Fads

[Sgooosh]

One 'fad' I always hated were the air powered deco items like the, I assume, spring tension clam shells and treasure chests that would open to release a glob of bubbles when the air pressure overcame the spring holding the thing closed.

This is the type of thing I mean...

i wouldn't put it with my fish, but some of them are pretty clever.

 

[GaryE]

I don't know if we could call the air powered decorations a fad.Their popularity goes up and down, but I don't think they ever disappeared. I remember them from when I was a kid and if I so desired, I could probably buy some today.

There is a short running fad I forgot from a few years ago. It was probably youtube driven, but Lego decor tanks were a things for about a year. I think what happened there is a fish would step on a Lego at 3 Am and wake the house up, and people changed out that decor fast.

 

[Deleted member 149562]

Styles (or fads) in fishkeeping (as with every aspect in life) come and go more frequently than the weather changes

Nothing wrong with following a specific style (or fad). Surely that should be a decision best left to the individual and not scorned or frowned upon by the purists. As said before there is an awful lot of snobbery in life....before judging anyone or anything, perhaps you should look at the reasoning behind it.

If a child (or an adult with learning/developmental issues such as autism) has designed their aquarium to look like how they want, then who are we to judge that and to make them feel inadequate just cos we might not "approve" or "like" what they have done.

At the end of the day the only thing that is important is the health and welfare of the animals within the aquarium. As long as the person is taking good care of things like maintenance and the health of their animals, no-one should care what the decor is like, what it is made of etc. Whether it be an air driven ornament, a lego house built by the child in the home or a skull etc.....who cares?

If the animal is healthy and if the owner is doing their maintenance properly and everyone concerned with that aquarium is happy and is enjoying fishkeeping then who cares if the aquarium looks like a dogs breakfast to other people.

Live and let live.....different styles (or fads) are enjoyed by a proportion of humans, they don't make them any less of a human just cos it is distasteful to the next person.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Oh, I wouldn't get too awfully serious about it. I don't think it's snobbery or judging to express an aesthetic preference for natural-looking tanks. It's just an expression of opinion. Nobody needs anybody's permission to design their tanks the way they want. I'm probably not going to vote for a Lego Spongebob tank for TOTM, but then I'm probably not going to vote for bell-bottoms and tube tops in a fashion contest, either. That isn't snobbery; it's just one person's sense of good taste.

If clown-puke gravel and sunken treasure galleons are your thing?

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

There's nano and there's micro-nano.
Several years ago I was shocked to see what a clothes shop had as decor on a shelf behind the till. A 10 cm /4 inch cube containing water and a male betta. No filter (obviously in that size), no heater (in the UK, in a shop unheated overnight in winter!) and no decor. Next time I went in it wasn't there. I wonder why.

Those "micro-nano" decor items I don't associate with nano tanks. Those are more decor items that people who think of fish as decoration set up, and that's happened for decades. Like those fish ball wall decor items *spits* that I associate with the 70s? But I wasn't around then so I might be wrong!

But when I think of nano tanks now, I think of 20gs or less. I consider my 15.5g tanks nano tanks, can only support small fish, and that seems to be the way the hobby is trending overall - moving away from teeny tanks and bowls, and starting at 5-10gs. I hope... the people that actually get into the hobby, anyway. I know a lot of those kids "starter tanks" which are basically just a plastic kritter keeper but with a nemo or Ariel theme or something are still sold, but generally I think the hobby is moving away from tiny tanks, and towards properly designed nano tanks. Like 5g shrimp only tanks, or carefully designed mini biotopes for teeny species like badis or chili rasboras etc.

One 'fad' I always hated were the air powered deco items like the, I assume, spring tension clam shells and treasure chests that would open to release a glob of bubbles when the air pressure overcame the spring holding the thing closed.

This is the type of thing I mean...

Eh, they're cute for a kids tank! I kinda want to buy a bubble crocodile now and put it in an otherwise all natural, heavily planted tank
I don't personally like clown puke gravel, and always promote at least adding some real plants among the fake, or sand over gravel for cories, but that's for the fishes' welfare and to help the keeper have improved water conditions and healthier fish. But otherwise, I don't care how anyone ones to design or decorate their tank. If they love it, they're much more likely to get into it and care for it.

Besides, I've seen some awesome themed tanks! I intend to make one myself at some point!! Especially if they do a mix of real and fake. Like mixing some brightly coloured fake plants among real plants to add a pop of colour can looks amazing! Especially now that you can get much better quality silk plants. I might use something like a few of these mixed into my themed tank to add those pops of purple colour and the strange shape is cool:

And I think any of these would make fantastic entries for TOTM:

 

[WhistlingBadger]

The little pagoda is cool. Reminds me of @Fishmanic 's little fisherman...

 

[Fishmanic]

 

[WhistlingBadger]

I've been known to add little non-aquatic decorations to biotope tanks. My SE Asian tank had a little piece of Thai pottery half buried in the substrate. I thought about adding a crashed B-52 model, but...too soon, maybe.

 

[GaryE]

When I started the thread, I was hoping we wouldn't be into judgment, and be more into what was big and has faded. We've lost what to me are good and bad ideas along the way.

You ever see the platform shoes that held fish in the heels? They never caught on, and they weren't a 'movement' within the hobby.

Off beat decor has been, in many forms. At one point. gravel was dark brown, everywhere. Then it wasn't.

