Lookin back, Where did you start???

LOL I started so long ago who'd believe it.. My Grandfatger was a fish man LOL And by the late 50's we/he had bred about ever F/W fish there was from angels and early discus and tetras loaches and some of the Lungs fishe and so on . So we moved onto saltwater I recall watching my Grandfather mixing the salts up in the kitchen boiling water and yadda yadda

Then in about 1961 we where at Daytonna for the races and we stopped in a LFS and Pop saw a Rock Beauty and had to have it and every 50 miles from Daytonna to Richmond he'd holler Hey Boy that fish OK ? I'd open the bag and say yes Sir sure is and he put the pressure on me then LOL Fine its your job to keep him like that until we get home LOL. He kept the thing alive for over two yrs as he passed away in 64 But long before that we kept Chesapeak Bay natural species fish and we went and got jars of water every few weeks until he found a formulia to make the home brew stuff. Hey you asked LOL

 

Sounds really cool to me!! It is really cool to see were we all started. Ive yet to see someone that started with a big fansy system. I learned more from my little tank, with no reactors and such. Then you can learn what reactors and skimmer do, not what you read they do!! Keep em commin!!

 

Great story Tangster. 8)
Got any pics of your grandfather's old tanks around?
That would be cool to see.

 

lOL no it was a considered luxury to have a camera in them days As I recall all we had was a old Brownie box the black square on that you looked down into the opening on top just above the shutter button and the Flash was dead the old bulbs you had to pop out ad catch ..
I do recall the worse problem with the actual tanks where keeping them from rusting even the new then Meta-Frame brand with the slate bottoms as they all had in those day and the so called S.S framing rusted out in no time. He used to lacquer them with Varnish all up under and on the framing.

I'll ask my sister they may be some of us and the glance of the tanks ? People would have called that wasteful in those days . Wasting film on a fish tank LOL

 

hehe.. cool all the same.
I recall an article I read recently on restoring those old metal tanks. I saw pics of some really ornate ones that were almost birdcage like in a FAMA mag recently. If someone made a reef with one of those that would be over the top! 8)

 

Yes Pop had a Victorian one it was beautiful tall and I can't recall if it was 6 or 8 sided hex or octagonal ? It was tall and he had it planted and stocked with what was then rare veil-tailed marbled Angel's it was really fancy. I will aske my older sister she was left in charge of all the pictures as I was in Nam when Granny passed and who knew if I'd be home Might be some old pic's ? hell I have not even looked at them since before I was drafted .
But they used to make them from angle Iron and slate or marble for the bottom and black tar pitch putty for the seams the glass just sat in the putty bead and the water pressure set it tight.. Old school LOL

 

Nice... what a way to seal!

Oceanic or the like needs to come out with retro-style looking tanks that follow modern safety guidelines.

I'd buy one. I'm sure others would too.

 

Did Pop's aquarium look like this?

Antique Bronze Aquarium/Terrarium: 23-1/2 diameter x 36 high (-) - PriceGrabber.com

 

Oh man, lets go into the Wayback Machine.

My first marine tank. I was in my early 20s, believe the year was 1980. Prior to that I had been doing fresh since I was a little kid. I had anywhere from 2 to 6 tanks running at any given time. Well I purchased a 50 gallon tank (What a monster lol). There was some sort of POS non-self priming hang on filter on the back (Dyna-flow?). An under-gravel filter driven by 2 power-heads. And the ultimate in high tech; a protein skimmer! I read about the "concept" in a magazine and built one out of a lift tube, 1/2 a shampoo bottle and an air stone. I remember being amazed that the silly thing seemed to work pretty good. I still killed lots of fish as no one at that time had a good handle on the anaerobic part of the cycle and eventually quit for a number of years when I was moving from house to house for a while. At that time, lights were almost an afterthought and almost no one was messing with coral. I know it never even crossed my mind.

Hey, I remember the metal framed tanks with slate bottoms. Wow, that takes me back. Those suckers always leaked!

 

Wow! 8)