Remember when....

[ChippieJoe]

Remember when...

I'll go first, pot scrubbies, wet/dry filters and sumps on MFK, must of been over a decade ago now. Everyone was making one and some was seeing who could make the most colour coordinated scubbies.

Pot scrubbies share price must of gone through the roof at that time 😀 

I just found these photos of my old attempts, the glass one worked brilliantly.

 

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 1/3/2023 at 1:54 PM, ChippieJoe said:

Remember when...

I'll go first, pot scrubbies, wet/dry filters and sumps on MFK, must of been over a decade ago now. Everyone was making one and some was seeing who could make the most colour coordinated scubbies.

Pot scrubbies share price must of gone through the roof at that time 😀 

I just found these photos of my old attempts, the glass one worked brilliantly.

 

I can see that in some kind of art installation somewhere..😂

[Odd Duck]

I remember scrubbies but never went there because we had bioballs already when they became popular.  All that “our bioballs are better than their bioballs” wars, “oh, but our ceramic media is even better” wars but then it turns out it wasn’t accessible surface area in that ceramic media, and cheapo scrubbers are better than all of them.  😆

We had a rather elaborate system plumbed through the wall into the closet behind the wall next to the tank that was in the living room.  Elevated refugium with its own light, 5 gallons of kalkwasser on an IV drip  which was to deliver the kalkwasser but also served as an auto-top off system.  This is when I figured out that an IV drip set could fit directly into airline which would fit directly into the little air vent on the 5 gallon jug.  We had an external “Little Giant” pump beside the sump that was loaded with bioballs, we had bioballs in the almost 3 foot tall protein skimmer that I sewed a custom cover for to reduce algae growth.  It was a pretty fancy system for back in the day.

I remember when HO fluorescents came out, when compact fluorescents came out (had one over the refugium) and how expensive LED lights were when they came out.  We never went with LED’s since they were too expensive and not yet better than HO fluorescent when we finally shut down the reef tank.  We moved a 70 gallon reef tank twice back in the late 80’s and early 90’s while I was in undergrad, then grad school, then after vet school to move it over 700 miles to Texas.

I remember when it was just starting to be common to add dechlorinator back in the early to mid 80’s.  Before that, we just set our bucket of water beside the tank and ran an airstone in it for 24 hours before changing the water.  That’s all it took to dissipate the chlorine.  Nobody was using chloramines much before that.  I remember as a kid, my friend and I would go to the local sand pits in the mid to late 70’s to try to collect Daphnia and Vallisneria because you could hardly get aquarium plants at our local mom and pop basement fish store and nobody else sold aquarium plants at all.  There were only 2 other places that had fish (both were what passed for local discount stores back then) and they both shut down their fish sections in the late 70’s.

[Bev C]

that looks like my first tank with first  hangback filter when i was first learning    😂 😂 i  had to do a emergency filter fix  i had the bio rocks and a sponge filter along with the hangback  in the tank but ran out of filter  pad   and my fish guy 1-2 hours away told me to  just run to dollar store  the only store in town and get the plastic scrubbies  they worked perfectly but from that day i learn to be sure to have extra supplies on hand and have backups of equipment

[nabokovfan87]

.......remember when.....

This was how you did tank maintenance.

[TOtrees]

When i started keeping fish maybe 5 years ago, it wasn't long before I set up a 10gal at my parents house. My mum had kept and bred angels when she was younger (this would be 1960 give or take 5 years, I think). Water changes? Why do you change water every week? As she recalls it (and I've had this confirmed on other forums etc), you put the fish in the tank, feed them daily or whatever, and then clean the whole tank out and reset everything around ever 6 months. Move the fish to a bowl, empty all the water, clean scrub and rinse everything, put it back together, fill it all back up (new water), and once the temp is ok add the fish back. Feed them for another 6 months and repeat. 🤔

Kinda makes me think we make it too easy for the fish nowadays, ie we make it easier for weaker fish to survive. Ie as lines or lineages they were stronger and more robust back then because only the strong survived. Anything that wasn't super robust didn't make it past 1 or 2 generations. 

[Bev C]

😂 😂 @nabokovfan87 I guess i am still old school person or more of a dollar store fish keeper some of the old style ways are better for my fish keeping with a disability 

 still use my drainers   i have 2 one very large and one smaller with a handle and I have a large scoop spoon when i clean or change  my  rocks , sand or add new gravel or sand .. i still use my drainer to hold  plant pieces when i clean or work on   my plants and carry small equipment and decorations around from tank to sink 

Edited January 3, 2023 by Bev C

[Tactical Error]

On 1/3/2023 at 3:16 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

.......remember when.....

This was how you did tank maintenance.

YUP!   And I feel so much better that it wasn’t just me…

[Flumpweesel]

I kept a goldfish for 15 years with no filter no dechlorinator and no air stone.

Nearly lost the fish when filtration was added. Sometimes I wonder if we are just making things harder.

[nabokovfan87]

On 1/3/2023 at 1:04 PM, Bev C said:

still use my drainers   i have 2 one very large and one smaller with a handle and I have a large scoop spoon when i clean or change  my  rocks , sand or add new gravel or sand .. i still use my drainer to hold  plant pieces when i clean or work on   my plants and carry small equipment and decorations around from tank to sink 

Totally is a useful tool.  We used to take the tank (20G tall I think) and we'd basically drain all the water, move the fish, take everything out, pour all the gravel into the sink / strainer.  Then clean the filter.  This was once a month, once every 2 months.

I mean, it worked. We had the tank for a really good while, but it definitely wasn't what we should've done based on tools we have now and the knowledge we have now.  If you're running all plastic decor and stuff like that, I probably would still use a bucket, strainer, and a fish sink to clean everything during maintenance.

[Odd Duck]

The only time I ever removed and rinsed all my gravel was to try to clear an infestation of MTS.  Other than that, I siphoned as I gravel vacced and replaced with aged water.  25% WC every week was always the rule I was taught in 1975 when I got my first tank.  That’s what was in all the books I could get my hands on back then, too.