Dealing with inflation?

I have always taken advanatge of sales on a number of items I use or might need to replace. And example was the Hydor Inline heaters which I used for all canister filters. When I spotted a sale on them a number of years ago I put one on the shelf where it sat for years, Abd then after running great for over 20 years one of them quit. I had 3 and going at my peak and when that one quit I had the one on the shelf.

The replacement probably cost me 1/2 of the the going price the old one finally quit.

I also keep spare Aquaclear parts as well. At my peak I had 28 of the running. I had multiples of every model in use except for the 110 where I have only one.

I also am a fan of the H.O.T. Magnum filters and may years ago bough a box of used ones and parts. They stopped making this filter several years ago and finding parts these days is very difficult.

The problem with really well made equipment that we often love is that the odds are it will often become obsolete and be discontinued. So then you have a great item that you really like and which is lasting a fair amount of time. And then it breaks and you discover you can not get the parts to fix it.

I have been able to keep my Eheim pro IIs running. My original model 2026 has been running since 2003. I have a bunch of spare parts for it as I had 3 of them going at one time. I still have 2 in use. They stop making it over 15 years ago. I still have a 2028 NIB on the shelf which I got on Ebay after Eheim had stopped selling them.

But, it is important to understand that I was lucky enough to be able to afford what it costs to maintain spare parts or even a working spare on the shelf.
 
We all need to budget and to economize to deal with inflation and to also deal with shrinkflation where food products decrease in size but prices stay the same or increase.
As we deal with inevitable inflation, take a moment and enjoy this song about dealing with inflation.
 
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Inflation is an issue all across the world, and the conversations we can have have about it don't care about petty politics in individual countries. Certainly, some countries are worse than others, but that's not really of interest to an international forum.

I've tried to redesign my fishroom to deal with rising energy costs and rising general equipment costs, and I think that for anyone who isn't rich, that's a sensible direction to take.

I've moved to central air delivered via homemade piping systems and with valves. I've largely eliminated the use of heaters by choosing fish carefully, and insulating a room very well. I bartered my skills for a pile of LED lights to replace all my older systems, and that saved a lot of money. I bought a pile of Chinese HOBs I liked (no names from a local store) and managed to run them for up to 12 years each, with a little switching out of parts. Eventually, you run out, and I've found a reasonably priced source of air driven sponge filters I like to replace them.

Are the sponge filters as good? I'd argue no. But they are good.

This weekend when the package arrives, I'm going to try attaching stainless washers to the not very good suction cups, and holding them in place with strong magnets through the glass. I have a pump that works that way, so we'll see if this hack does it longterm.

You try things, but if you are retired and on a set budget, you may just try them sooner!

Technology in the hobby is interesting. Much of it is unnecessary, as brilliant as it may be. It's convenient, but not necessary. I'll leave the super gadget tanks to the engineers drawn to the reef hobby.

I don't need power hungry filtration (though I use some and will til its wheels fall off). I've looked at what the older generations of fishkeepers did. If you pair that with our increased knowledge of the science of water and of the evolution of fish, and with improvements in lighting technology, you can reduce costs longterm. You need more water changes, something older aquarists didn't understand, but low tech approaches can save you a lot of money.
 

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