Calling All Old Timers

[WhistlingBadger]

Creeping up on 51 here, so just a baby compared to some of you, but not as young or quite as dumb as I used to be. I never used the fiberglass box; undergravel filters and airstones were where it was at my first twenty years or so of fish keeping. For fish we had comets, blackmoors, black mollies, angelfish, firemouths, tiger barbs, neons, common plecos, and pictus cats (which I never bought because the pet store owner said they were mean). And whatever coldwater native fish my neighbors had in their bait minnow tank. That was about it for selection. Never gave any thought to compatibility. Back there were two kinds of fish: Tropical and cold-water.

I did the best I could, but the books I had available were terrible, though I didn't know it at the time. Plants? Ha. I always wanted a planted tank, and used to try elodea about once every other year, and it always died because nobody ever told me that aquarium plants need more light than they're going to get from a bedroom window.

I used to demolish the tank once a year, rinse out the gravel and lay it out in the sun to dry (cringe--nobody ever told me about the nitrogen cycle, either), fill the tank back up, treat the water with dechlor and malachite blue (thought it helped the fish be healthy, or something), and plop 'em back in. Never really understood why so many of my fish died. Did have a comet goldfish that kept going for 10 years or so.

I'm sure glad things have come so far since then. Ten years or so ago I joined the now-defunct Aquatic Community forum, considering myself an experienced fish keeper. Whooooo boy, did I have to swallow a whole bunch of pride! Started learning about cycling, compatibility, and the needs of plants, and finally started working toward the kind of tank I had always wanted. The last five or six years I've kind of gotten the hang of it, finally. Kind of.

 

[gadabout]

There's a lot of youngsters on this forum but there's a lot of us old fossils too. Just curious if any of my fellow 60genarians remember using filter floss in box filters that was made out of fiberglass ? You ever get that stuff knifing into your tender young fingers ? I think Hartz Mountain made it.

Yes I remember that horrible stuff. It was called Glass Wool.

 

[Back in the fold]

Yes I remember that horrible stuff. It was called Glass Wool.

@gadabout I thought more people would remember that stuff. I remember it sticking deep into my hands. I learned fast to handle it carefully. All these years later I vividly remember watching my prize Swordtail pick at a shard of it sticking out of the filter and thinking he would be impaled on it. My guppies gave birth plentifully and lots of guppy fry wound up inside my box filter full of Glass Wool but none got spiked with it. Anyway, not sorry to see it go.

 

[dR3ws3r]

I had a few corner filters with the glass wool, although I switched to undergravel filters on all my tanks when they came into fashion. Had the aquamaster Supreme ... I might still have that in a box somewhere.

I recently came back into the hobby and went through the garage and threw out my Diatom Filter, as the plastic outlet port had cracked off unfortunately. It always used to spew white clouds into the tank until it circulated all the water a few times. It sure did seem to clean the water though. Just a pain to get it going. I had an old metal frame tank too with the slate bottom. It was given to me by somebody who had long since left the hobby.

I think I have a box full of tropical fish hobbyist magazines from the 70's and early 80's as well. I remember reading about how difficult it was to breed chocolate gourami's, and wanted to try it myself, but could never find any.

I'm not sure I really remember the fish being different. I had all sorts of tetras. I had a few cichlids including convicts, firemouths and festivums (Flag). I had many gourami's too, including blue (3 spot), dwarf and pearls.

 

[gadabout]

@gadabout I thought more people would remember that stuff. I remember it sticking deep into my hands. I learned fast to handle it carefully. All these years later I vividly remember watching my prize Swordtail pick at a shard of it sticking out of the filter and thinking he would be impaled on it. My guppies gave birth plentifully and lots of guppy fry wound up inside my box filter full of Glass Wool but none got spiked with it. Anyway, not sorry to see it go.

I associate with the symphony of piston pumps going cluck-cluck-cluck that you heard whenever you entered the pet store.

 

[Back in the fold]

I associate with the symphony of piston pumps going cluck-cluck-cluck that you heard whenever you entered the pet store.

Oh Yeah ! I loved those. That's one of those sounds you never forget. Like an air cooled Volkswagen . Singularly distinctive and like nothing else. I wanted one so bad but couldn't afford one. So fun just to watch them run too.
And @dR3ws3r Your post is great. You're really from back in the day !

 

[Stan510]

The Aquarium Magazine,Braz Walker,Paul Loiselle.Oats for fish,Metaframe,Slate bottoms, 50 gallons was a large aquarium. Oblong incandescent lights. "Snails eat Algae" one of so many myths huh?
Herbert Axelrod was still almost honest. IBM 1970 computer. Took up my whole house to tell me what the moon is doing...

 

[gilpi]

Showing my age… anybody remember snakeheads being sold as aquarium fish?

 

[Colin_T]

Showing my age… anybody remember snakeheads being sold as aquarium fish?

Yeah but it wasn't that long ago here. Around the mid 90s a shop imported a whole bunch of snakeheads (way more than 20). They are illegal to own or bring into Australia and are on the top 10 noxious species list here. None the less, a shop brought in a lot of them and sold most of them. The quarantine boys didn't identify them in quarantine and let them out. A while later the Department of Fisheries was doing a crackdown in the shops and found a few. The stuff hit the fan. There was a recall and the "20 snakeheads that were sold" were returned. The shop and owner were fined thousands and the owner was given the opportunity to go to jail or leave the country. He left.