I have seen some tanks - one with pink flamingoes, one with a crucifixion, one with electric jellyfish, another with plastic toy soldiers glued to the bottom. People do stuff I wouldn't, and vice versa. A savannah with dollar store hippos that were probably poisoning the water... there I draw the law, not at the hippos but at the painted plastic.

Those are individual choices though, not styles.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

I was pretty into the blue gravel thing in the 80s-90s. I don't use it anymore, but I still think it looks rather cool in certain setups. I'm not proud of it.

 

[Fishmanic]

In Jan 2019, I won Tank of the Month with my Zen Garden themed tank featuring the Asian Fisherman and a homemade Japanese bridge.
Click on the youtube video in this link.

Fishmanic - January 2019 Tank of the Month

We would like to congratulate Fishmanic as the FishForums.net January 2019 Tank of the month! click on video Here's some additional information on the winning tank: "Fisherman's Paradise".......Japanese Zen Garden Themed 35 gallon tall hex tank Inhabitants: 9 Serpae Tetra, 3 Black Skirt...

www.fishforums.net

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

1. Old water. It was widely believed that old, unchanged water, pale yellow for some reason, had semi-magical properties for avoiding disease. That one got flushed early.
2. The Balanced Aquarium. It was to be your goal to create a no water change aquarium by creating a perfect balance of light, nutrients, plants, waste, feeding, stocking. Then somehow that balance would maintain itself in your tank. That still comes back, usually sold by white haired men with suspenders (for some reason) on youtube. It still begs the question of how you would maintain perfection unchanged. I was a sucker for that one in my teens.

These are the ones I used to battle with dad over! He was keeping and selling fish in the 50s-80s, but even then, he was really the bird person, while my mum managed the aquatics. Even after the business, he kept a personal tank throughout my childhood in the 80s - 90s and later.

What I remember, he rarely gravel cleaned or did water changes, would just have a big tank clean when it got ugly or every six months or so, otherwise it just got topped up. But it always had live plants and generally would be what I'd now consider understocked. I remember really enjoying gravel vac-ing when I was a kid, because it seemed kinda magical to me, lol. Always had charcoal in the filter too.


Decades later when both parents needed care and I moved in to help, I took over tank maintenance since he was struggling with caring for his tank by then and had added a lot more livebearers,

I did a lot of research and ended up getting into fish myself, but I was learning more new school methods, like here. I got an API freshwater test kit, and the nitrAtes were so high, they were unreadable. It took many small water changes (to avoid old tank syndrome) just to bring them into readable levels. He didn't like and distrusted all the water changing! But gradually accepted that we just had different ways of doing things (although I'd often sneak in water changes while he napped or at night, so we wouldn't argue over it! )

But there was a definitely old school/new school clash that I experienced with him, and have seen play out on the forum too, and I find it pretty fascinating. I've kept some of the remaining fish care books they had, but I know they got rid of a lot that I wish they'd kept! Not sure when the hobby seems to switch from old water - new water, but there was definitely a change in fishkeeping methods.


For those old school keepers out there, was it normal to turn off the filter to "rest the motor"? Dad used to turn the filter off randomly for a few days and said the motor needed resting, until the tank would start to look cloudy, then he'd turn it back on again. Sadly had more than one tank crash as a result of this habit.

 

[seangee]

Some high end filters turn themselves off momentarily once a day. Don't recall why. My new temp controller is connected via wifi and I get alerts on my phone. Unfortunatley it periodically errors and shuts itself off (good that it doesn't turn into a soup maker). The old version with no wifi has always been rock solid. Last time I was away during a really cold spell my phone notified me my tank heating was in an error state but still told me the temp . I watchedthe temp drop for around 24 hours, decided it would be too cold before I got home and had to call a neighbour to turn it off and back on again. Now its connected to a timer plug that shuts it off every 6 hours. Resetting sorts it so this way my tank should never be without heat for more than 6 hours

 

[GaryE]

I decided to go with water changing in the 80s. In those days, with no internet and for me then, no fish magazines, new ways trickled slowly. And resistance? Water changing is work and it had to show tangible benefits to be worth doing. It did.

I recall no discussions about the cycle. We knew about the 'new tank syndrome', but didn't know what it was. My mentors were all older than me, a lot older than me, and that may have given me different info than others. People in the large urban clubs may have been ahead of us.

Still, if I were to go to my old clubs, a turnout of 25 for English, and 50 for French language meetings would be excellent. Then, 100 and 150 would have been more like it.

A lot of the fads flowed out of the horrible idea that a tank could not run itself, a heresy many still resist. Plus we switch back and forth from seeing fish as ornaments, fish as windows into evolution, fish as things to be improved and as creatures to be conserved. We're in a far from nature phase now. It'll swing back. And forth.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

I recall no discussions about the cycle. We knew about the 'new tank syndrome', but didn't know what it was. My mentors were all older than me, a lot older than me, and that may have given me different info than others. People in the large urban clubs may have been ahead of us.

My dad was confused when I tried to talk him through the nitrogen cycle too. Although I found the remains of a very old test kit among his equipment, and some of the books cover it. But yes, when I started my own tank he knew to recommend I take some media and substrate from his tank to start the new one.

It was also pretty normal to mix hard and soft water fish for the average community tank, right? Not for breeding, but for the average mixed community.

Still, if I were to go to my old clubs, a turnout of 25 for English, and 50 for French language meetings would be excellent. Then, 100 and 150 would have been more like it.

I wish those were still a thing. Well, I joined my local tropical fish club and they have quarterly meetings, planning to go to the next one.