1930s historically accurate planted aquarium

[Cory]

This is turning into quite an interesting project. I think i'm most interested because I don't know what the outcome will be 😉 Following this build for sure.

[Daniel]

Yikes,

Just took my first early morning temperature in the tank and I get 69.4°F! I was hoping for maybe 72°F. So I might have to adjust the fish I keep (definitely no rams). Or maybe something like a glass top to hold in the heat that builds up during the day. And if I paired the glass top with an incandescent light bulb I could stay true to the rules, but still keep the tank a couple of degrees warmer. I can see why goldfish were so popular.

[Brandy]

I was thinking you might get better results with an extra incandescent light on it. The top would totally help too. Older lights would have been less effecient and therefore dimmer and warmer? If you blanket it at night will it help? 

 

I suspect all those things are tiny changes in the scheme of things, but they might add up.

Edited August 10, 2020 by Brandy

[shkote]

I think the top alone will help a lot. I keep uncovered cold water tanks that run about 68 degrees with covered unheated tanks sitting directly next to it staying at around 72-74 degrees. A cover can make quite a bit of difference. 

[Daniel]

Thanks, I will get a piece of glass made to use as a cover.

The plants will definitely get at least some sunlight.

Of course so will the side of the tank 🙂

Still waiting for the old tank to be repaired.

[pedrofisk]

I'm loving this project. I remember reading about the concept of " balanced aquariums" in historical literature. Not too far from where we are now with the exception that they didn't believe in lots of water changes.

Just don't use the film "The Incredible Mr. Limpet" as a reference. Goldfish, gouramis, silver dollars  AND angels?! How about that gate valve though. The Trailer is worth checking out for a scenario we've all had happen.: https://youtu.be/bM4vR1B6xCk

Edited December 27, 2020 by pedrofisk

[Daniel]

33 minutes ago, pedrofisk said:

The Trailer is worth checking out for a scenario we've all had happen...

 

The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964)

Bessie: “Just look, just look at my rug.”

Limpet: “I’ve got it stopped now Bessie”

Bessie: “Henry Limpet, your floating yourself right out of this happy home with this crazy hobby of yours."

Limpet: “Now Bessie I’m going to run down right to the pet store and I’m going to get a new regulator for the intake hose.”

[Daniel]

Yesterday afternoon I added a glass cover as per page 22 of the 1936 edition of The Complete Aquarium Book.

Also @Lynze and @Brandy in above posts. Did this help? Yes! Yesterday morning I recorded a temperature of 69.4°F with the tank uncovered the night before.

After placing the glass cover on yesterday afternoon, this morning I recorded a temperature of 74.6°F

This is much more the kind of temperature I had been hoping for as my choice of tropical fish at 75°F is a little bit better than at 69°F.

 I'm still waiting on the restoration to be complete on the actual 1930s aquarium but I will continue to test on this tank in the meantime.

 I have some Endler's  guppies that might be arriving today and if they get here, I will go ahead and throw them in the tank also.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Daniel

[Daniel]

Interesting philosophic question regarding staying true to 1930s methods.

The easy part will be:

• A 1930s aquarium without specialty aquarium lighting
• No heater just a glass top
• A 1930s aquarium stand
• No filtration

The medium hard part

• 1930s fish foods (thank goodness live foods were popular as I already do a lot of that)
• 1930s fish and plants as years of breeding have made the fish and plants more adapted to aquarium conditions

The hard part

• How to un-know the aquarium keeping knowledge gained over the last 90 years
• And a hard question: Is it against the rules test water parameter using modern methods

I can tell what temperature the water is to within about 5°F. If the water feels 'coolish', I know that it is in the lower 70s. If the water feels luke-warmish, I know that it is in the high 70s, if the water feels moderately warm I know that it's in the low to mid 80s, and if it begins to feel actually warm it's in the 90s.

But I realized today when I was using a NIST traceable temperature sensor accurate to within 0.1°F to see if the tank had held its heat overnight that this might not have been exactly what they would've done in the 1930s. They had good thermometers back then of course so why I am concerned?

I am concerned because I have to make a decision of what I want to learn. Am I going to dress in vintage clothing and while listening to AM radio and feeding my zebra danios daphnia? I am sure it would be a learning experience. But that is just it. I want to learn things I didn't know.

Today (by using modern measuring equipment) I learned that the tank is not at its coolest temperature early in the morning. This was a naive assumption based my house being at its coolest temperature early in the morning, but my fish tank is at the nadir of coolness at about noon at 73.6°F. That make total sense once I think about this as the temperature is as much of a lagging indicator as consumer confidence is to the economy.

