Different Theory From A Old Fish Keeper....

[Tiger Tiger]

Quite an interesting discussion. A little different from the fish in or not. My view is as I thought I better have a say to the thoughts of his comments is gently as she goes with a fish in cycle. 20% water changes a day and with this volume of tank then 2 reasonably sized fish (say 4 inches) in the first 2 weeks only.
Check the ammonia levels and let them go up slightly for palpable reasons and plenty of testing for nitrite after 2 weeks although a few in the first week will do no harm. Only enough food for the 2 fish.
I really see no harm in this technique as said above there is ALWAYS ammonia in there if only slight.
He is well experienced so he knows how to deal with this method but for a newbie it's full of disasters. Newbie’s want it up in a hurry. First week using this volume put 6 fish in and huge water changes every day. That seems to be OK they think and add more fish and more than likely as most newbie’s do over feed them as the mind-set is that if I don't feed them twice a day they will die!
Recipe for Disaster, dead fish, wasted money, start again etc.

I partly, well more than partly blame the retailers this. I talked to the fish keeper yesterday and more detail came out. He will not sell more than one fish for a new fish in cycle for 1 week (maybe two depending on size) he will get them a print out of the method for the first month.
I think that is where your local small retailer who are the ones who 'USUALLY' are more knowledgbly and caring, after all they need the custom and local custom too. The vast company is more selling selling selling, I once heard (I swear this is true)said to a newbie...you want this and this and this, and these rocks and these bogwoods. Start off with a daily water change and put these lovely (and expensive) fish in.
The result is palpable back the customer comes unless he is on a forum like this or who knows other fish keepers.

The answer from the shop.....OH YOU SHOULD HAVE NOT PUT ALL THE FISH IN AND HOW MUCH DID YOU FEED THEM' ( as I can bet you unless they asked they were not told as they no, more food bought , in all probability dead fish and let's all start again with new fish £££££££££ in their eyes as commission is to be had.

I KNOW this is how some carry on as a newbie tends to accept that 'BUGGER I KNEW I COCKED UP BEING A NEWBIE' blames himself and back again to the same retailer.

So to me unless under great support the fish in is an OK method but sadly there are few of him around and trying to get a beginner to get to grips with fishless? How many times have you heard on here 'I am confused?'

We also talk about fish in disasters what about fishless disasters, my friend has heard of total disasters with that method. Stick a bottle of Ammonia in, work out this and that, PPM, What's that an e-mail the newbie jokes in blushes as he is covering up his lack of knowledge?

One guy stuck a whole huge bottle of ammonia he got from a salon in his 80 litre tank....I won't persist with that one. And fish 'HAVE' died with this method as too soon the fish are put in a tank where either the ammonia has not had a chance to break down as everyone says 'That's it now everything is fine , two weeks non fish and in they go to a tank of either pure ammonia or pure Nitrite.

All I am saying is newbie’s quite often can't grasp either opinions or methods but we don't seem to hear too much about the odd disaster about Fishless cycling and believe me the fish keeper has heard many.

So to sum up, I hope newbie’s come on here and get great guidance but sadly the retailers know that sound advice loses money and I am not saying salesman knowingly do it (in most cases) but I think higher up the command chain by not educating their staff enough I think they know unerringly what they are doing.

Just my thoughts and please nobody take indignation over my post even retailers on here as I not say all are at fault of negligence.

Me....I think I still would do fish in but I am patient and know what I am doing and introducing fish slowly I can get a few fish monthly as they aren’t cheap are they

 

[BigC]

To the original post at the top.
I whole heartidly agree with the old bloke, no need to change a thing. It works for him, he has thriving fish stocks with little or no fatalities.
Its alright saying things have moved on and the earth is flat and this and that, but still there's a great wealth of knowledge to be gleened from the old folks.
Todays society wants to get everywhere in a hurry, this spills over into every aspect of our lives including this hobby of fishkeeping. new technology has come along, some of it good, some of it not so good. In days gone by, people had to improvise and search for new ways to keep fish alive and tank water sweet. Now days its on a plate for todays generation with meds and additives to buffer this and cure that. In my view this array of wonder chemicals is killing more fish (especially in the wrong hands) than they did back then. Fishkeeping has become more accessable today, anybody can walk into an aquarium supermarket with multi outlets (gone are the days of the lowly standalone aquarist shop) I can walk into my LFS any day of the week and see folks buying fish and dont have a bawldy what they're doing.
Getting back on topic, There is more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak, so people should stop condemming others just because they go about their hobby in a different fashion than someone else. The old guy sees no reason to change his tried and trusted ways, so why do folks need to label him a Victor Meldew, whereby he could maybe teach these people a thing or two if only they'd take the time to listem.
Regards
BigC

 

[Tiger Tiger]

That is what i call him Victor Meldew to his face. But he knows it's jest and like i said above each one to there own so i agree with you. I just hate it when just because they are Fish and not say Parrots that they can be treated that way.

