Half a century ago ...

[GuppSword]

Hello,

Many, many years ago, when I was young, I had in my country a fish tank with bottom filter and gravel/sand, I just followed some basic instructions given to me to condition everything ... and put the fish in about two weeks after everything was finished.
Feeding was worms from a stream, once in a while and very little ... -- ... the magic secret they gave me was "do nothing", "let it be" ... so I did, I never had a problem with that aquarium.

That was a real experience, some people don't believe me, but that's the way things were handled before, I never had any serious problem of contamination, sick fish, parasites, or any other abnormality in the aquarium...siphon an aquarium, what is that?, nitrates, nitrites, CO2...?, I never heard of anything like that!.
Today I see with astonishment that a whole science of fish farming has been developed and I wonder if it is not mere mercantilism behind all this, driving the issue of all these new products and the desire to sell and sell more and more everyday and make everything more expensive and earn more ...

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be science, don't get me wrong, but I think it should be directed/obligated to create a functional ecosystem as natural as possible, with the minimum of human intervention.

That was my experience, I don't know what you think, I would like to know what you think about it.
Do you really believe that all this modernity has been an advance in the culture and maintenance of aquariums, or simply a path that has been followed because certain vested interests have marked it?.

Best regards.

 

[GaryE]

Anything that can be sold will be sold. That's a basic. A lot of faddish or unnecessary gear is out there.

But...

I roamed through aquarium stores 50 years ago, and there were very few fish available. ,Many of the species we love couldn't be kept in the low tech tanks we had. So there is a balance. Yes to gadgets and commercial exploitation as wasteful, and yes to technology making the hobby more interesting.

I feed live food, as you did, but here in the north, my fish would go unfed for 6 months if I adopted that as a sole source. I culture foods to compensate, but not all of us have the luxury of easy access to real diets for fish. City dwellers don't.

We didn't know about the cycle, and we worked around it. Is it worthwhile to look at the tank though test kits? Good aquarists really enjoy that, other good aquarists don't.

Our economy does many things, and in the fish world, it gives us diseased fish. They're cheap, and people want that over pricier but better stock.

Siphoning to clean water is a progressive discovery. In 1970, we had a lot of fish from swamps available, because they could tolerate rough conditions. Now we can enjoy fish from more dynamic habitats.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

This a topic that fascinates me, because I came to the hobby recently, so learned "new fishkeeping" style, but my parents were in the aviaries and aquatics trade in the 60s- late 80s, so old school all the way. I avoided the hobby myself until parents needed full time care, I moved in with them and took over maintaining my dad's community tank since he couldn't manage it anymore.

We butted heads a LOT in that first year or two due to the clash in fishkeeping styles, combined with his memory not being the best, and his stubborn streak (okay, and mine too, I'll admit it). The biggest clash was always over water changes. After gradually turning the tank around from a case of old tank syndrome so severe, the nitrAtes were unreadable on the API chart and it took several changes just to bring them down to readable levels, everything I'd read and watched urged regular, fairly large water changes. Dad distrusted water changes in general, and thought they should be rare and tiny at the best of times. Filter must always have carbon, salt added to tank, community tank was a mishmash of hard and soft water fish kept in inadequate school numbers etc.

His tank is old enough that it has box filters built into the hood, and used to have a pump that would send the water through those. He used to turn that off every now and then for a few days to "rest the motor", sending me into panics when the water would turn murky, only for me to find the filter off. I still don't know whether it was regular practice back then to rest the motor on a pump, or if that's one of his unique quirks he came up with. The last time he decided to turn off the filter without telling me though, after I thought I'd broken him of the habit and convinced him modern motors didn't need resting, it wiped out most of the tank inhabitants.

But they had a successful business for a long time and kept them successfully then (although in practice my mother was the fish keeper, he was the bird guy), so I'm not sneering at everything old school by any means, and there is a lot wrong with modern fishkeeping too. I think a lot of improvements have been made due to science and technology moving forward, such as better understanding of the cycle, increased water changes, aquascaping becoming a rising interest that can help keep the hobby flourishing etc, while things like the instant gratification and consumerism of "aquarium nano starter tanks" and the instinct to throw chemicals of any kind into a tank to try to fix any problem, are huge downsides.

