How Things Change

[Munroco]

Having recently come back to the hobby after about a 20 year gap I've found so many things have changed.
 
We used to have 2ft, 3ft 4ft etc tanks. Now we have 55/90/200 litre etc tanks. The way we worked out stocking levels was by calculating the surface area and dividing by x (which I can't remember) to see how many fish could be kept. This would multiply if filtration was used. Power filters back then were a bit rarer than now. Undergravel filters were the norm for larger tanks.
 
Cycling is another relatively new thing (to me at least). It was recommended when setting up a new tank that you left it for 3 days to let any harmful elements in the water dissapate. Where I lived I was lucky in that the water was great for keeping fish, so once the temperature was right then in they'd go. I honestly didn't lose fish using this method, and as I had over 40 tanks at one time, if it didn't work I'd soon have noticed. Nowadays the water we get from the tap is no longer untreated and it may be that whatever is in it now could be harmful.
 
Surprisingly there arent that many new fish around, maybe a few slightly different cichlids and the odd fish like the Celestial Pearl danio, but there are a lot more shapes, sizes and colours amongst the fish I used to know. I hate seeing fish like Balloon mollies and ridiculously long finned varieties of many fish. This has been done with goldfish for years, but somehow I feel its wrong to breed fish for defomities. I'm sure it can't give them a better quality of life.
 
There will certainly be more tank bred fish on the market now which is probably good for the environment but bad for fish quality in a lot of cases. It's hard to find a natural coloured silver angel fish with good marking for instance, but conversely it was harder to find well marked tiger barbs back then.
 
BETTAS - We didn't have these, we had Siamese fighting fish, not sure why this changed unless it for ease of typing, but betta doesn't sound nearly so interesting.
 
Lots of changes, mostly for the better, but some I'm not so sure about.

 

[Akasha72]

having grown up with my Dad keeping, and breeding, tropical fish I understand exactly what your saying. My Dad gave up the hobby when I was in my teens but when I decided to get into the hobby he soon picked it back up again. He now has my old 2ft tank .... or 50 litres if you prefer lol
 
He's said to me many times ...'we never bothered with all this cycling and water changing lark 20 years ago' and he's right! I clearly remember helping him just once a year to strip the tank and clean everything and put it back together. Somehow the fish survived ... I often wonder how but as you say ... they just did!
 
I've often wondered if we 'mess about' too much these days and it's hard to determine the true answer to that question. Perhaps the fish are weaker now than they were 20 years ago ... or perhaps we just pamper them too much! I honestly don't know the answer to that.
 
As for the 'balloon' fish .... I can remember about 2 years ago looking at balloon rams with interest ... and then someone told me how they got like that and then I felt sick. It's time to stop those kind of practices. It's cruel.
 
I think Betta comes from their latin name of Betta Splendins ... but yes, my Dad still calls em fighting fish!

 

[attibones]

Use of the name "fighting fish" is discourage because it promotes the the act of forcing males into tanks so they could fight each other, which is still done for sport (and is very frowned upon). Like with rooster or dog fighting, it is incredibly inhumane. "Betta," which is the genus name, does not imply the anything about the "sport," so many new people will not buy them for the act of seeing the fish fight.

 

[DrRob]

Welcome back to the hobby. It has indeed changed a bit in the last 20 years, although I've been doing water changes since before then, but still meet people who keep set ups that apparently don't need them.
 
There's been a fair amount of progress in keeping things closer to the edges. Tanks tend to be smaller, and to be fair, so are people's houses, and they have more other stuff in them in the way to stop you from keeping so many tanks. Stocking levels tend to be higher, and that requires finer lines of care. Sadly several of the fish also aren't as good. As you've said, weirdly bred stuff is available now, and overbred, intensively farmed stock simply isn't as robust as the fish we used to get. I've given up keeping neons, despite the fact that I'd never struggled with them before, but cardinals, which used to be regarded as far more fickle fish, have been far easier now.
 
Marine and planted systems have seen the most movement really. We're growing a range of plants that would have been impossible to either buy or grow on back then, and the tech to do it is far more complicated. Reef's have really moved forwards with salt mixes and various other bits of kit. Yet still there are the old gems, the undergravel filter remains one of the best biofilters, but it's never been the best for planted set ups and has wandered out of fashion as the external power filters have become more ubiquitous.

 

[Munroco]

Use of the name "fighting fish" is discourage because it promotes the the act of forcing males into tanks so they could fight each other, which is still done for sport (and is very frowned upon). Like with rooster or dog fighting, it is incredibly inhumane. "Betta," which is the genus name, does not imply the anything about the "sport," so many new people will not buy them for the act of seeing the fish fight.

Good point Attibones, that probably is the reason. I hadn't thought about that