Selling Fish on E-Bay in my view is a pure example of why some retailers get away with what they do

 

[Miss Wiggle]

To the original post at the top.
I whole heartidly agree with the old bloke, no need to change a thing. It works for him, he has thriving fish stocks with little or no fatalities.
Its alright saying things have moved on and the earth is flat and this and that, but still there's a great wealth of knowledge to be gleened from the old folks.
Todays society wants to get everywhere in a hurry, this spills over into every aspect of our lives including this hobby of fishkeeping. new technology has come along, some of it good, some of it not so good. In days gone by, people had to improvise and search for new ways to keep fish alive and tank water sweet. Now days its on a plate for todays generation with meds and additives to buffer this and cure that. In my view this array of wonder chemicals is killing more fish (especially in the wrong hands) than they did back then. Fishkeeping has become more accessable today, anybody can walk into an aquarium supermarket with multi outlets (gone are the days of the lowly standalone aquarist shop) I can walk into my LFS any day of the week and see folks buying fish and dont have a bawldy what they're doing.
Getting back on topic, There is more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak, so people should stop condemming others just because they go about their hobby in a different fashion than someone else. The old guy sees no reason to change his tried and trusted ways, so why do folks need to label him a Victor Meldew, whereby he could maybe teach these people a thing or two if only they'd take the time to listem.
Regards
BigC

well i agree with you about the 'wonder chemicals' the old methods of cycling with fish, as above with a v light fish load and regular water changes to keep things in line are significantly safer than this new 'stick some bacteria in a bottle, some ammo lock and as many chemical media that you can find then whack half a tank load of fish in'. mostly because half these chemicals don't do what they say they will and when they do work they often interfere with other processes and reactions and the un suspecting newbies don't understand what they are adding to the tank.

 

[BigC]

Sometimes I think its commercialism to the extreme by the big aquarium industries. All these super remedies in little plastic bottles. Adding just one med/buffer to your tank will have a knock on effect on something else then that parameter will go pearshaped, then its off down to the LFS for another wonder cure/buffer to combat the first. The saga goes on, The LFS will surely welcome you back with open arms and sell you another bottle, OOps that didn't work now the fish are dead. Back to the LFS to get cleaning agents and some more stuff to steralise the tank and start again, not to mention buying more fish. The cycle goes on.
What happened to keeping it simple and not the head pickling hobby its now become.
I've been keeping and breeding and showing fish for over 35 years and have hardly ever lost fish, I hardly ever use meds except for the most common ich cure. and that I could count on one hand in all those years.
To me we need to take stock and get back to basics, and not running out at the first sign of trouble to reach for another plastic bottle.
This hobby is becomming too stressful in this day and age.
Gone are the days of aquariums in hospitals, convelesant homes and dental surgeries.
Need to think more about what we are actually doing.
Regards
BigC

 

[SharonCC]

I couldn't agree more!!!

 

[waterdrop]

Ah BigC, such a wonderful couple of posts up there! I really enjoyed reading them and agree!

This is such a very interesting discussion. To me it suggests that we might take stock of the difference between using patience and care as the important thing to success versus just thinking that fishless over fish-in is the basis of success.

The old fish store retailer described in the original story is really carrying on the very same process of education (with his customers) as we find ourselves doing (for fun, as members to each other) here in the "New to the Hobby" forum. He's concerned about the fish. He's even handing out guidelines on paper, hoping to encourage his beginning customers to go very very slow with the adding of a fish.

He's "swimming against the current" with his customers, trying to slow them down from their high-speed world that BigC describes. That's just what we end up doing so much here on the forum with the new methods, we still find one of the main difficulties is in encouraging patience and helping beginners to accept that growing new biofilms, for instance, takes weeks and weeks sometimes, that you can't just pour a bottle in and then pop in the fish!

~~waterdrop~~
ps. BicC, you once again made me nostalgic for my beautiful old childhood aquarium shop in Pittsburgh PA. which was like stepping into an underwater adventure. You were in a quiet backstreet amidst towering city buildings and stepped off the sidewalk into a dimly lit narrow store where the surroundings were mostly black. But light shown from each of the scores of tanks that seemed to rise on top of each other to near the ceiling. All was quiet and you could spend as long as you liked staring into the little underwater worlds of every different kind of fish. Ah well, just nostalgia...

 

[BigC]

ps. BicC, you once again made me nostalgic for my beautiful old childhood aquarium shop in Pittsburgh PA. which was like stepping into an underwater adventure. You were in a quiet backstreet amidst towering city buildings and stepped off the sidewalk into a dimly lit narrow store where the surroundings were mostly black. But light shown from each of the scores of tanks that seemed to rise on top of each other to near the ceiling. All was quiet and you could spend as long as you liked staring into the little underwater worlds of every different kind of fish. Ah well, just nostalgia...

There was once places like that in every town and city in the civilised world. I too had my own nostalgic retreats, sadly they have been replaced with commercial out of town multi store galvanised sheds like P@H that know little or nothing about fishkeeping.
Sorry for the rant guys
Its just sometimes I get infuriated by the modern day generation refering to old aquarists as people who are lost in time. Yes things have moved on, are they any better, in some respects NO.
Regards
BigC

 

[Miss Wiggle]

ha ha good old rant there! i do agree with you sort of anyway.

there have no doubt been a lot of advances, in terms of our knowledge of the fishes environment we know much more than we ever did, and because we know more we can become better fishkeepers. the one thing that i would say is the strongest point from this new knowledge is fishless cycling, but i do think once you're past the point of the cycle sticking to the basics and not overcomplicating things with a million different products is definately the best way.

