how do you keep fish in the old days, anything changed?

[CWO4GUNNER]

Before I joined the service in 1974 I had a ten and 27 gallon stainless tanks. The cycle diden't exist and LFS never gave out much advice buy-buy-buy. I used to buy most of my fish at Woolworth's where it was self serve fish from $0.18 to $0.95 for fish and diseased fish were always 1/2 off.

Maintenance always amounted to adding water and treating for Ich about once a month. every 3 month my mom would make me take the tank out and scrub it with dish soap because the smell would get too bad and I would keep my Oscars in the dog water tin so they could watch me clean the aquarium.

Oacars were the only fish that seemed bullet proof back then. So many times I couldn't afford to feed them beef hart so I had to get my pail and enter the storm drain in the street and walk down the tube to the river channel and scoop up some wild green guppies that live down their year round becasue the water was so shallow most of the time the concrete kept the water warm. The Oscars loved them.

I had quarter size green sliders in my tank also, they would always be trying to bite the fins off my Oscar and the Oscars would be trying to pull their legs off as they climbed up the floating raft.

I cracked my tank with the steel vacuum cleaner pipe as they were all steel back then and just patched it with some tar glue on the outside where it dripped water for years without braking apart..

I had a tadpole period from a big rain one year at the local ditch where after growing legs they escaped and cased great panic in the house with my sisters when they crawled out from under their beds covered with lint.

I caught a rock fish one day at the beach cove and brought it home in a bucket where I set it up in my 10 gallon with Morton salt. Tried to sell it to the LFS but they said it was poisonous so i took it back to the cove and let it go.

Then I joined the service at age 17 and retired in 2004 at age 47.

 

[tekonus]

Am I the ONLY person here horrified at the question what did you OLDER FOLKS do in the OLD days- ya know, like the 80s. !!!
WTF?

Denial is a slippery slope.

 

[FastFly67]

I remember having a fish tank when I was little (I was born in 81) that I *think* had some type of livebearer in it (I remember there being babies) and some type of HOB. We had a housefire in 89 and the fish were boiled and that was the last of that adventure.

 

[pinkertd]

Also had the corner filter which you added floss and loose carbon to. Rainbow colored gravel. Incandescent lights. All total coolness. When the water evaporated, you just filled it up again. And every so often (was probably every couple of months) you cleaned the whole tank by taking everything out, cleaning it all really good, then putting it all back together again, all sparkly clean and put the fish back in.

I remember when I was a little girl, my grandpa had a tank of guppies down in the basement, at their house, on the workbench. I can only guess that grandma wouldn't allow him to have it upstairs. No lid, no light that I can recall. They had light when grandpa went down there. But I'll never forget the dried up little bodies on the workbench when they jumped out of the tank. I wonder why he never put a lid on that tank.

 

[VFC]

Back in the 70s and 80s little was understood (if it was it was not communicated like it is today via the internet) about the nitrogen cycle.

When I lived at home with my parents I set up a number of fish tanks (5G to 29G) using underground and corner box filters driven by air pumps. Because of the noise from the air pumps, I drilled a hole in the floor and ran an air tube to a large (and very noisy) piston air pump in the basement.

When I started a new tank, I filled it with water, started the filters and let it sit for "two days" before adding fish. I never did water changes; only replaced water that had evaporated. Often had too many (or too large) fish in a tank.

I killed off many fish during the start up process. If a certain species of fish died, I assumed they were weak and bought something different the next time. I ended up with a lot of tanks stocked with Silver Dollars and Severums as they tended to survive in spite of my efforts to kill them.

When I walk past all the fish tanks at PetSmart today, I can honestly say that I prematurely killed off every single species during my 40+ years of fish keeping.

In the 70s, tank frames were made of stainless steel, stands mostly wrought iron , and the new filter technology was motor driven HOBs.

Below are some pictures of my old tanks from the 80s. Check out the huge motors on the HOBs. I do not have pictures of my tanks in the 70s with the stainless steel frame tanks (I don't think they had cameras back then).

Top two tanks - 60G (72"x12"x12"). Third tank 20L. Last tank 29G.

 

[naliel]

Am I the ONLY person here horrified at the question what did you OLDER FOLKS do in the OLD days- ya know, like the 80s. !!!
WTF?

:hitting::laugh:

 

[fishorama]

Well, I'm 52, middle aged, not "older" yet. We started in the 70s with a 10g & box filter. Then eventually got a huge used 55g. It had a HOB filter, a Dynaflo or Supreme, the kind with j shaped tubes you had to fill with water & get into the tank & box without breaking the syphon, very frustrating. It was a long time before self staring HOBs became something we knew about & could afford. We also had UGF for many (many) years, still would if my husband had his way LOL.

The heaters were similar to cheap disfunctional clamp types still sold. The least bump or tightening the screw would drastically alter the temp.

We used a long piece of airline tubing to slowly vac & water change. I'm still using cleaned out milk jugs to refill if it's just a tank or 2.

We actually had 3 pretty good LFS in Kalamazoo, MI. We'd make the rounds every week or 2, got good advice we didn't always take thinking they just wanted to sell us stuff. They'd take back fish too big or too mean, give credit for cichlid fry until they couldn't sell anymore.

 

[platytudes]

Thanks so much for those pictures VFC...priceless!! I especially love the second pic, your 60 gallon.

 

[FastFly67]

VFC, those last two had some pretty groovy backgrounds.

 

[VFC]

Regarding the nitrogen cycle; whenever I changed the filter material in the HOBs, I would toss out the dirty filter floss and charcoal; basically eliminating the BB in the filter. So the fish tank contents was the primary source of BB.

I always used charcoal back then. Today I only use it after meds.