History

[alton]

Can you remember when Sohal, Purple, and Chevron Tangs where over $200. When a 10” Blue face Angel cost only $80? 8” Clown triggers where everywhere? 55 gallon aquariums cost $75 and that was in 1978! Oscars where the best fish ever! When under gravel filters where the best new thing on the market. All tanks had a chrome steel trim. When we used 3 cool whites and 1 Philips 03 actinic for lighting. What do you remember about our hobby in the old days?

[GaryP]

Alton, your gray hair is showing. I can remember when TT was the "new" shop in town. I can also remember buying fish and supplies at Winn's dept. store. I think the neon tetra's were 10 for a $1.

[Thunderkat]

When I was a kid my dad had a fresh water tank with one of those old style filters that was a little box with activated carbon on the bottom and the aquarium floss stuff on top and an air pump was used to put bubbles through it. My dad did something right because he had some plecostomous lay eggs and raise the babies in there.

[GeoB]

I remember a pet store in the Colonies North Mall (back when it was a mall). A few shops down from Winns. A nice older guy ran it. I had a tank with steel trim, steel hood, wrought iron stand, and no GFCI outlet. That thing buzzed me more than a few times, kinda scary now looking back on it. Metal, water, electricity, and a kid that couldn't keep stop messing with his tank, not a good combination.

[alton]

I forgot about those corner box filters. We had one in our 5 gallon tank that we kept guppies. We where hot stuff the day we got to move up to a 10 gallon.

[brewercm]

Good to see others remember some of the old stuff.
My first saltwater tank was a 45 gallon tall back around 1986 I think. We had a small single pet shop when I was stationed in Oklahoma and if you wanted something you had him order it. Live rock was something that was hard to get and was extremely expensive (especially for some little airman). We were pushing undergravel filters with powerheads and that was high tech at the time.

Of course this was also many years after the metal framed tanks of guppies, platties, swordtails, etc. when we were kids. We though we had hit it big time when we had a hang on back filter that was powered by air hose.