Home Aquarium Test Kit History

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

venymae

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
Dec 31, 2013
Messages
1,082
Location
Kansas, USA
I've been very curious as to when home test kits became available to the home aquarist, as so many people here tout them as religion. So I've been searching online and haven't found much except this man's personal account. Which state that they still were not available in the 1970's.

Has anyone else been able to scrounge up info on this? What about you more mature crowd who have been at it for a long time? When do you remember them becoming readily available?

I'll be heading to the library (hopefully) in the next week or two to see what the books say, but would appreciate any links/info with references, personal accounts you can find.

THANKS! :bulb:
 
I remember a company called Hartz Mountain. They were about the only commercial aquarium food and accessory sellers back in the late 50's to mid 60's. Their fish food was like dumping corn meal into your water. It was horrible but all we had. I seem to remember them selling a pH only test strip about the mid 60's. Then Tetra products came to the US from Germany and broke the aquarium accessory/food industry wide open.

I love it! You must be a history buff too. OS.
 
Well I wouldn't call myself a buff, but this is something I've been very curious about for a long time! I mean, how did people do it back then?
 
With a super low bio load and a lot of failure. That's where the 1in per gallon rule came from. They were all basically still water tanks with a sub par water change schedule.
 
+1 to Mebbid.
Until about the late 70's the predominate "theory" was "the balanced tank" where it was thought with plants and air stone all you had to do was top off evaporation. No WC's. Obviously it made for many dead fish and many we keep now, like the GBR's, were considered unsuitable for aquariums. Indeed 50% of the fish we can buy now were either undiscovered or classed as unsuitable. Even the pioneers of tropical fishkeeping, Axelrod and Innes thought the balanced tank was the way. LOL.
I remember that a 20g tank was considered a larger tank. I smile as I can remember so many firsts that came about during my 50+ years of fishys. Thank goodness for technology! OS.
 
Well I wouldn't call myself a buff, but this is something I've been very curious about for a long time! I mean, how did people do it back then?

In the 70's I had a 55 with two corner filters run by airstones. Weekly 'maintenance' was cleaning the filters - yes, tap water! :ermm:. Every three months I tore the tank down and cleaned it well- yes, tap water! I had only a couple of losses oddly enough. And I even had a Jack Dempsey then and never had HITH/HLLE issue. Lucky, I guess.
 
Last edited:
That's amazing - I didn't think they went that far back. Actually - sounds a long way back, wasn't fire discovered about the same time?.....
 
Dela,
Fire was discovered the year before. It was the wheel that was invented that same year.
We used it to move our stone fish tanks from one side of the cave to the other. You need to get your history right! lol. OS.
 
Lol - oops!

Sometimes I miss the 1990's when all I knew was how many miles of air tubing you could run off an air pump as that powered everything for me. And my ugf was state of the art :)
 
LOL. I hear you. Sometimes I miss not having high light, mega-ferts and CO2 with plants growing at light speed. I didn't have to trim down and replant a "jungle" every 2 weeks.
OS.
 
Yeah - now I get 'are you sure that tank doesn't use a lot of power'?

Reply - 'can't be, they are led lights' :)

Edit - I'm tempted to add they keep the house warm but not sure if that will give the game away!
 
Back
Top Bottom