1966 "Your First Aquarium" booklet

[fearlessfisch]

I found this little treasure in our local book exchange. It's an instructional booklet for starting your first aquarium, dated 1966.

The cover is below, and this link takes you the rest of the booklet. The picture on the cover (What exactly is happening there?) must be especially designed to draw you into the booklet...

https://imgur.com/a/6QELbAI


.

 

[DrWho42]

whoa nice! please feel free to post any scans

 

[Andy Sager]

I found this little treasure in our local book exchange. It's an instructional booklet for starting your first aquarium, dated 1966.

The cover is below, and this link takes you the rest of the booklet. The picture on the cover (What exactly is happening there?) must be especially designed to draw you into the booklet...

https://imgur.com/a/6QELbAI


.

The cover looks just like what was available back in 1966. ( I started fish keeping in '64 ) All tanks then were with metal frames ( all glass tanks came much later), The contraption in the back was one of the original outside filters ( look up Dynaflow and Bubbleup Filters ) and there is a heater, hang on Thermometer and a can of Tetramin fish food. Not really sure what has you confused. The bag in the picture was probably one of the first ones being used for transporting fish from the store to the home. ( My first fish came home in the Chinese food paper containers. ) So all on the cover would be what you needed for your first aquarium.

 

[fearlessfisch]

DrWho42, the imgur link in the post should go to the full booklet: https://imgur.com/a/6QELbAI. I scanned all the pages so everyone can read the whole thing if they are interested.

Andy Sager, it's a beautiful little booklet. I was just being silly about the picture. She is poised above the aquarium with a huge bag of fish, but the aquarium doesn't even have water in it yet.

I love hearing your memories of keeping fish in the 60s (more please!). Paper containers! I got my first tank in about 1979, when I was a freshman in high school. It was metal-framed and had a filter that was a little plastic box with floss that sat inside the tank in the back corner. I remember dutifully scrubbing out the filter (and the beneficial bacteria) every once in awhile and then being devastated when the fish would start dying soon afterward.

The whole booklet should be at the imgur link I posted, but here are just a few pages:

 

[Andy Sager]

Andy Sager, it's a beautiful little booklet. I was just being silly about the picture. She is poised above the aquarium with a huge bag of fish, but the aquarium doesn't even have water in it yet.

I love hearing your memories of keeping fish in the 60s (more please!). Paper containers! I got my first tank in about 1979, when I was a freshman in high school. It was metal-framed and had a filter that was a little plastic box with floss that sat inside the tank in the back corner. I remember dutifully scrubbing out the filter (and the beneficial bacteria) every once in awhile and then being devastated when the fish would start dying soon afterward.

The whole booklet should be at the imgur link I posted, but here are just a few pages:

Glad to hear you enjoy my past. I sure do. We are far enough removed from those days where people do not know about the metal framed tanks even existed. I mean, who would think that the first outside filters were air driven when you see what is available today? And how many people can say that they got their fish in one of these: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61DDJHWlsbL._AC_SL1180_.jpg
( Do you have any idea how hard it was to ride a bike 5 miles with one of these in your hand? True story!!)
There are a few of those old books that really made a mark or in one case, a boo boo. A small paperback on Angelfish by Pet Library that shows a picture of the Marbled Angelfish where the author says " Not very pretty, it is doubtful the Marble variety will ever achieve popularity." Marbles became one of my number 1 sellers and today, according to the Angelfish Society, there are now 7 recognized kinds of Marble Angels. So you need to take some of those oldies with a grain of salt.

 

[fearlessfisch]

Glad to hear you enjoy my past. I sure do. We are far enough removed from those days where people do not know about the metal framed tanks even existed. I mean, who would think that the first outside filters were air driven when you see what is available today? And how many people can say that they got their fish in one of these: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61DDJHWlsbL._AC_SL1180_.jpg
( Do you have any idea how hard it was to ride a bike 5 miles with one of these in your hand? True story!!)
There are a few of those old books that really made a mark or in one case, a boo boo. A small paperback on Angelfish by Pet Library that shows a picture of the Marbled Angelfish where the author says " Not very pretty, it is doubtful the Marble variety will ever achieve popularity." Marbles became one of my number 1 sellers and today, according to the Angelfish Society, there are now 7 recognized kinds of Marble Angels. So you need to take some of those oldies with a grain of salt.

Ha ha...Yeah, marbles will never last....just like this internet thing wasn't supposed to catch on...

I am imagining you pedaling back home on your Schwinn with fried rice in one hand and marble angels in the other.

The booklet definitely gets a lot right...like suggesting that you go as big as you can afford when buying an aquarium. But then they get so excited about those newfangled air pumps that they seem to suggest that there is no limit on the number of fish you can have per tank anymore (page 10). Accordingly, the lady on the cover is adding multiple gouramis, some platies, and an entire school of angelfish to what appears to be a ten-gallon tank. Probably those fish deserve some Chinese food. I also wonder what advice we are giving now might make people roll their eyes in another fifty-five years...

I love the metal-framed tanks and would use one again in a minute!

 

[Andy Sager]

Ha ha...Yeah, marbles will never last....just like this internet thing wasn't supposed to catch on...

I am imagining you pedaling back home on your Schwinn with fried rice in one hand and marble angels in the other.

The booklet definitely gets a lot right...like suggesting that you go as big as you can afford when buying an aquarium. But then they get so excited about those newfangled air pumps that they seem to suggest that there is no limit on the number of fish you can have per tank anymore (page 10). Accordingly, the lady on the cover is adding multiple gouramis, some platies, and an entire school of angelfish to what appears to be a ten-gallon tank. Probably those fish deserve some Chinese food. I also wonder what advice we are giving now might make people roll their eyes in another fifty-five years...

I love the metal-framed tanks and would use one again in a minute!

Ha ha, it wasn't like that. I lived 5(ish) miles from my Mentor's store and my friend and I would occasionally ride bikes there instead of taking the bus. ( We usually rode to the beach because we lived just a couple of miles from there.) A few times I would see a fish in the store that had a trait I wanted to explore and the only way I could guarantee it would still be there when I would be back there was to take it immediately. In reality, using those boxes is not much different than using breather bags. The shaking of the box would help exchange the gases in the water and oxygenate the water. The handle of the box would go over my handlebar so I would be holding it that way to ensure it didn't shake or shift too much. So no Chinese food and fish together. lol

Those old books did have some good info. We weren't totally devoid of intelligence back then. But just as you mentioned, what we knew back then has been refined over the years and who knows what
of today will be refined in the future. I'm here to say that without the information refining, I was able to keep and breed fish very well so enough was known.

One of the issues with those metal framed tanks was that the bottom was a sheet of slate and it all got held together with tar. So if you see a metal frame tank with a glass bottom, it may be a rebuilt tank. ( And those tanks were HEAVY!!!!! lol )

 

[fishingBuds]

The beginning looks like Aliens from history channel

 

[Brookster123]

100% drop a 90 gallon metal framed tank in the middle of my dining room, gotta class this place up a bit.

 

[Autumnsky]

Wow, the olden days. We kept fish at our house ~ 1973. +1 on metal frame tanks. 1960's and 70's want their bottle of DeChlor back.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Weco-De-...meyNaUEU7-4nMCmXouKI_eREyLP0CzzEaAtcrEALw_wcB
Love the book, not sure we ever had a book about fish keeping.

And Colorado Aquarium Society will be 75 years old in a year and a half! So people have been loving this hobby in a commercial way for a very long time!