To young and old

[esoxlucius]

I came back into the hobby in 2015 after an absence of about 20 years away from it. I've never spoken about my first stint in the hobby (from about 1985 to 1994), but I was thinking about it the other day and i'll be honest with you, I haven't got a clue how I got by back then.

No Internet back then so no fishkeeping forum to guide me, no you tube for tutorials and no googling fish species. Any info you needed on fish was by relying on and trusting the guys at the LFS, and we know how hit and miss that can be, or by books.

And this lack of vital information that is at the tips of our fingers nowadays, that wasn't there for me back then, occasionally manifested itself during my attempts to keep fish. I did have some success, it wasn't all failure otherwise I would have just packed it in completely never to return.

That brief trip down memory lane has made me realise just how fortunate we are nowadays.

I'm 52 but I know there are older members on the forum. How did you guys get by compared to the simplicity of modern day?

And you young pups, do you actually ever wonder what it was like in the hobby before the days of fish forums, you tube tutorials, on line purchasing or researching fish, all at the simple press of a keyboard button?

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I am 72 and I set up my first tank about 7 weeks before I turned 52. Most of the equipment we have now was available to me then as well. The biggest change, imo, has bee in lighting. I started with standard Fluors, moved on to power compact flours. I never made the jump to LEDs. Many of the filters I still use I bought in the first 4-5 years in the hobby.

While there have been a few majors changes in the last 20 years, a lot of things are still the same. I believe ishkeeping is mostly an analogue thing. it is the mechanical stuff like filters, air pumps, water pumps and power heads as well as heaters which keep a tank healthy and a good home for the occupants. Probably one of the biggest differences between Jan. 01 and the start of tank #1 for me is that most folks used fake plants back then and today live pants are everywhere.

 

[tarheel96]

I had my first tank when I was 16. I'm 47 now. Back then, the only way to be successful keeping fish is if you were lucky enough to know someone who happened to know what they were doing and they educated you. In that sense, it isn't much different today except that there are more sources of information ... like you say.

That first tank was an Oscar in a 55GL. The local store didn't tell me much and that fish lasted about a year. -Not like today ... If one of my cichlids dies within a year then it would be because I neglected the tank ... most likely a lack of water changes.

 

[Kolton13]

I’m 15 today marks my 1st year on MFK. I’ve been keeping fish for 1 and a half years. I do wonder a lot about old fish keeping and an curious how people evolved in knowledge.

 

[Hendre]

My dad had a tank many years ago, around the same age i started. Undergravel filter and he rinsed everything out every week with a hose. He doesn't hold interest in the hobby anymore, guess he lives through me!

 

[duanes]

I started keeping fish (cichlids) as a kid in the late 1950s, back when water changes were thought to bad, and cichlid species choices were not close to what they are today. Undergravel filters were the thing back then, and we hoped for the best.
Fishkeeping lead me to a career in drinking water treatment as a chemist/microbiologist.
Now retired, I have traveled to many of the places where my fish come from, and spent time with them in nature, which has opened my eyes to what they really require, as opposed to what data sheets claim, and which to me are almost all inadequate.
Now, I have moved to Panama to in part, to spend more time studying them in nature, and finding true un-mutted, unmutant species.

 

[skjl47]

Hello; Like duanes I started back around 1959. I think I was 12 years old at the time. Mowed yards and such stuff to earn some money. Used UGF (undergravel filters) for a couple of decades and still do in some setups. The UGF work in the manner intended and as with any sort of tool or bit of equipment the user needs to understand the benefits and limitations.
I was lucky is a couple of respects. There was a fish shop on the outskirts of Knoxville TN in an area called Halls. A man there was very good at the hobby. I would hitch rides with a friends grandparents or talk my parents into stopping at his shop. I still can recall the back of his shop. He had built some large tanks of mostly cinder blocks and a large glass panel. He had a very large and healthy pair of common angel fish in one from which he raised some of his own stock. I bought my first kulhi loaches from his place. I asked questions and he would tell me stuff. I got off to a decent start but also had setbacks.

The other thing was we had great water back then in Middlesboro KY. Did not know at the time but I was born and raised in an old meteor crater. Makes sense now when viewed from the Pinnacle overlook on a ridge in the Cumberland Gap National Park that covers the adjoining corners of KY, TN and VA. There is a small lake nestled on the hillside above Middlesboro ( also spelled Middlesborough) KY. called Fern lake. The water was good enough at one time to not require any treatment is what I think I recall. I did not do water changes (WC) the way we do now but would tear down my tanks about once a year, rinse the gravel and put it back in one afternoon. Just added water straight from the tap.

I wanted to be a marine biologist but there was not an ocean handy so I settled for just a degree in Biology. Somehow I learned about or figured things out for my self without modern type media. There were books which I read. Not sure how I came about to doing WC but somehow did. Even if it was not my own idea I had already noticed how the fish seemed to be more lively after a tank cleanup. I probably heard about or read about doing regular WC and the idea clicked due to my own observations.