As to the whereabouts of the remaining snakeheads, nobody knows

 

[itiwhetu]

Yeah but it wasn't that long ago here. Around the mid 90s a shop imported a whole bunch of snakeheads (way more than 20). They are illegal to own or bring into Australia and are on the top 10 noxious species list here. None the less, a shop brought in a lot of them and sold most of them. The quarantine boys didn't identify them in quarantine and let them out. A while later the Department of Fisheries was doing a crackdown in the shops and found a few. The stuff hit the fan. There was a recall and the "20 snakeheads that were sold" were returned. The shop and owner were fined thousands and the owner was given the opportunity to go to jail or leave the country. He left.

As to the whereabouts of the remaining snakeheads, nobody knows

Dangerous, and this is why our hobby gets into so much trouble. All of us must be careful about what we wish for.

 

[Colin_T]

Dangerous, and this is why our hobby gets into so much trouble. All of us must be careful about what we wish for.

The shop used to bring in all sorts of interesting fishes, and if they hadn't brought in the snakeheads, they would still be in business today. But when you bring in something on the top 10 noxious species list, well your asking for trouble.

They weren't the only shop to import fishes that weren't meant to come in. Just about every importer in the country did it. In the eastern states, the importers were allowed to pick up their fish shipments from the airport and take them to the importer's quarantine facility and put them in tanks. Then quarantine would go to the importer's facility and check the fish to make sure there were no illegal imports. In WA they check the stuff at the airport before we are allowed anywhere near it. Let's just say that while they were busting one shop in Perth for snakeheads, there were hundreds of shops over east bringing in entire shipments of illegal fish and dropping them off at the shop on the way to the quarantine facility.

I asked quarantine for a job some years ago. They refused to hire me because I knew most of the people in the pet industry and kept fish. Their concern was I would allow illegal fishes into the country for my own tanks. I said why would I put a job paying a lot of money at risk and potentially go to jail for a few unusual fish. None the less, I never got the job and tens of thousands of illegal fish came into my state, and even more came into the rest of the country.

Quarantine workers were so bad at identifying fish, they let freshwater pipefish into the state and let them out of quarantine. It wasn't until several weeks later when someone typing the fish list into the system got a red flag for a possible illegal import. Then they came back to the shop to check out the dangerous pipefish We got to keep the pipefish and they gave us a warning, but they didn't do anything else. Perhaps because they let the fish into the state and let them out of quarantine after checking them several times while they were in quarantine.

For anyone who doesn't know what a freshwater pipefish looks like, it's like a long straightened out seahorse. They look nothing like a normal fish and are extremely easy to identify. So the fact quarantine didn't even recognise them when they were looking in the tanks, well that shows the caliber of people working there.

 

[itiwhetu]

The shop used to bring in all sorts of interesting fishes, and if they hadn't brought in the snakeheads, they would still be in business today. But when you bring in something on the top 10 noxious species list, well your asking for trouble.

They weren't the only shop to import fishes that weren't meant to come in. Just about every importer in the country did it. In the eastern states, the importers were allowed to pick up their fish shipments from the airport and take them to the importer's quarantine facility and put them in tanks. Then quarantine would go to the importer's facility and check the fish to make sure there were no illegal imports. In WA they check the stuff at the airport before we are allowed anywhere near it. Let's just say that while they were busting one shop in Perth for snakeheads, there were hundreds of shops over east bringing in entire shipments of illegal fish and dropping them off at the shop on the way to the quarantine facility.

I asked quarantine for a job some years ago. They refused to hire me because I knew most of the people in the pet industry and kept fish. Their concern was I would allow illegal fishes into the country for my own tanks. I said why would I put a job paying a lot of money at risk and potentially go to jail for a few unusual fish. None the less, I never got the job and tens of thousands of illegal fish came into my state, and even more came into the rest of the country.

Quarantine workers were so bad at identifying fish, they let freshwater pipefish into the state and let them out of quarantine. It wasn't until several weeks later when someone typing the fish list into the system got a red flag for a possible illegal import. Then they came back to the shop to check out the dangerous pipefish We got to keep the pipefish and they gave us a warning, but they didn't do anything else. Perhaps because they let the fish into the state and let them out of quarantine after checking them several times while they were in quarantine.

For anyone who doesn't know what a freshwater pipefish looks like, it's like a long straightened out seahorse. They look nothing like a normal fish and are extremely easy to identify. So the fact quarantine didn't even recognise them when they were looking in the tanks, well that shows the caliber of people working there.

At one stage in my life, I had a whole tank of illegally imported fish in my flat. They were in quarantine and never identified by the inspectors so went home to my place, well we couldn't sell them. Some of them I never really identified conclusively.

 

[gilpi]

Yeah but it wasn't that long ago here. Around the mid 90s a shop imported a whole bunch of snakeheads (way more than 20). They are illegal to own or bring into Australia and are on the top 10 noxious species list here. None the less, a shop brought in a lot of them and sold most of them. The quarantine boys didn't identify them in quarantine and let them out. A while later the Department of Fisheries was doing a crackdown in the shops and found a few. The stuff hit the fan. There was a recall and the "20 snakeheads that were sold" were returned. The shop and owner were fined thousands and the owner was given the opportunity to go to jail or leave the country. He left.

As to the whereabouts of the remaining snakeheads, nobody knows

Jail or leave the country?!!

 

[WhistlingBadger]

At one stage in my life, I had a whole tank of illegally imported fish in my flat. They were in quarantine and never identified by the inspectors so went home to my place, well we couldn't sell them. Some of them I never really identified conclusively.

...and that's why itiwhetu lives in New Zealand now. He used to live in Australia, but had to leave in a hurry...

 

[emeraldking]

Calling All Old Timers​

I seemed to be one of them...