My urge is to follow the rules on the easy parts and medium parts, but give myself a break on the hard parts and measure everything with all the equipment at my disposal and see just what I can learn from this experiment.

Is that cheating?

Edited August 11, 2020 by Daniel

[Brandy]

As you pointed out, they did have accurate thermometers. A mercury thermometer DOES measure accurately, our eyes and the gradations on the shaft are the limiting factors. I suspect many of these things were measurable then by different names. Nitrate and Nitrite were well known in the 30s for their use in both agriculture and explosives, and nitrifying bacteria had been known since 1892 (Winogradsky S. Arch Sci Biol. Vol. 1. St. Petersb: 1892. Contributions a la morphologie des organismes de la nitrification; pp. 88–137. [Google Scholar]), but I don't know if their role in the aquarium hobby was widely known? 

I feel like the whole point is to sort of compare the hobby then and now, so without the bench marks we would use currently this could get less meaningful. Maybe you could make a compromise--measure your benchmarks once or twice but largely make decisions based on the technology they would have had, and take modern measurements AFTER making the decision, to check your work in effect. Like "I will make a water change xx% at xx frequency due to this line by Innes" but then after you do that check to see if it led to the anticipated outcome or not. This is like a science experiment, where we should have a WRITTEN (to keep us honest) hypothesis before conducting a test.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Brandy

[pedrofisk]

6 hours ago, Daniel said:

My urge is to follow the rules on the easy parts and medium parts, but give myself a break on the hard parts and measure everything with all the equipment at my disposal and see just what I can learn from this experiment.

Is that cheating?

I don't think it's cheating on the hard parts as long as...you wear period dress while maintaining the aquarium. There's gotta be a trade off. Especially a Fedora, that's non-negotiable.

[Daniel]

2 hours ago, Brandy said:

...nitrifying bacteria had been known since 1892 (Winogradsky S. Arch Sci Biol. Vol. 1. St. Petersb: 1892. Contributions a la morphologie des organismes de la nitrification; pp. 88–137. [Google Scholar])

It’s funny you should mention Sergai Winogradsky. He was a hero of mine as I always admired his iconoclastic approach to science. Back in the early 2000’s I was interested in the oxidation of inorganic compounds by early forms of life. My son and I went down to a salt flat on the NC coast and collected mud from the anaerobic layer below the black needle rushes.

 

We made a series of Winogradsky columns and were able to successfully culture Beggiatoa a genus of bacteria that can oxidize hydrogen sulfide H₂S just like plants do with water H₂O in photosynthesis but in this case it was chemo-synthesis.

 

The cultured Beggiatoa from our Winogradsky columns oxidized hydrogen sulfide to elemental sulfur and the sulfur was stored intracellularly. It was unbelievable until you saw it for yourself in the microscope.

Those are grains of pure elemental sulfur stored as a waste product inside the body of that Beggiatoa. The other cool part about this experiment was it was the perfect excuse to to buy a high-quality microscope with a camera port 🙂

 

 

Edited August 11, 2020 by Daniel
changed photos

[Brandy]

In my other life I work in a microscopy lab. I get to play with confocal microscopes with tunable white light lasers that cost more than any home I have ever owned. My kid had a real (student-grade) lab quality microscope by age 8. It featured in several prize winning class projects. We may not have always had the latest shoes, the kids backpacks might have been duck-taped together, but I spent the money where it mattered, lol. This is a photo with a cell phone thru the eyepiece of flagellated algae.

[Daniel]

On 8/10/2020 at 11:41 AM, pedrofisk said:

1 minute ago, Brandy said:

This is a photo with a cell phone thru the eyepiece of flagellated algae.

 

Great photo! There is this whole other world right in front of us. When I was a kid (probably because I was nearsighted) I loved looking at the little stuff. I loved looking at the belly of a pregnant guppy and seeing the eyeballs of the unborn baby guppies. I had terrible little 4 inch tall toy microscope, but when my bettas bred for the first time I put the newly hatched fry under the lens and saw their tiny hearts beating and blood flowing. I was hooked. 

[Daniel]

21 minutes ago, Brandy said:

In my other life I work in a microscopy lab. I get to play with confocal microscopes with tunable white light lasers that cost more than any home I have ever owned. My kid had a real (student-grade) lab quality microscope by age 8. It featured in several prize winning class projects. We may not have always had the latest shoes, the kids backpacks might have been duck-taped together, but I spent the money where it mattered, lol. This is a photo with a cell phone thru the eyepiece of flagellated algae.

And lest some think we have gone way off tropic, I think that I should point out that in the 1936 beloved Innes Book there is an entire chapter titled 'The Microscope in Aquarium Work'.