Among the challenges was getting the power filters to run right. Some of the early stuff was very prone to lose siphon and did every day or two. I always ran air powered filters, UGF and bubblers. That air operated stuff save my tanks many times.

Note - there is a reason my home town has the same name as a town in England. Seems the meteor that made the crater was an iron sort. Left some of itself in the surrounding landscape. Some business men from England planed to mine iron and turn the area into another Pittsburg is the story I have heard. Built some fine homes and a very fine hotel. A few of the homes are still around but the hotel was gone by the time I came onto the scene. I used to play among the old foundations. There was not a big deposit of iron ore as was hoped so they went bust. There is the remains of one of the early iron furnaces in a small town called Cumberland Gap TN.

 

[jjohnwm]

I started out at about the age of ten, in the late 60's. My father was very supportive of anything in which I showed an interest, and for the first few years he essentially did the work with me as a helper...and my dad's common-sense approach to fish-keeping included the simple idea that fish poop in the water, so the water needs to be changed frequently. I haven't really veered too far from that notion in the years since then.

With no internet, knowledge was hard-earned. You don't "learn by doing", as many phrase it...you learn by doing it wrong. The sad lessons taught by this harsh instructive process are always remembered. Another source of info was the few experienced aquarists with whom I had occasional contact: a friend of my father who raised fish and provided me with my very first ones, the owner of a small local fish shop who traded with me for livestock and plants, and a wonderful lady who worked in the pet department of the local K-Mart. They probably weren't experts by today's standards, but they were certainly able to help me out in my early years.

But by far the number one source of knowledge available to me then was reading books and magazines. I devoured every book remotely related to fish or aquaristics in the local library, I bought most of the magazines of which I was aware, and I slowly built up a collection of volumes purchased at bookstores, both new and used. If I saw or heard of a fish or plant or technique that I wanted to research, it meant a long bike-ride to the library, and a laborious (and often fruitless) hunt through the shelves for what I wanted. I am still amazed at the ease with which I can now search the internet for any info I need; back then, you had to really, really want to learn about something to put in the effort required. I wonder how many of the young people today would maintain an interest in the hobby under those circumstances; some of them can't even be bothered to do the simplest search, they just post a question here and then sit back waiting to be spoon fed. They're like nestling birds, just sitting with mouths open, stridently demanding to be fed.

Lots of other things have changed the hobby, some for the better and others for the worse. How about silicone? Unbelievably useful and versatile stuff, but it wasn't commonly available for hobbyist use in 1970. How'd you like to have a metal-framed tank, with individual panes of glass glazed in place using some weird black tar-like substance which would easily crack and cause leaks? Filter-floss? Nope; try actual fibreglass instead. My first air pump had an electric motor which drove a belt, which in turn spun a wheel attached to a cam that operated a piston to pump the air; looked like a little train, and sounded like a big one.

Not many designer fish around back then, no ridiculous man-made hybrids endangering natural gene pools, no "short-body" monstrosities with distorted abdominal cavities hiding malformed organs, no long-fin can't-swim-but-look-good-trying oddities...and also far fewer natural species to be had than are available today. And, of course, if something new and different did show up...how would you know without the internet?

I like my hobby today to be a blend of the old and the new. Take what I have learned, mix it with newer knowledge of techniques and husbandry, and just enjoy myself. And I do enjoy it, enough so that even after a couple of absences from the hobby for a few years...caused by housing or work restrictions...I was always happy to be able to get back to it. Now, semi-retired and soon to be fully so, I keep enough tanks to maintain my interest, but few enough to keep it a pleasant past-time rather than an onerous chore. If it stops being fun...why do it? Hasn't stopped being fun yet.

 

[BigBeardDaHuZi]

I think I started when I was 10 or so, some time in the 80s anyway, and I kept fish for about 15 years.
My little tropical fish book with drawn pictures. Later, one of my mom's workmates gave me a HUGE stack of old Tropical Fish Hobbyist - the ones that had the black cover. Those were amazing and I poured through them. I went through every magazine looking for articles on cichlids and then I would go back through and read about all the other fish too. I was a little sad to see that cichlasoma was mostly gone.

Lights now are such a big wonderful change. It is amazing what you can get with a LED.

The other big surprise for me was finding out that every time I changed out the filter pads on the back of my HOBs I was throwing away all my BB. I don't know how much money I spent trying to keep up with the filter pad changes that you were supposed to do.

I moved a lot over the years and eventually I even moved countries. I have been in China now for a little over ten years now. We bought a flat last year and life has settled down. No more moving. No more changing houses. I got back into the hobby when my wife suggested maybe we should get a tank for the kids. I'm not sure she is so thrilled she suggested it now. I have got bitten pretty bad by MTS.

 

[celebrist]

I was 7 with a five gallon, drooling over my big brothers huge 20 that you could fit a whale in. The swamp behind our house provided a variety of experiences and I dreamed of a six foot tank

Now I must stay content with my tiny 450 and live vicariously through so many of my MFK brethren