The lack of real connection to other hobbyists is a huge downside too. Local fish stores like the ones my parent's owned are a dying breed, your average hobbyist is far less likely to belong to local fish keeping societies and attend weekly/monthly meetings, and everything is ordered online, shutting down those aspects of the hobby that benefitted everyone in the hobby. Just my take on things.

 

[GaryE]

This exact moment is the good old days for someone. maybe you.

I won't say people don't 'believe in' the cycle, because that isn't belief. They don't understand it. And they certainly didn't back then. Filters were regularly turned off to save power or rest motors. We still see people doing that here, in questions.
There are new aquarists learning, since they've never asked these questions before (no need).
There are old aquarists till stuck in the Axelrod years (he was a 1960s-70s guru - very creative with, uh, info) who just don't ask questions and do what they always did. It often works. It may not get the result I want, but they're happy.
I don't know what understanding will develop if this hobby survives another 20 years. The role of archaea? Viruses? Who knows?
We'll weather fads, and may laugh at API test kits, expensive pellet foods or overheated tanks. Or not.

The hobby has increased the possibility for learning within it. It doesn't look as easy as people used to think it was. In any system growing more complex, some will dig in.

Progress is a dodgy idea. I filter 90% of my set up with box filters. I have to make them myself now, as they are seen as hopeless old tech. They work though. Not everything we've discarded is things we should have.

Some things really had to go. I remember filters with integrated heaters (ie- plastic waste for landfills). Weekly bacteria in a bottle dosing (I was often told fish would die without that. They didn't). Charcoal in filters or an apocalypse would result. We're as good at believing in as any other area of human activity.

I get excited at being able to look at youtube vids of fish in the wild, of plants and habitats as the fish live in them. A lot of people would say that's too much like homework, and they don't do that. I hope we go toward "evolutionary fishkeeping", where we backtrack and design our tanks to fit with where our fish come from (not farm vats). Will we? I doubt it. But if we do we'll be pretty snarky about how things are done now.

 

[Essjay]

Technology changes in every field. Something I'm learning about is pregnancy and childbirth in 2022 as my younger son's partner is 36 weeks pregnant. So many changes since mine were born in 1980 and 1982.

 

[BrianK]

I'm in the same boat. I kept fish as a kid. Other than treating for chlorine, I did nothing. Undergravel filter, changed the water when I felt like it. Plants grew great and fish lived without much trouble. Fish seem much more fragile now.

 

[Glenn407]

My first experiance was seeing the tank in the dentists office in the mid fifties. I don't recall if I was more fascinated with the fish or the belt driven air pump on the floor.

 

[GuppSword]

Briank,

They probably won't believe me, but I didn't even worry about doing 'water changes', the water evaporates naturally in the tank, I just had a container previously ready for more than a week in storage -- so I wouldn't worry about 'dechlorinating the water' -- to cover the level I wanted according to what evaporated, period, the philosophy was: Let it be!.
*The problem today is in fish products.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

Progress is a dodgy idea. I filter 90% of my set up with box filters. I have to make them myself now, as they are seen as hopeless old tech. They work though. Not everything we've discarded is things we should have.

Those box filters are/were great - they hold a huge amount of media! I have pics since I was selling the tank;

They're one older style item that I wouldn't mind keeping, but you won't see around much these days since the tanks with the big old hoods these fit in aren't really in fashion anymore.

The problems we had with them were one: The tank held two of 'em, so he'd run one for around 2-3 months, then move the pump to the other one to run for a while, without switching the media. So a lot of the BB would die off from the box currently not in use, and the tank would struggle with a mini cycle with every switch. Had he only moved the media at the same time as the pump, this wouldn't have caused a problem.

