Size Standards Over Years

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Vitaliy

Vitaliy

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Apr 18, 2005
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We have a number of members who are in the hobby for a long time now; a couple of people that I spoke to who are in the hobby for over 15-20 years have stated that aquarium size standards have greatly changed over time. For example a couple of them kept Oscars and other cichlids in 55 gallon tanks and that used to be considered as a perfectly fine thing while today people consider a 75 as a bare minimum for an Oscar.

Have any of you noticed these type of trends? Have any examples such as the Oscar? What do you think will happen in the future?
 
The best example I can think of is like you mentioned...oscars. At one time you could keep one in a 29g and a pair in a 55g. Then it went up to 55g for one, 75g for two, now it is 75g for one and 100+ for two. I am personally of the belief that a 55g is fine for one oscar and a 75g for two.

Like DanDan said...UGF used to be highly popular, I have read a lot of old books that have sworn by them...the same books are mostly in regards to small tropicals though.

Another change I have noticed...native fish. Older books mention very few of them. It was generally thought back in the day that they needed cold water, to be outside, live foods, fast flowing water, excellent filtration. Now many more books and aquarist keep natives. New technology and knowledge has shown us that it is not hard to keep natives at all.
 
it is interesting in regard to UGF's. i mean, read any book 10 years or so old and they absolutely swear by them.

i think the biggest change though is in stocking vs. tank size. when i was younger (i'm talking like 7-8 years old, i'm 28 now) my family had friends that kept oscars. they had 4 in a 100gl tank. they seemed to be relatively happy and from speaking with them now the fish lived for more than 10yrs minimum and one live for 15 years so it couldn't have been that bad for the fish.
 
Water changing....I have been keeping aquariums for 23 years now. I didn't start doing regular water changes till about five years ago. This also has to do with the species I have kept. I got tired of loosing expensive fish. After many years I have kept just about everything you would see in the LFS now I can't even find what I want in the LFS.
 
I've been at this game for over 40 years. What I've noticed is the hobby going towards a more ergonomic mindset on how to properly house fish. We used to hear things like: "need a gallon of water for every inch of fish". Now we hear; "best kept in a tank twice the length of the adult fish and 1 1/2 times the fish's adult length in tank width." Makes more sense and because of the trend toward larger tanks for traditionally kept species, I've seen a drop in the numbers of deformed fish that suffered atrophy in too small of an environment (bent jaws, useless fins, bent backs, etc.)
I've also kept oscars in smaller tanks than is recommended today (RTCs also). Today, I use larger tanks. In the long run, these fish in larger tanks seem healthier, more alert, more active, and hold better colors. So, I guess I'll stand by this new mindset until something better comes along.
 
the people who kept their oscars in the 100+ gallon tanks are the ones who changed the standard. they had their fish live much longer grow bigger and stay much healthier. a lot of people used to encounter HITH regularly while keeping their fish in such small polluted tanks. people could keep their oscars for 5 or 6 years in their 29 gallon tank only to have it develop serious problems and die. thats a LONG 5 or 6 years as well, most the time it will happen much sooner, im being lenient here. people started talking to other people as more and more fish stores came about and some people who knew people who had fish live for decades told some other people and the word eventually spread. so what i knew is what he knew which was what you knew which your grandfather taught you and his dad taught him who was taught by his friend and so on so forth. so basically what im saying is that as these fish became more popular and people began experimenting with water quality and maintenance they discovered that bigger tanks and larger more frequent partial water changes were the way to go. back in the day they used to not believe in changing water as well.......just think what we would be like as a hobby today without ever changing the water. we certainly wouldnt be keeping the monsters that we are here at MFK. :headbang2
 
i see a large influence from europe coming this way they started with biotopes when we still thought the treasure chests were the in thing not that we didnt have serious fishkeepers but they were few and far between .
I think the net is helping progress in regards to tech and science a lot of the equipment is making it over here via net shopping the germans have done more research on fish speices and biotopes then any others i've found and look at japan with the amazing aquascaping and goldfish breeds all this info is creating a far more sofiscated aquatist with everyone sharing info from around the world we have a far greater knowledge of speices that were a mystery once and now can be obtained if we really want it bad enough.So what i'm trying to get at is the more we know about care of fish the more we want to provide proper size tanks and conditions,also i think larger tanks have become much more affordable in the last 10 yrs.
 
i dont agree with this , but the manager at a lfs who i know has 5 large tanks with many large fish including oscars, arowanas and many others. i would say he is pretty old school and never ever changes the water. out here in the desert we do get alot of evaporation, so all he does is add water. if i dont change the water in my tanks weekly the water perameters get bad
 
Saying a lfs never changes the water is saying the store is failing since it's not making any sales. Every fish leaves a lfs in water so the tank it came from just had a water change when it was next topped off.
The lfs I worked in had 250 tanks that were gravel-washed every 2 weeks (in stages). They had a high volume of fish sales and, every evening, the tanks were topped-off.
 
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