My mum came round my house yesterday and see my tank, she loved it,
anyway, we got chatting and i was explaining to her how you have to do water changes and clean filter etc etc, she couldnt believe it, she said to me ''when i was young all this was rubbish, you just filled the tank up and put the fish in''
and i said, ''yeah and they all died''
her reply was ''no chance, i had a few fish that lived years.
so my point is, are we all over protected or do are fish really need this much attention.
my mum thinks i have gone mad

glen2009 wrote:


not all but a few


some fish are more tolerante to bad water conditions than others. therefore can survive in poor water conditions for longer periods. unfortunetly oscar are not one of them so water maintenace is critical.
as to are we overprotective probably we are but we are all trying to reproduce a fish's natural enviroment as best we can.

are we a little mad????? probablyB)

She was amazed at the maintenance i was putting in, i said to her, so all the fish you had, you didnt do water changes are buy aqua safe or use a good filter, she said no.
she said to me i dont even think that stuff was available many years ago.
she also said to me, 'i only changed the water when it got to dirty.
i was amazed.
she said thats how everyone done it years ago.

when had my first tank back in the day there were no canister filters or water conditioners. there was in tank fiber fill filters and hob and declorinator but not much else. now mind you i was young at the time and didnt know anything about keeping fish back then. there might have been more but not at my lfs.

it does make you think though dont it.
im only 26 now so i dont really know the deal 40-50 years back, but i cant imagine keeping fish without all the maintenance?
maybe you can let me know what it was like 50-60 years ago necro? im sure you had fish then.

i remember my grandfather keeping tropical fish many years ago......my father tells me stories of my grandfathers fishkeeping exploits long before i was around and he himself was a young boy,,,,,,and i can guarantee that what we do today was done exactly the same in the 1940,s but the comercialy available products we have today were created in the home from "other" household products......medication ingredients today remain the same...active antibiotic ingredients are mainly for human ingestion and treatments like malachite green and methylene blue were and still are available and used in apothacaries and homeopathy today wormers were and still are wormers ....but mainly filtration was gravity fed sumps or done with airpumps and sponges ..but tanks were a great deal smaler then!!!!!!!!!!! if you had a 3ft tank you were captain nemo!!!!!!!!! my earliest memories as a child were of my grandfathers 34 fishtanks in their livingroom !!!!!! they were all built into alcoves in the walls and ran from the floor to the celing all around the room with a massive varity of species that most people had never seen as tv programes on the natural world were non existant .........i do remember in a power outage he used to fill the old fassioned copper water flasks (the round ones with a butterfly nut top) with boiling water and drop them in the tanks to keep the temp up and he had his pipework for his air pumps connected to an old blacksmiths bellows to add air to the tanks!!!!!!!!!!!! GREAT THREAD GLEN realy brings back some great memories for me.....

I carry out 1 WC on my 125g tank every week. At the momment it's every 2 weeks on the 300g. Filters are every few weeks. Is that over protective? As long as people follow a few basic rules then there is no need to be over protective. Your fish should lead perfectly healty lives.

If you're into breeding or specialed aquatics then maybe a case of carrying out more work.

That's my two pennith anyway

I think this is where most newcomers go wrong. They do what your mum did. buy a fish, fill a tank and put it in. chlorine,ammonia,nitrites. then they come here and ask why its all gone wrong. people don't understand water that looks clean isn't always good for fish. if its good to drink why are the fish dieing?? its a very easy mistake to make and a lot of fish dealers don't ask simple questions that could prevent a lot of upset for some people. But they do come back to buy more fish.))))

personally I find my cleaning simple and no hassle. the cat and dog take more work than the fish but thats the wifes department.)))

We have the internet now so getting reliable info quickly is easy. Even as little as 10yrs ago there weren't the websies there are now and not as many people had the internet. If you wanted to learn you had buy a book. It really isn't suprising people didn't know what they were doing and their were dead within the week.

Also filtration has come on leaps & bounds, I would say it's easier to maintaun a tank containing large fish.

i do a 20% water change on my 55 everyweek and i deal with the filter minimally
by the way nice to see you back OFL

OFL you say not being surprised that the fish are dead within a week but my mum said her fish didnt die, they all lived for a long time.
maybe she just had hardy fish.
anyway, how did hospital go? is everything ok mate?

I remember a fish store back in the early 80's.I think community fish were what most would keep & a lot of them are hardier than oscars. Sadly out of all the fish I keep, it's the oscars that are most at risk from developing health problems.

Could this due to heavy inter breeding, I don't know.

I'll be home tomorrow