50 years is a long time

   by Bob Krampetz  krampetz@aol.com
First published in The Fish Flash, Greater Portland Aquarium Society
Aquarticles

Originally written as 3 articles

Some weeks ago I was telling another aquarium club member how different raising fish was when I started with tropical fish. I was about 13 at the time and it was about 1950, over 50 years ago! Roland suggested I write an article, and like so many other ‘old timers' telling a story, it ‘growed' until it needed to be broken into several parts. This is the first of several parts.

Ever since I could remember, my father kept a tank of guppies over the radiator in our kitchen. He used the old "balanced aquarium" technique that Dr. Innes explains in his book from the 1930s. Plants and fish, no ‘hi-tech' air or filter, ‘age' the water before adding, no ‘changing' the water! "Eel grass", which I later learned was Vallisneria, filled the tank. Baby guppies sometimes appeared and as often would disappear. A dead guppy would be picked over by the others. Dad would occasionally trade a few guppies from that tank with other guppy keepers to avoid ‘inbreeding'. Because guppies are livebearers, I was surprised later to learn most other fish laid eggs!

There was one time I brought home a few very small tadpoles that were dropped in with the guppies. We watched as the tadpoles' legs later emerged and they began their futile escape attempts against the glass cover.

As a 13-year-old with a bike in the rural world of New York City's outskirts, there was nowhere we kids wouldn't explore. 1950 was into the boom of "after WWII" and many GI's were taking advantage of low interest home loans. Long Island was starting to be built up, yet, there was still much ‘wilderness' left all along the Queens – Nassau border.

Lake Success was a half-hour from where I lived. A pristine lake that served as a summer coolin' off spot for many of us in the neighborhood. Sure, it was posted and private property, but tell that to a teenager on a hot and humid day in the northeast. Once, on a record-breaking day, the local police joined us for a cool dip in the lake.

Lake Success was only about 5 miles from home, I checked the mileage some years later, but for a 13-year-old on a bike, it was a galaxy away from the neat rows of Cape Cod and Tudor homes where we lived. There were no adults there, just us explorers learning about the ‘natural world' of woods, swamps and endless exposure to the world.

The large lake was connected to smaller lake that was a bit like a swamp; it was filled with Myriophyllum and water hyacinths. Myriophyllum is frequently sold as a bunched floating aquarium plant, also known as "foxtail". Years later when I was selling fish, I also offered bunches of the harvested foxtail for a few cents a bunch.

Across a dirt road and unconnected to the other lakes was a marsh where some years later the winter's ice allowed access to its water and we'd chop through several inches of ice to collect ‘winter daphnia' (also known as 'Cyclops').

A ‘short cut' to the lake passed another marsh loaded with bullfrogs. I led my father there one evening to catch some and he slid down an embankment into 5 feet of frog infested swamp water and came out covered in duckweed and rotting plants! He left bullfrog catching to me after that.

Past that marsh, about a mile down a dirt road was an old abandoned and walled estate with a collapsed swimming pool. The house was long gone, but the pool and foundation were there to be clambered on. Rumor was that it was the old Al Jolson (of vaudeville fame) estate, but I never confirmed that. Later, that pool was filled with daphnia where I'd collect it with my homemade net. One rainy spring there were puddles loaded with mosquito larvae that were even better fishfood than daphnia. My father wanted to banish me and my fish after the mosquitoes began emerging and patrolling in the house!

One year at the lake I noticed a pair of adult catfish and thousands of baby catfish schooling through the overflows around the lake's shoreline. I was fascinated as I watched the larger catfish herding the school of black fry around tree stumps and submerged grass and not eating them as our guppies would. In fact, they were protecting them! I then realized parental care wasn't limited to animals and birds.

One summer, as I was heading to the lake, I noticed a bulldozer had been filling in the bullfrog marsh. The dozer had been pushing dirt over the cattails and making it easy to get to the large amount of water that had been hidden by the reeds. I found small puddles filled with numerous goldfish that would soon become buried when the bulldozer continued its relentless landscaping. I found a clutch of mallard eggs that I took home to incubate, but that's another story for another time. In those days, there were no environmental concerns about eliminating waterways and no one would protest a few thousand fish yielding to progress.

I found a discarded milk bottle and began filling it with the gold colored goldfish, the darker colored fish weren't interesting and were left behind. Getting them home in a jar via a bicycle wasn't as hard as later years when I had to juggle a daphnia net and the shipping can full of water & daphnia. I wasn't about to put all those gold fish in with the little guppies so I put them in our bathtub with a few inches of water. When my dad got home, he produced a 10 gallon tank from our basement/garage hoard of "someday we'll need this" collection and the goldfish were soon swimming with the cleanest water they'd ever swum in.

A few more jugs of rescued goldfish over a few more days and soon the tank water was turning green and many of the fish were dying. There were parasites clinging to sores on many of the fish. Soon they all had gone the way of all sick fish. Dad declared we'd find replacements for the now empty tank. A trip into Manhattan ("the City") was made one Saturday and we came home with some swordtails, platys, ‘lyretail' guppies and a pair of paradise fish. The paradise fish were something dad wanted and he kept them in another container explaining to me about ‘bubble nests', but the female jumped out and the male went into my 'community' tank.

It wasn't long before another tank joined the first. Dad went back to that source in the basement/garage and pulled out an old angle iron stand that he had made years before.

