I just bought an 80 gal tank from an old man unable to keep fish any more...Along with all the goodies that come with the tank ( some old, some new ), I found a copy of


by Dr. Ulrich Baensch & Hans A. Baensch.

Circa 1975

Maybe some of our older members remember reading this? Here are some scans...If anybody wants, I will scan the whole book - just let me know. It's a fun nostalgic look WAAAAY back into the past of fishkeeping.







1inch/gal rule...How long has this been around?


Again

Thats neat that the guy still had this book. I love the illustration of the front cover..very family oriented
The info sounds pretty good on the page I could read I think. I'd keep the book..it could be worth something one day..lol!
Dianne

Thanx for the thought, Snooks. and thanx for using "older" not "old". Actually, since my hair is still dark and still WITH me, and I don't need glasses and lack wrinkles, most folks think I'm in my late 30's or early 40's at worst. Really cool "retro" book.

This post has been edited by fredgarvin: Mar 1 2008, 06:42 PM

I wasn't keeping fish in them days (wasn't born in them days to tell the truth) but love the book. The front cover is awesome, I love retro advertising.

I found a fishkeeping book in a charity shop a while book that wasn't that disimilar. I don't how old it was but it talked about aquariums having slate bottoms but modern ones are now available in all glass!
The pictures of the fish in that book were all painted rather than photographed too.

This post has been edited by littlest: Mar 1 2008, 07:12 PM

I love the framed pictures of fish on the family's walls. Like anyone would actually do that. lol (sorry if anyone does)

I was going to say that I love the idea that people who keep fish would have pictures of fish on their living room walls, but then I thought someone might have pictures of their fish on their living room walls and might be offended.

Hey when I go fishing, I take pictures and put them on my wall!!!

Hmm...not quite the same thing as having pretty fishy watercolours on your wall.

I love old aquarium books, especially the excited way they talk about 'new' technologies that are way out of date these days. What amazes me is how much of the advice is still valid though.

I recently bought a book from 1932 for a measly £5. Yes, 1932. It's American and most of the fish and plants are North American but even then plants like Vallis and fish like Badis Badis and bettas were supposedly fairly common. It also mentioned the 1" per gallon rule!

The biggest change was that almost no powered filters or airpumps were used and they recommended that a properly balanced aquarium would not need cleaning or water changes apart from a once-a-year stripdown. Tank ecology was more important and it struck me how we rely on technology these days, perhaps more than we need to.

I like it!

My dad has got an old Computer Science Dictionary that i think is from the 70's. It talks about a 10MB hard drive being huge.

Nice book to come across. It just goes to show that 1" per gallon isn't all bad and also mentions that it's "sufficient for beginners". Still good advice today. Not too fond of the idea that it shows 3 goldfish in an unfiltered bowl though.

when i first started fishkeeping a year ago i bought this book of ebay for $10 it was written in 1982 by Dr. Herbert R. Axelrod it is very good book and is in excelent condition and also mentions the 1 inch rule

Completely agree, Skoppers. We have quite complex life support systems for keeping fish these days. Back in the day, I had an angelfish and a kissing gourami in a 29G tank and that was a lot!

Now, I have CF lights, compressed CO2 systems, massive canister filters, timers, uv filters, fertilizers and on and on. Back then I had a small filter that I cleaned once a month - sometimes less often.

Just a side question for those that were in the hobby back in the "dark ages" so to speak. Do you notice that fish live any longer today with the improved filtration we now have or any other differences for the good or bad that are/could be related to newer technology?

I dont know if fish live any longer but they seem to be much weaker then in the good old days. I used to breed livebearers and all we had were in tank carbon filters. Only did water changes once in a while, and hardly ever lost any fish. We didnt run around testing water every day and I still dont.
Pat

From what I have read, it seems the "weaker" fish are partly/mostly a result of inbreeding. As for testiing, I never test any more but I did when I was getting my tanks up and running. I think the 2 go hand in hand though. Because of the weaker fish (what ever the reason may be), they aren't as tolerant of bad water conditions. That's not to say that people back then had bad water parameters on a regular basis but more that the fish were able to tolerate the ammonia and nitrite spikes in the beginning better than they can now. Even then though, as I mentioned in another thread, I'm sure a lot of people tried the hobby back then and were turned off because they kept losing fish and didn't have the resources we have today to figure out what was causing the deaths and how to fix the problem.

I agree with you there and I think the tests are a must for a newbie I still test about once a month, and I have to say I certainly think fish and plants are healthier with all the new filters etc.

That's pretty awesome. Nice find.