Mail order fish from the 1950's

lol, I will not say Ni.

I hadn't thought about those old tanks in a long while, and just last week I was talking to a reefer buddy about a guy who had left an open jar of pickeling lime near his sump, and it fell in. Yeahhh, not good. I remembered that old tank, and how all of us kids learned to only put in pinches of flakes. It's second nature to never open anything near the tank, or pour anything directly from a container. The things this hobby teaches us. I thought it was so odd that an adult would leave an open container near his tank.

 

My grandmother gave me my first tank when I was 10 and it is somewhere out in my garage, its a stainless 10 gallon with a slate bottom and black caulking. It also has a stainless cover with a incandescent light.

There were several reasons that they used slate, cost was one, Plate glass back in those day's was rather costly. Slate was readily available and cheap. It is also very strong and easy to cut with a diamond blade and would hold up well in a fish tank and would not break as easily as glass.

Silicone was invented by Fredrick Kipping in 1901, and Silicone Rubber was invented in 1945 by Dr. Earl Warrick who worked for Dow Corning. But it wasn't until 1958 that Dr. Edwin “Dr. Glue” Plueddemann developed the first commercial silicone adhesive/caulk that would stick to everything which is what we use today.

Back in the late 50's early 60's there was no such thing as an under-gravel filter. The only filters that were available were either in-tank container filters or air operated HOB filters. I can remember having to pull my filter out of the tank and replacing the charcoal and filter floss which by the way was real spun glass at the time, what a PITA!

My first power filter was a Diatom filter, its was a gallon glass jar with a pump mounted on it, an you would fill the jar with Diatomaceous Earth, Man talk about crystal clear water! But that filter was ugly and a real leaker, I used to have to keep it in a old steel wash bucket under the tank, look really nice, LOL. Vortex makes one similar to the one I used to have.

I used to get my fish from either S. S. Kresge Company (todays Kmart), Woolworth's or Gobel department stores. I can remember the tanks all had little pictures of the fish and their names and prices on the pictures. There was no such thing as a fish store like we have now.

 

Thanks for sharing and walking us through memory lane. Very cool. 8)
Diatom filters are still around and a good tool if you are stirring up your tank.
You should bust out that old tank and reseal it - it would make a nice nano! (hint-hint)

matt

 

Someone may have mentioned this already, but I would bet that way back then the technology in glass-making hadn't yet advanced far enough to support that kind of weight in such a thin piece of glass.

Just pure speculation.