How this Geezer did it in the beginning
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BigCountry74
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Paul I still have a huge bleached dead coral my dad used back in the day. He ran a UG filter as well on a 75g fueled by a huge 4 outlet air pump.
Back in the 80's hurricane Hugo wiped out power in Charlotte for almost 2 weeks. He would use his truck and power everything off the alternator for a few hours every other day. It was a nightmare for him, I remember...lol
Back in the 80's hurricane Hugo wiped out power in Charlotte for almost 2 weeks. He would use his truck and power everything off the alternator for a few hours every other day. It was a nightmare for him, I remember...lol
Whitelight
New member
lol!
This has got to be one of the funniest posts I've seen on this forum! I'm only 25, and can only imagine what life was like before computers were around. I'm the assistant manager at the biggest auto parts store in town, and love to listen to the old guys about their catalog racks and pricing lists. too funny!
Now excuse me while I clean up the coffee I just spilled :lmao:
Paul B
Premium Member
He was a smart man.
It was actually much better and almost everyone was healthier and could take care of themselves better.
We didn't have computer dating, we actually had to meet someone, that is when you have to stand in front of a person and use your mouth to talk to them while making sence.
We didn't have computers or cell phones but we had something better.
Muscle shirts and cool cars. Thats all you needed, a muscle shirt and a cool car.
It helped if you had some muscles to fill out the shirt but it wasn't mandatory.
I remember my older cousin had a 1955 Oldsmobile in about 1962 and we were all in the car, which was a cool car. We would cruise around and look for girls. Well, they did, I was young but I went along for the ride and at least I looked cool. Air conditioning was not in cars in those days unless you were extreamly wealthy, which none of us were.
So when we saw a good looking girl, we would quickly roll up the windows and smile as we drove past her so it looked like we had air conditioning.
Of course it was 95 degrees so as we turned the corner we had to quickly open the windows before we fainted. Now that was being cool.
I don't know what we would do if the girl actually ever got in the car.:hmm2:
OK one more story about that car, then back to fish. We were out in Long Island and we went clamming. We collected about 100 or so clams and had them in 2 bushels in the trunk of that 55 Oldsmobile. This was in a country house out in the sticks which now looks like a city.
Anyway, my cousin forgot the clams in the trunk of the car and left the car there in the sun, for a week.
The next week we returned and we could smell the car from about 3 blocks away. You could not get with in 100 yards of the thing and he ended up junking it.
I am sure that if that car survived the crushing machine it is still on some side street with the doors and trunk open to air it out. You never get the smell of dead clam out of a car.:lol:
jasonrstewart79
New member
After reading this thread I am reminded of the early days, when I started out with my father's hand-me-down equipment... the in-tank cube filter box with its carbon and floss was a memory I had repressed!! lol
Paul B
Premium Member
LOL. My very first "tank" was the sink in the basement of our house when I was about 3. My Dad had a seafood business and every week he went to the Fulton Street Fish Market in Manhattan to buy fish. I would sometimes go with him and he would let me sit on the giant sea turtles that were off loaded by crane on the sidewalk alive to be shipped out for turtle soup. I am glad they are now protected but in those days, the way they protected something was to eat it.
Anyway, sometimes there was something still alive in the holds of the ship and they would give it to my Dad for me. We would take it home and put it in the sink with some running water. Of course we didn't have salt water so the creature, whatever it was had a very short lifespan, but considerably longer than it would have had in the hold of the fishing boat.
We did have a few catfish that survived a while though.
The market was mob controlled then and my Dad would give the nice man there $5.00 to "watch" the truck. And it was a good investment because if you didn't pay someone to "watch" your truck, you had to fish it out of the harbor.
Yes, I know I am getting side tracked all over the place with this thread.
Paul B
Premium Member
We had a few of those blackouts here in NY that lasted a few days. I am a SCUBA diver and have 3 tanks. I also have a regulator for the tanks that lower the preasure from the 3,000lbs in the tank to about 6 lbs for my airbrush. I used these SCUBA tanks to airate my water by putting an airstone in my UG filter tubes and that would circulate water through the tank. 3 or 4 days without power was nothing. Now I have a generator but I still have the SCUBA tanks and regulator.
See, I knew I would get back to fish tanks.
