Under Gravel Filters

[waterdrop]

But the gravel cleaner was one of those ones where you squeeze the suction bulb at the top and it just pulls the water up the stiff plastic tube and dumps it over into a cloth strainer bag.

I remember those. Never had one as I always did gravel cleaning when doing a water change so used a wide ugf uplift tube connected via a bored cork to my syphon tube thus the crud was straight out of the tank at the same time as the water.

I used ugf's from the mid '60's until perhaps the mid '80's by which time I had changed over to external canisters on all of my tanks, (apart from fry tanks of course - sponges).

The betta comment above is also good, betta's like a fairly still surface environment.

LatLine, Interesting, I remember moving my skinny siphon tube around the gravel trying to get dirt, never thinking how clever it would be if combined with a wider tube like my hand-pump gravel cleaner had. I'm sure the hand-pump type which simply returned the filtered water to the aquarium seemed more attractive back in those days because I had little idea how important water changes were. The cloth bag hand-pump(or battery) things were only as good as the cloth bag, which was only good for larger debris mostly.

I wonder, you being in Denmark, how you came to know that water changes were good? Some here in US say that the fellow Innes who had the most popular large aquarium ref-style book of the time was one who went against the grain of "old-water-is-good" dogma but I was probably too young to see that subtlety in his recommendations.

Regards, ~~waterdrop~~

 

[Colin_T]

Some info for those that do use a Python siphon, or anyone who drains their tank water into the household drains.
The aquarium water is full of disease organisms and if you pour tank water into the household drain, you are potentially pouring contaminated water into the nation's sewerage system. Now although this doesn't sound too bad there is the possibility (although remote) that some of these disease organisms can survive the water treatment process and end up in the natural waterways where they can affect the native fishes and aquatic organisms.
A better option is to drain the water out onto the garden where it goes into the soil and hopefully anything living in it will die when the soil dries out. Aquarium water is also good for the garden because it is full of nutrients. Obviously salt water isn't quite as good for the garden but small amounts of seawater does not affect the average garden.
You can use a garden hose or any length of plastic tubing to drain the tank water out to the garden. Then you can refill it with tap water via the Python.

 

[Lateral Line]

the fellow Innes

I have the Innes "White" book in my library still. Something of a collectors item.

I guess starting, when I just had goldfish, the tank became so cloudy after a few weeks, changing the water helped me see my fish. I recall with my very first tank, (an odd, rigid artificial material - one piece), this was acheived by carrying the full tank to the garden, and running the hose into the tank allowing it to overflow for 15 minutes or so. Fish always seemed much perkier afterwards.

That was impractical when I moved to trops, temperature as much as the larger tank, (iron framed 24x12x12 and glazed with putty), which weighed a lot empty. Again, I changed water when it looked dirty, but after a while, (I'm in ~1962 now), the effect of the changes really struck me. What happened was after changes, I noticed things spawning. By the time the first of the McKinnery books came out, I was already doing water changes every week or so "whether they looked needed or not".

I found I was capable of breeding all kinds of things, things the old books said did not breed in captivity. Never looked back.

 

[Colin_T]

I remember when the shops told you to drain the tank or bowl every week and replace with clean water. Just wash it all out and refill it. Then use a tablespoon of this water conditioner (blue salt) and put the fish back in.
Then if a fish died you just drained the tank, refilled it and stuck new fish in.
A good fish shop had discus and the bad shops didn't. But you couldn't buy the discus, they were only for the shop owner.
And comet goldsfish had long tails but common goldfish did not.
If a fish got sick (didn't matter why) you dumped a heap of blue medication in the water and watched the silicon change colour.
You changed the filter floss in the box filter every week and you fed the fish as often as you want with flake food coz it is good enough for everything.
Oh, and 2ft tanks were made from 6mm glass.
God I'm glad those days have gone.

 

[waterdrop]

Lateral Line, I think you have earned the right to be called a true water change pioneer. I'm impressed!

 

[Osian]

Thank for the info on the UGF, i think i'll try and build a mod for a internal filter for my betta. Also talking about the water changes not being common back in the 60's I know my dad used to change the water for his goldfigh when he was a kid every day from the nearby river. Why he did it i dont know, or why he chose to use the river and not the tap either, but he did say the goldfish (which he won in a fair) lived for quite a long time.