ah, bagging fish. I did that for three years LOL just wait until you're almost ready to hand it to a customer and it bursts...FUN FUN!

well everything is still going well, im there almost every Saturday.
i now answer the phone, abg things for customers, ect.

and i'm still having fun :)

Im working tomorow, so if you wanna check out some cool stuff,
(like cool inverts) and meet another canreefer, come on by!

Hope your having good times, I think I may have seen you squgeeing(thats deffinitly not how to spell any of that), I thought you may have been slave labour.

Sounds like a future in owning your own store someday. Congratulations, I worked in
a pet store a million years ago in Whitehorse. I loved it......but I am the last person
who should because I would be like 1 for you and 10 for me. I think I live for my pets. LOL
Have fun ~ I am jealous! And try to stay dry, ha ha!