Speaking about fish, in the very early days I had 7 blue devils and they had clear fins like most blue devils. I was feeding tetra min flakes as there was nothing else, certainly no frozen food. I aquired some live blackworms and started feeding them to my blue devils. After a few weeks something happened. One of the fish turned all blue, even his fins and he became a male. (I learned that later) He started to chase around the other 6 females who still had clear fins. Eventually they started to lay eggs in gooseneck barnacle shells. The eggs always hatched but without computers there was no way to get or even know about rotifers and being blue devils are so small their fry look like this ------> , <---------- and you really need rotifers. I always hatched brine shrimp (still do today, every day) but the shrimp were about the size of the fry so I at the time, I could not raise them.
But this is why I am so adament about pushing live blackworms in many of my posts.
I still feed them every day and it is my opinion that that is the main reason I don't have to quarantine even though I add all sorts of "stuff" living and dead from New York waters.
That was over 40 years ago so I have been feeding them long enough to know exactly what they do for our fish. I get a lot of flack from people telling me that flakes are just as good, but what do I know?
Here is that blue devil over his nest of eggs in that barnacle shell. This picture has been posted many times and I do have close ups of the eggs but they have to be downloaded as they were taken with a film camera. Film is like what they make Scotch Tape out of but it is a different color and pictures stick to it.
If you want to see the eggs close up, just put your face close to your monitor and squint.
Also notice the bleached corals circa 1972-3
Thanks for the read, and the laughs, and the old memories Paul.
While I'm just a little younger than you, I was in grade school during Nam, I too was one who switched from FW to SW back in the 70's.
And your are so right, if the younguns had to deal with even half of what we had to deal with back in the 70's, I don't think they could survive, let alone keep a tank and fish in it alive.
I was a bit luckeier than you in that I had a somewhat decent Fish store in Haltom city Texas which was about 20 miles from my house. A little place run by a little old lady named Winnies fish store. I had to talk my Mom into driving me over there whenever I got some birthday money or collected enough pop bottles to turn in at the store for the deposit. Can't do that anymore, got to go to the local recycle place now days.
But she had Salt water fish. Damsels, Yellow tangs, Occelaris clowns and lion fish. But that was it.
Keep the saga going Buddy.
While I'm just a little younger than you, I was in grade school during Nam, I too was one who switched from FW to SW back in the 70's.
And your are so right, if the younguns had to deal with even half of what we had to deal with back in the 70's, I don't think they could survive, let alone keep a tank and fish in it alive.
I was a bit luckeier than you in that I had a somewhat decent Fish store in Haltom city Texas which was about 20 miles from my house. A little place run by a little old lady named Winnies fish store. I had to talk my Mom into driving me over there whenever I got some birthday money or collected enough pop bottles to turn in at the store for the deposit. Can't do that anymore, got to go to the local recycle place now days.
But she had Salt water fish. Damsels, Yellow tangs, Occelaris clowns and lion fish. But that was it.
Keep the saga going Buddy.
Ambiturner006
New member
Such a great read. Please keep it going!
BigCountry74
New member
I still have my dads hand me down Magnum 350 canister. You have to love on it for a tad to get it locked into place and up and running but that thing is amazing. It's 20 years old. I use it still for portable cleaning. I am pretty sure it has not changed part wise in 20 years?
I am currently using one of his old heaters also in my 135g, down in the sump. I call it the "green machine". It's ugly, but it is a beast, and again, its 20 years old.
I like the old gear, depending on what it is, who made it etc. It's solid stuff.
Dad and I went hiking 2 weekends ago. We were laughing about how craigslist has made reefing so much cheaper than it was when we was into it....back in his day you were at the mercy of the LFS, if not close to the ocean...
I am currently using one of his old heaters also in my 135g, down in the sump. I call it the "green machine". It's ugly, but it is a beast, and again, its 20 years old.
I like the old gear, depending on what it is, who made it etc. It's solid stuff.
Dad and I went hiking 2 weekends ago. We were laughing about how craigslist has made reefing so much cheaper than it was when we was into it....back in his day you were at the mercy of the LFS, if not close to the ocean...
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Old guys?? I am only 45 and worked as an autoparts manager in a GM dealership in the very late 80's and we used cards and catalog racks..