 

[vinylman]

i do think once you're past the point of the cycle sticking to the basics and not overcomplicating things with a million different products is definately the best way.

Exactly. I've had people at work (who've seen me on this site) thinking about starting a tank, but they always say something along the lines of ''It's so expensive, all that stuff you have to buy'' and I say ''What, a tank, cabinet, filter, heater and lights?''.
''Oh no, all that other stuff in bottles on the shelves''.
''Why on earth would you need all that?'' says I.
''Well, you do, don't you?'' is the standard response.
I sit them down, tell them exactly what they need (cycling is never a problem, as I can give them some mature media, so they don't have to look at an empty tank for several weeks). I've helped three or four people at work set up tanks of varying sizes, all successfully, and it's no exaggeration to say that they'd have spent a fortune on things they don't need otherwise. I'm not sure whose 'fault' it is. Is it the manufacturers who try to persuade us that we all need their product?. The magazines who have big ads trying to persuade us?. Or the shops who fill their shelves with it?. I'm so glad that when I started my tank four years ago, there was someone working here who kept Kribs (actually, he bred and showed them, he won loads of awards for them); he used to see me looking at online ads and say ''You'll never need that, or that. Spend your money on really good quality fish and plants instead''.
But newbies don't often have that advice before they set up a tank, or even WHILE they're setting one up. Simple is best; find out your rough PH, choose fish accordingly and the only things you'll need to buy are dechlorinator and fish food. The shame is the number of people who come here for advice AFTER they've been given poor info. There must be hundreds of folks who are lost to the hobby each year who give up after an initial disaster caused by bad advice. THAT'S the real shame.

 

[Tiger Tiger]

i do think once you're past the point of the cycle sticking to the basics and not overcomplicating things with a million different products is definately the best way.

Exactly. I've had people at work (who've seen me on this site) thinking about starting a tank, but they always say something along the lines of ''It's so expensive, all that stuff you have to buy'' and I say ''What, a tank, cabinet, filter, heater and lights?''.
''Oh no, all that other stuff in bottles on the shelves''.
''Why on earth would you need all that?'' says I.
''Well, you do, don't you?'' is the standard response.
I sit them down, tell them exactly what they need (cycling is never a problem, as I can give them some mature media, so they don't have to look at an empty tank for several weeks). I've helped three or four people at work set up tanks of varying sizes, all successfully, and it's no exaggeration to say that they'd have spent a fortune on things they don't need otherwise. I'm not sure whose 'fault' it is. Is it the manufacturers who try to persuade us that we all need their product?. The magazines who have big ads trying to persuade us?. Or the shops who fill their shelves with it?. I'm so glad that when I started my tank four years ago, there was someone working here who kept Kribs (actually, he bred and showed them, he won loads of awards for them); he used to see me looking at online ads and say ''You'll never need that, or that. Spend your money on really good quality fish and plants instead''.
But newbies don't often have that advice before they set up a tank, or even WHILE they're setting one up. Simple is best; find out your rough PH, choose fish accordingly and the only things you'll need to buy are dechlorinator and fish food. The shame is the number of people who come here for advice AFTER they've been given poor info. There must be hundreds of folks who are lost to the hobby each year who give up after an initial disaster caused by bad advice. THAT'S the real shame.

I agree completely, I think there are two aspects here, if done correctly the fish in cycle does not require much more than 1 or two fish.
Like everything in life now we want everything on tap (sorry I couldn’t resist ), quick, and no patience. I think it’s a sad state we now find ourselves in all walks of life apart from medical advances I guess.
The second is 30 years ago where all these products? Stress zyme, cycle and all that. There are hundreds of them now. We talk about the fish being poisoned by a fish in cycle but what about all this other man made stuff, it can’t be that healthy and £10 for a bottle of this or that. You could spend more on these either useless products or just quick to cycle products, so what do they achieve?
A bottle of ammonia or urinating in the tank horrifies me.
Well, it’s because you have no patience and newbie’s no knowledge, but the retailer dupes us too ‘Save time’ and spend money.
A pure example of this is when I went into a well recognized aquatics retailer; I have spent £100’s of my cash over the years in there. My question was ‘Could I have a handful of your gravel to develop my tank’ the answer was but we have a bottle of cycle here for £9 + stress zyme for the same money.
I would just like a handful of your gravel please if you can.
Sorry sir we are not authorized to do that.
I went to my local guy I mentioned, Yes Dave here you are and mentioned nothing about these products, he asked about the tank, I said readings are good. You could try 1 fish a week now but if you get a spike bring him back and we will leave it longer.
No money spent, no wounded fish, just Patients that’s all that’s necessary apart from the test kits.
I like the idea about fishless cycling but to spend more money than the tank itself in exchange for patience. I can wait a few weeks longer.