The big one was my error for lack of checking, as much as his error for not fully grasping the cycle.
As you and anyone else who has these knows, the output for these boxes comes from the back and centre of the tank at the surface level. In this 57g tank at that height, with a quiet pump, I couldn't easily tell when the main box filter was on or off, especially since the tank was packed full of hornwort that was blocking the view of the output. One day he turned the filter off to rest the motor (and thank you for letting me know that was a real thing, and not just his own weirdness!) without telling me, on a heavily stocked tank with the only other filtration being a teeny tiny internal I'd added, just to increase flow and surface disturbance. I only found out when fish began dying and I was doing emergency water changes and testing the water, discovered the filter was off, and he admitted he'd turned it off a few days previously. Months since I thought I'd broken him of the habit. Wiped out most of the tank due to my discovering it so late and my own lack of knowledge about other ways to help in a crisis like that. Was a horrible thing to go through, and moments like finding the elderly botia or the last of my beloved black/silver molly line passed away almost had me give up the hobby altogether. Really devastated me.

I'm in the same boat. I kept fish as a kid. Other than treating for chlorine, I did nothing. Undergravel filter, changed the water when I felt like it. Plants grew great and fish lived without much trouble. Fish seem much more fragile now.

They probably won't believe me, but I didn't even worry about doing 'water changes', the water evaporates naturally in the tank, I just had a container previously ready for more than a week in storage -- so I wouldn't worry about 'dechlorinating the water' -- to cover the level I wanted according to what evaporated, period, the philosophy was: Let it be!.
*The problem today is in fish products.

Pretty sure there are some rose-tinted glasses going on there though, where as is human nature, you remember the successes and minimise and forget the losses. My dad tried to say the above tank crash was just something that happens sometimes, and I'm sure the occasional tank wipeout was seen as a sad thing, but something that sometimes does happen when keeping fish. But with understanding of the cycle now, we know exactly what happened and how to prevent it. You're remembering the tank chugging along for years, and not the losses you suffered or the odd bout of ich you dealt with.

Water changes were regarded as dangerous because when a tank has old tank syndrome, they are dangerous. But they don't have to be in a regularly maintained system, and in the long term, so is old tank syndrome. You wouldn't necessarily notice if your high nitrates were shortening the lifespans of your fish at the time, but science can tell you now about the long term effects of high nitrates or the wrong GH on a fish's internal organs.

Yes, you let tap water stand and chlorine evaporate then, many still do now. But most city councils were not adding chloromine to the water supply at the time, so those people living in one of the many areas that now have chloromine, and not just plain old chlorine in their water, could leave the water to stand for months and it wouldn't air off and become safe, and need to use a declorinator.

Combination of rose-tinted glasses and a resistance to understanding newer science/how the world has changed (which isn't always changing for the worst) I think.

 

[GuppSword]

We knew that, and even more, neither chlorine nor fluoride was used as today, but iodine.
The aquarium that I just set up now is already thirteen days old, I have not dechlorinated the water, of course I used the water that comes out of the tap filter I have: Brita Basic Faucet Water Filter System, and I let it sit for ten days, enough!, there they are alive and kicking!.
... and when the water evaporates, I will add more of the water I have reserved beforehand.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

We knew that, and even more, neither chlorine nor fluoride was used as today, but iodine.
The aquarium that I just set up now is already thirteen days old, I have not dechlorinated the water, of course I used the water that comes out of the tap filter I have: Brita Basic Faucet Water Filter System, and I let it sit for ten days, enough!, there they are alive and kicking!.
... and when the water evaporates, I will add more of the water I have reserved beforehand.

So you don't live in an area with chloromine in the water, that's great! But those that do will have no choice other than to use a declorinator, or to find an alternative source of water such as buying RO water.

But if you added fish to a tank filled with water you allowed to air off that contained chloromines, then they would not be "alive and kicking" without a declorinator.

If you only top up the tank due to evaporation loss without ever changing out any of the water, eventually the chemistry of your water changes and drifts away from your source water. Minerals don't evaporate and become concentrated over time, your pH changes etc. Even if you personally don't care about old tan syndrome, if you wanted to to keep aquarium plants that are a little more exotic and tricky than hortwort and the odd crypt, things like the mineral and nutrient content of your tank start to become more important.