Paul B
Premium Member
I was a mechanic for Oldsmobile in 1968. Toranado, the first American front wheel drive came out then and I loved them. I was allowed to take home customers new cars to check them out for the weekend so I usually had a new, hot car to pick up girls in. Of course I couldn't take them out again because the next time it was in my own car which I practically built.
I had what I called a nuclear reactor in my 1964 Olds cutless convertible. I removed the radio and installed it under the dash and installed 8 neon lights in that place that would light up in sync with each spark plug. It looked like a fire in the dashboard, Very cool even though it was useless.
We will get to that, in the meantime, do you know why we started with corals?
I forgot the year but Germany banned the importation of angelfish which were a staple in the hobby. Without angelfish the German hobbiests wanted something as cool to fill their tanks with. Corals were not banned, so they started importing corals for aquarists. A year later the US followed.
Eventually Germany relaxed their ban on angelfish.
As to inverts, arrow crabs and anemones came at the beginning with hermits and shrimp following. I always kept anemones and I am surprised I could with my dim lights.
Speaking of lights, I used to put low voltage light bulbs in my rockwork to light up the caves. Sometimes I used blue lights. We didn't have silicone that I remember but I used wax, which was not very good for that. But I had cool looking, blue caves.
Sure Crusty, you let me do all the muddy work, then you go and join the Navy :lol:
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DM1975
New member
This reminds me of listening to my Grandpa tell me about trying to ride their milk cow back from the creek from getting water. I'm only in my later thirties but I remember working for Ford Tractor and having the micro fisch files to look up part numbers. Back then I thought it was so cool... No internet back then and personal computers were just hitting the scene, at least in the middle of nowhere in Texas they were far few and in-between.
I went on a trip to Abilene Texas with my parents in the early to mid 80's and they had a pet shop in the mall with a HUGE Macaw in a big iron cage and a decent selection of fish. I asked my mother if I could have salt water fish and she said since we didn't live near the ocean I couldn't get the water. I told her I could just pour some Morton's table salt into the water to make it salt. Needless to say the answer was no.
I did have a few bleached corals, a dried starfish, dried seahorse, and a sand dollar that she got me from a local home decor shop. My first fish was a blue gouramie that I got at the local variety store, sold in the toy section just like Paul said. I kept it in a big pickle jar with holes in the lid and bright blue sand. No air stones, no filters, just daily water changes and little pills we dropped into the water to get the chlorine out. I couldn't afford to get an aquarium. Those were moon money to me back then. Like $15.00 for a whole five gallon setup I think. Not that it was in the olden days when a stick of gum cost a months wages, but because we were rather poor at the time.
I went on a trip to Abilene Texas with my parents in the early to mid 80's and they had a pet shop in the mall with a HUGE Macaw in a big iron cage and a decent selection of fish. I asked my mother if I could have salt water fish and she said since we didn't live near the ocean I couldn't get the water. I told her I could just pour some Morton's table salt into the water to make it salt. Needless to say the answer was no.
I did have a few bleached corals, a dried starfish, dried seahorse, and a sand dollar that she got me from a local home decor shop. My first fish was a blue gouramie that I got at the local variety store, sold in the toy section just like Paul said. I kept it in a big pickle jar with holes in the lid and bright blue sand. No air stones, no filters, just daily water changes and little pills we dropped into the water to get the chlorine out. I couldn't afford to get an aquarium. Those were moon money to me back then. Like $15.00 for a whole five gallon setup I think. Not that it was in the olden days when a stick of gum cost a months wages, but because we were rather poor at the time.
when I said old guys, I meant older than that, lol. I do remember going to hardware stores and such as a kid, being able to sit at the counter on bar stools! Man was that cool, hanging out with the guys. My current store is considerably different than the good old days, specially since we just moved into it back in April.
Very interesting that the hobby lead in Germany. I'd be curious to know how it even got started over there.
Good thread!
Very interesting that the hobby lead in Germany. I'd be curious to know how it even got started over there.
Good thread!
Prairie Reef
New member
This is fantastic! I'm on board.
coralsurfer
New member
It's like reading a book and imaganing Mr. Rogers narrating. hows about a before and current pic? PLEEZ.
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