Fish keeping - 40 years ago

5kg of brine shrimp eggs!! No wonder you still have some.

 

Moreso to bump the thread,... I need to also add... Baby Oscars...(at around 25mm - when I first saw them).. were the most expensive fish at the time at R1 each... the cheapest were Zebra Danios.. 15c each and Guppies around 25c.... My first Arowanas were babies of about 15mm.. (not Centimeters... Millimeters) ... never had a clue that they grow so big... and I bought 10 of them... to be a schooling community in my 2foot tank... Ha! ha!..... I was published in the TFH Magazine about 7 times... I still have all the old magazines... and will scan some of my published queries and their responses and post them here... (I was a subscriber to the magazine from about 1974... to 1995... and still have all those magazines)....

 

Out of interest - how many tanks do you have now?
Keeping 150 tanks would probably best be described as the folly of youth.

 

Set up, I have 17... Available to be set up.... about 40... (and of the 17 set-up.... only 5 have fish in them).... But... I'm keeping them in case the bug bites again somewhere in the future... One never knows...lol

 

Yes... I did.... and it was to serve as motivator for me to be interested again... but .. I'm afraid... It did not rise to the purpose.... lol... I think... if there was an outlet market in Kimberley... it might just be the breakthrough..... We currently have two pet stores here.. and their priorities are certainly not fish....

 

@Cheetah... awesome thread... had a good chuckle at some of the things

Shows how lucky and easy fishkeepers have it today...

150 tanks... holy molly... I thought my Dad was bad....

 

And... You know what!!!... when I stopped breeding...(the first time).... I advertised everything for sale.... as long as... who-ever takes the stuff..... takes everything fish related from my house... back room ... and garage.... It was truckloads and I could not find a taker... Eventually... a guy pitched up.... and offered me a car radio and a welding machine for the lot... I understood that he said car radio OR welding machine... so I said ja okay... I'll take the car radio.... lol... so... everything went for a Car radio..... It was not six months after that... that I started breeding again... and had to start from scratch again!

 

Hahaha, I remember going to OK bazaars in cape Town ~ they had the largest selection at one time.

We had electric Air 'Piston Pumps' an engineering marvel back then, they ran silently and required a drop of singer sewing oil every now and then.
Gravel was obtained from the Du Toits Kloof river bed or I utilised sand from the garden, growing large Amazon Swords, which flowered outside the aquarium, into the canopy space.

Fluorescent tubes where unheard of ~ I used ordinary globes sometimes coloured globes to accentuate different night lighting.

Daphnia and Tubifex was common and easy to find!!

 

Thanks for sharig those experiences! Luckily I missed the steel frame tanks. Under gravel filters were big when I started in the late 80's. Still have my old TFH books from back then. Used to drool over all the pictures. Think I sold guppies to the petshops for 50 cents...

 

Just read this threadm very interesting stuff lol.

 

Those are before my time but I would love to page through some of them though.

 

I have a bunch of old fish keeping books from the 50s and 60s its fun reading about how they did things some went into jungles of south America to find fish axlerod I think havnt looked at those books in years but still some good advise in them . The early discus books are facinating keeping those wild caught discus was like keeping marines today