one of my first salt tanks

[psteeleb]

I dug up an old magazine article on one of my original salt set ups. It’s by no way a reef in today’s standards but I did have anemones and other inverts. The biological filtration system was an under gravel set up powered by 2 power heads and 2 air-stones. At times I also ran a UV and had a hang on filter that had floss and carbon. This set up had 4 standard florescent aquarium bulbs.

The systems were set up in 1975, moved several times, was taken apart and setup again in my home Houston Texas in 1980, and I sold it in 1986.

In this article the lower tank is set up as a terrarium but it was later converted into a California tide pool tank and later to an aggressive salt fish tank.

I'm still using some of the rock from that set up in my 290, over 30 years later

 

[washingtond]

Impressive!

 

[ss95003]

so what were the survival rates of the anemones and other inverts? just curious.

What kind of fish were avliable back then too?

 

[BigJay]

Gorgeous Pete, you'll have to tell me sometime how things were done in the good old days. :lol:

 

[psteeleb]

@ss95003 wrote:

Anemones - if you had one a year you were doing good, some would go longer but not nearly the longevity we see today. I don't recall anyone ever having one split. Common anemones you could find; Carpets, Sebae, and the Condylactis. I don't recall seeing any Bubble tips back then

Inverts - for the most part no problems, basically the same ones you see today we kept back then and had about the same kind of survivability

Fish – pretty much the same ones you see today, actually maybe even more but stuff was sold with no knowledge of care or feeding so the success rate was low. We had constant battles with Ich, velvet and a ton of others. Quarantines were just not practiced back then.

The picture I show has a healthy yellow tang at least one clown and what looks like a threadfin butterfly fish that I suspect did not last long. My most prized fish back then was a beautiful blue face angle that I just had to have when I saw it at the wholesale store (I use to work at a LFS in Southern Ca). Damsels, tangs, butterflies and angels were all popular, but you could even find orange spot filefish, but again no luck keeping one alive.