There was a definite progression in the elimination of live food. The first to go was Daphnia, which, although not considered as nutritious as shrimp or worms, was great as a occasional treat. Plus, since they were so active in all levels of the tank, it was just a lot of fun to watch all the fish "hunt" them. Next on the list was Tubifex. From what I've heard/read, Tubifex was not only labor intensive to obtain because they had to be thoroughly "cleaned" prior to sale, but also because their shelf life wasn't very long - even when refrigerated. For awhile one used to also be able to pick up 2 other live food items: Glass Worms & Blood Worms (not really worms, but some sort of larvae). Fish never seemed to relish these as much as the old favorites. But they did add variety if you had fish that could handle them, as they were about an inch long & a bit wide for small tropicals. I can only surmise that they went because there was little demand for them, not to mention Lord knows what ugly little fly or whatever they eventually pupated into if not sold - lol!! Brine Shrimp can still occasionally be found, especially at stores that carry a large inventory of specialty &/or saltwater fish - but once again, they require a tank of strongly aerated salt water to survive, & again don't have a long shelf life. These days, the only live food I seem to EVER find - at least here in VA - is the Black Worm, which resembles a slightler larger & darker Tubifex. They definitely have a longer shelf life than Tubifex, if kept jarred in fresh, cold water in the refrigerator, & fish do seem to love them, but coming across them seems to be a rarer than rare treat. The new varieties/brands of frozen foods seem to have become my fishes' best friends. I try to have 4-5 different varieties in cube form that I thaw out under running water in a fish net & pop into the tank every morning. I vary this with the ever-popular TetraMin-type flake food.

I agree with you Anne. I pop in every once in awhile to see if anyone has posted anything different but for awhile now this place has been dead. :o( I don't mind the requests for free patterns or site links but the copyright "discussions" of the past have frightend many people away. At one point that was all that was "discussed". I for one would love to see this forum returned to it's past glory. Karen

Actually, if you learn one color system - the language of just one color system - it's not hard to figure out all the other ones. The one to learn is Munsell. Albert Munsell is my favorite old dead guy. We share the same birthday but that's not the only reason he's my favorite. Al was a teacher and his motivation for creating his system was color education for elementary school children. What that means is you don't even have to be smarter than a 5th grader to figure out how the Munsell Color System works. I recently wrote an article about the absurd state of retail paint stores and how manufacturers market color. In the article I ask readers to imagine walking into a department store to buy an outfit: shirt, jeans and shoes. Everybody can relate to that, right? Now imagine that there are no tags on anything. No labels sewn into the collar of the shirts or seams of the jeans. No sizes imprinted on the bottom of the shoes. No clues whatsoever about sizes or prices. The only way you're going to be able to find a complete outfit it to start trying stuff on. You have to start by searching out a shirt that "looks like" it might fit. Try it on and when it doesn't fit, your only option is to keep trying on shirts; comparing each one to the one before that didn't fit. Then you have to do the same to find a pair of jeans. Then you have to do the same to find a pair of shoes. How long do you think it would take you to find an outfit that fits? How long do you think it would be before you got totally frustrated, confused, and exhausted by the process. How long before you said "this is crazy, I'm outta here!"? No one in their right mind would shop at that store. They'd find a department store where all the items had labels and price tags. Substitute color notations for labels and this is exactly the situation in paint store world right now. Some stores have paint brands that have notations. And some do not. Sounds half hopeful, right? Not so fast. Sadly, the people who own/work in the paint stores that do have brands with notations have not one fat clue their brand has a color system loaded behind it - let alone what to do with the actual notation. So, unfortunately, @williamsem nailed it. Most people are left with aimlessly combing through chips and sticking with the company with the chip you like. Bonne chance my colorful friends. P.S. Thanks @linelle for the kind words.

This thread is inspiring! I am dying to just clear out crap (or not so crappy stuff which I still feel is weighing me down.) We're going to try to sell our house next year and move back to the city, so we will need to get rid of a lot of stuff. Books... no one brought up the issue of bringing them to a library, so I thought I would broach that topic. As a librarian, I have to advise against this! I cannot tell you the CRAP people bring us. Most people are well-meaning, imagining that we can use as many books as we can get. A fair amount of people, though, bring thing to us which are obviously junk, leaving boxes outside the building when we're closed, rather than making the effort to go through things and then bring the junky stuff to the dump. Even the well-meaning people almost invariably end up making more work for us. Even in small libraries with limited budgets, space is usually an issue. And, librarians would rather be able to use the precious space for new items they've selected themselves, in keeping with their Collection Development policies. At best, we can store the donated books and try to sell them in a book sale. Usually, though, the donations make more work for us and the return on the "investment" (of effort) is not high. Most librarians want to create and maintain goodwill in their communities, so they will rarely turn away anything but the worst donated items, but in every library in which I have ever worked, they turn around and gripe to their colleagues. So please... use other avenues (like Got Books? in the northeast) to get rid of your books. Burning books... it sounds horrible, so Fahrenheit 451. But really, very, very few books are precious. There are so many copies of most books, and so many books become obsolete quickly. Others simply aren't in good shape. Don't feel bad about burning your books. Sure, if you have some books which are not on topics which can become outdated, and they're in wonderful shape, consider donating them to a charity which specifically requests book donations. But otherwise... you are not harming anyone or anything by burning books.