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Have you ever met an aquarium keeper who hasn’t made a few mistakes, especially when getting started in the hobby? Talking about those mistakes can ease the sting and save others from repeating the same errors. In that spirit, I invite My Aquarium Club members to recount their goofs in this blog. I’ll get the ball rolling.
CONFESSION NUMBER ONE
I started keeping aquarium fish in the early 1950s just about the time my age reached double digits, so maybe being young is at least a partial excuse for all the mistakes I made. My first aquarium was a 15 gallon one with a stainless steel frame, slate bottom, black putty sealer, angle iron stand and stainless steel light/hood with no glass between the aquarium water and bulb socket. As was the practice of the day, the substrate was white sand, and the filter was a plastic box hung inside the aquarium. Inside the filter were charcoal, fiberglass (we called it angel hair.), and a bubbler to circulate the water through the plastic box. The vibrating type air pump was under the aquarium.
My first mistake was buying what ever fish looked good to me. Some, of course, were not compatible. The second mistake was not to waste aquarium space. I bought as many fish as I figured the aquarium would hold, and the fish store was happy to sell them. In those days, the store put the fish in a folded paper box of the kind sometimes used today for takeout Oriental food. And one more thing: the tank was brand new (who ever heard of cycling an aquarium?) when I put in the first purchase of fish.
I didn’t want the poor fish to starve, so I fed them any time they looked hungry, which was most of the time for about a week.
In a couple of weeks, the aquarium shop was selling me a variety of the latest medications to cure dropsy, white spots, shimmies, fin rot, and death in general. I also bought a heater, which was basically a thermostat and electrical coil in a glass test tube. My aquarium made so much money for the fish shop that I was reduced to buying a few guppies from the dime store in downtown Dallas. Anybody with a lick of sense would have gotten out of the hobby by now. But I persisted.
When I finally stopped paying so much attention to the aquarium, the guppies did not to thrive but at least survived for the most part. Only after years of similar experiences did I come up with these DON’Ts for aquarists:
*Don’t over crowd
*Don’t mix incompatible species
*Don’t over feed
*Don’t over medicate; in fact if you’re not real sure what you’re doing, don’t medicate at all.
*With a few exceptions, don’t believe everything they tell you at the aquarium shop.
If you think all those mistakes are pretty bad, wait until you hear about some of my early aquarium maintenance techniques.
OK, it’s time for the next confession. Don’t make me drag out more old stories.
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Imperfect Aquarist ??? You probably mean someone else :-D
My first aquarium I grew only plants and it was beautiful. I wanted a perfectly lovely home for my future fish. knowing absolutely nothing at the time, I bought gold fish, to go with my beautiful green aquarium, and in no time at all they had eaten all of the plants leaving me with a desert aquarium and some goldfish I didn’t feel to fond of.
A couple years ago, more like aaa lets say about 5 or 6, I had a 10 gallon, and had some community fish, cant remember which, and a betta. After school, I came home to find a half dried betta lying on my floor. So I stuck him back in the tank thinking that he would rehydrate. Everyone should know where that story ends…in the commode with the betta.
That reminds me of an albino paradise fish who committed suicide by swimming, head first, into a filter lift tube. The air was turned off, he couldn’t back out, and his gills could not absorb enough oxygen to keep him alive. Usually they supplement their small gills by breathing air. I was only a couple feet away, but it all happened so fast that I didn’t notice until it was too late.
I know its not nice but I had to laugh at the last one, Johnarthur :-D
PLEASE SOMEONE ANSWER MY QUESTION I POSTED ITS IMPORTANT EMERGENCY
It was the first thihg I did this morning. I hope it helps.
The following is just a copy of a previous posting. I hope it makes all of our newbies feel better. In the 1950s, aquarium maintenance consisted mainly of syphoning the gook off the bottom of the tank when it started to smell bad. If the idea of weekly partial water changes was around at the time, I didn’t know anything about it. Most aquariums, not just mine, had murky looking water, and it wasn’t until I discovered the miracle of under gravel filters that I actually saw nice clear aquarium water. I was so impressed that all of my aquariums still have cheap under gravel filtering. To drain aquarium water, the trick setup was a clear plastic flexible hose. They were hard to find, and it was often necessary to make do with an old garden hose. Those things were dangerous, because you couldn’t see the water level while you were sucking on the hose trying to start a syphon. Even with the clear plastic hose, I often got a mouth full of aquarium bottom water cooties. Strong mouth wash was not effective in removing the cootie cocktail taste. Usually it was necessary to completely break down an aquarium about twice a year. The slate bottom made even small aquariums heavy, and the odor didn’t help much either. I once read an article that advocated putting an air bubblier in an aquarium and using no filtration. The guy who wrote it probably didn’t have to tear down fish tanks in the 50s. After washing the white sand and replacing the angel hair in the box filter, the aquarium got fresh tap water with a few anti chlorine drops. No fancy water conditioners. No water test kits. Just fill and add fish. Somehow, they survived. At least some of them did, as did my interest in the hobby. I think all those cootie cocktails lengthened my learning curve, because it was ten or fifteen years before I was actually selling fish, plants and mystery snails to a local aquarium shop. The gradual onset of puberty also handicapped my ability to learn, but that’s another subject entirely.
LOL, I was wondering about that one. It is hard to say what my biggest mistake would have been. I think I have made all the basics at one time or another. I used to not change the water at all. Then I would suddenly get a wild hair and break down and clean the whole thing. It is amazing any of my fish survived the change in parameters. The only disease I knew anything about was ich. Needless to say, I don’t think any of my fish lasted a year.
Wow… I don’t know where to start on this one… Like most beginners… I made a LOT of misakes.
I was a kid when I started, and the internet wasn’t here yet… The library materials were outdated… and there just weren’t any fish (according to the fish store guy) that you could breed in your own tank other than guppies, and maybe swordtails or mollies… Well I bred quite a few guppies… and traded them back to him for credit.
I had 2 swamps in my early days… There was no way I could afford a python type thing… even if they existed back then. And my tanks were in my bedroom… A LONG way away from a bathroom… So My water changes… whenever I go around to them were like Jesse’s put them in a bucket and dump the tank method. It’s amazing they lasted as long as they did… But my saving grace was probably that I was too young for Mom to allow me to have the bleach… And I did have water conditioner, and a large array of other chemicals that I never buy now…
When I went to college I got out of the fish business for a couple of years. Till I moved in with this funky chick that left a lot of illegal plant matter laying around the house (when she wasn’t busy inhaling it) I decided to get another tank. I opted for one larger tank this time, and didn’t really have the room or funds to purchase another one… I got a 20 gallon. I didn’t have much money, so it didn’t really have a lot of gravel in it, or plants, (this was in the big fad of when they sold all those plants in bulb form) So I had TONS of little dead bulbs sticking partially out of my very shallow gravel bed… For a while, every week when I got paid, I’d go buy more bulbs! I had the tank sitting on a less than sturdy stand…
One night while I was staying at my parents house… Spring break I believe… Her VERY LARGE German Shepard CJ, chased her VERY MEAN cat (I can’t remember it’s name) into my room, and the door went shut behind them… She was partakng of the herbal variety… While the animals WRECKED my room… CJ knocked over my fish tank… Onto my bed, and spilling onto my computer… It was a disaster… I’ve never seen anything like it…
So she picked up a few fish that she found and put them into a pitcher, but she didn’t find all of them, and the tank was busted, and with no air, they didn’t make it till the next morning when I got home…
Ahhhh…. The learning curve…
I reckon it’s tough, these days, to get a college education.
Yeah… LOL!