Edited August 12, 2020 by Daniel

[RovingGinger]

13 hours ago, Daniel said:

Yesterday afternoon I added a glass cover as per page 22 of the 1936 edition of The Complete Aquarium Book.

Wait, doesn’t this mean you also do get to use aeration of some kind? Assuming you can find an 1930s air pump of course. 
 

On the “how authentic should it be” question, I think it’s most interesting if you try the older methods you research and compare the results to modern methods with modern analysis capabilities and years of fish knowledge. It’s one thing to know something works, it’s far more interesting to know why it works that way and the trade offs you are making with one method over another. 

[Daniel]

Since I know what the temperature is and can roughly measure it with my hand, I have decided the not measure anything else from here on out. That will keep it old school for sure. Today's task will be deciding on a substrate. I think I will be using sand and gravel from my creek, but I am not sure yet.

I talked to the person working on restoring the old aquarium I will be using for the project and gave her a link to this forum so she can see what we have been talking about so far. She runs a science and history museum so this project should be right down her alley.

13 hours ago, RovingGinger said:

Wait, doesn’t this mean you also do get to use aeration of some kind? Assuming you can find an 1930s air pump of course.

Yes, technically I could use an air pump, but I think it will be more fun without one.

Edited August 12, 2020 by Daniel

[Daniel]

Endlers came today (the Post Office held them for 2 days at the nearby distribution center). I put some mosquito larva in the tank for them to eat. I cannot wait to setup the actual vintage tank as soon as it is repaired.

 

 

Edited August 12, 2020 by Daniel

[Daniel]

Yikes!

Endler's may not be that smart, but I am less smart than my guppies.

Yesterday when they arrived, I gave them a historically correct feeding of mosquito larva.

This morning while thinking about what to feed next, I thought, 'bet they would really go for some Vibra Bites.'

As I walked over to get the Vibra Bites, I froze in my tracks. Whoa, whoa, no modern foods! It was just reflex.

So, I went out to the ditch and netted some Daphnia and they seemed pretty happy with that, or as happy as is possible if you have the mental capacity of an Endler.

[Brandy]

Lol, I wish I had a ditch full of daphnia!! I LOVE the font you chose for the video, this is so fun. What is your full stocking list, or is it a surprise? 🙂

[Daniel]

It will definitely be a surprise because I don't even know what's gonna go in there yet. I like the idea of re-creating that 1934 Better Homes & Gardens cover.

I haven't had zebra Danios since I was a kid.

I've also thought about something like a pygmy sunfish (imagine a guppy crossed with a cichlid with the color of a saltwater fish). That's the sort of thing I can go and collect from a ditch around here. The reason people don't keep them now is because they only eat live foods (which won't be a problem in this aquarium). I don't think I want to keep a fish that people say 'what the heck is that?' (I hear they love them in Germany). But, the males are pretty when they are breeding.

That is not an enhanced photo, that is exactly what pygmy sunfish males look like when showing off for females. And the male nuptial dance involves slow staccato waggling while simultaneously and independently flicking each fin. Probably the most amazing fish dance I have ever seen. Technically I could keep this as they are listed in the book.

But most people kept, guppies, mollies, and goldfish so those should be the ones I consider first.

Edited August 13, 2020 by Daniel

[pedrofisk]

I spent summer on a lake in Minnesota as a kid that has tones of sunfish, mostly bluegill but others too. I've always wanted to set up a biotope aquarium with sunfish to match that lake. Might have to put a chiller on it I suppose and it'd have to be big. I never saw those pygmy sunfish but they're gorgeous.

[Daniel]

Nothing new on the tank itself today. But an artist friend of mine composed an homage to the 1930s Historically Accurate Planted Aquarium. I gave her the 1934 Better Homes and Gardens and she produced this artwork:

To me it is an updated 'American Gothic.' Her genius was to work in the Angelfish and Swordtails, cats, beehives, and gardening all in a 1930s motif.

[Daniel]

I was about to use a piece of rigid airline tubing to siphon away some guppy poop in the 1930s aquarium when I stopped and thought, I need to look up when PVC came in to general use. Turns it out it had been invented by the 1930s but they weren't making rigid airline tubing out of it.

I am being to realize that the tough part of this project isn't the big box of water, it is all the little things like 'no plastic'.

So plan B. 'Rubber tubing' tied to a stick:

[Daniel]

From the 1934 movie 'Dragon Murder Case'.

"Betta splendens they call them"

Note the tank in which two Bettas are fighting has a course sand gravel, no heater, no visible lighting, but some sort of airstone.

I may need help ID'ing the fish you see in the first tank. Definately discus and mollies. What else do you see?

I like the quote: "There is one thing about fish, if they dislike one another, they fight until they kill."

 

Edited August 17, 2020 by Daniel