I found an aquarium store that sold broken 10 and 15-gallon tanks for 25 cents. I'd try to choose ones with the small sides broken. Add a 15-cent can of aquarium cement (which was just 'tar') and I still had change from 50 cents. I'd scrounge a free piece of glass, cut it to size and replace the broken glass. It wasn't too long before I had 6 tanks in my bedroom and learning all the ways of a fish geek (there was no such word then, but I guess that's what I was). One night when we were watching TV, a loud crack and splash from my bedroom had me tearing it there to find a 15 gal tank that I had repaired cracked open along the large side. Another lesson learned; you don't use single thick windowpane glass in a fish tank! It was banished to the basement with its cement floor more tolerant of accidents and water spills. Soon, the extra space allowed an even greater expansion and furnace heat.

Next chapter: My first fish room along with the onset of puberty.

My First fish room.

Hello, my name is Bob, and I have an addiction.

I've been keeping and raising tropical fish for over 50 years.

In a previous article I covered the start of my addiction somewhere about 1950 and how a discarded milk bottle and a bulldozer lured me into my first tank of green water and parasite infected goldfish. I think I left off that story with 15 gallons of water and some number of fish flopping on my bedroom floor and my father showing me the door to the basement.

After moving my 6 tanks downstairs I discovered that the oil burner threw off enough heat that I no longer needed to use those aggravating heaters of the day. A thermostatic heater then was a luxury few would afford, and the first one or two I did use would be more apt to jam and raise the temperature too high. I surreptitiously removed the asbestos coverings from the steam pipes radiating from the furnace to the pipes upstairs, and added still more warmth. I wonder how much asbestos I inhaled removing that now banned insulation. I built walls to enclose my fish room and the door was posted with a sign that read "Aquary," similar to a neighbor's "aviary" room. Florescent lighting was the main source of light.

A typical aquarium heater was a test tube filled with heater coils, packed with sand and sealed with a Bakelite plug or tar. You'd calculate how many watts you needed to raise the tank's temperature, and drop an appropriate sized heater in. Even though they were supposed to be submersible I tried to keep the wire above the water after I got a surprise jolt netting a fish one day. As summer temperatures increased, you'd swap the heater to lower wattage heaters then none at all.

Dr. Innes' book was one of very few books about tropical fish and it had some good ideas I used, such as keeping an incandescent bulb submerged in a tank to warm the water. Of course you had to be careful that the metal didn't slip into the water or you'd have a small problem with fuses. I used a submerged bulb a few times and I can tell you that the bulbs lasted much longer than normal. I can't tell you how the fish felt about that light, but hey! It worked! I recall a book explaining how to warm a tank with a small gas flame!

With all the new space it was inevitable that more tanks would appear to fill it, I think that's one of those Murphy type ‘laws' (Tanks increase to fill the room allocated to them). By the time I was in my second year of high school, I had about 50 tanks. Mostly 15's and 10's a few 5's and one 50 gal display. I'd even found and bought a ‘breeders rack', that's a stand holding 3 20 gallon tanks that were 24" x 24" x 8" high. Those were great grow-out tanks. I even built a couple of 40 gal. tanks. The frames were spot-welded, the plate glass was free from a local glass company. Lots of cans of aquarium cement warmed in the kitchen oven to help spread the tar set the plate glass in the frames. No leaks on that project.

A friend constructed a compressor for me using an old refrigerator motor and its compressor. It was bolted to a small 25-gal hot water tank. The compressor would run about 3-4 minutes and would shut off for 10-15 minutes. The chugging sound wasn't bad, not enough to disturb the family upstairs. A brine shrimp hatchery was made using three 1-gallon jugs that I'd cut the bottoms off and inverted in a wooden rack. Brine shrimp eggs were a few dollars a pint from San Francisco Bay brand (still in business today). Utah eggs were available, but harder to get.

Still using my bike as transportation, I'd stop at a couple of diners and scavenge their 1-gallon mayonnaise or mustard jars. These had openings nearly as large as the jar, I don't see them used anymore – but there are plastic jugs about the same size.

I acquired a few shipping containers. Remember, this was before the advent of plastic bags or Styrofoam boxes. You'd bring your fish home in ‘Dixie cups' or even those containers you got take-out Chinese food in, of course if you planned right, you'd bring your own jar and carrier. Those shipping containers were of two styles, both metal. One style was merely a straight-sided pail, about 5 gallons with a tight fitting lid. Much like today's ice cream bucket, but of metal. The other style has disappeared, I haven't seen them in years. They were about 24" in diameter, sides about 8" high then it angled in for another 4" to an 8" opening. A metal lid fit snugly into the top and they looked much like the antique milk can lids. They were known as "German shipping containers". The idea was water would slosh about more, "oxygenating" the water, and more fish could be put into those low wide cans.

The German shipping can was the preferred shipping container for Florida raised fish. Bangkok? Thailand? Southeast Asia? No way! Those exotic locals were only in National Geographic, which us pubescent boys read to get a look at naked breasts! Florida raised fish shipped to New York had a high mortality. It wasn't unusual for any store getting a delivery and finding no fish alive. Heavy metal cans, no water chemicals, and railroad service taking several days to make it up the coast ensured that local New York fish breeders always had the market.

Fish? Gosh, I almost forgot! .. I'd soon met a local breeder of angels, an old German guy who taught me more about fish than any book. He bred and raised angels, bettas, rams, and numerous other species. Back then, angelfish were more difficult to breed than today's discus. He asked me "You think they get nice aged steady temperature water where they come from?" (picture this lectured in a thick German accent!). He convinced me that Innes' book was wrong. You HAD to change water often, give them a change in temperature and they would spawn every two weeks on an upright piece of slate. Eggs would be moved into a 2-gal tank with methylene blue and soon I had thousands of fry at all stages. In the early ‘50s, you'd get $.15 each when they were dime sized – a princely fortune at the time!

Black and lace angels came along a few years later and I wasn't successful with those.

Bettas then had no double tails or other mutations. He sold me pairs in the four available colors; red, blue, green and Cambodian. I won numerous ribbons with those, as they were all pure color. Bicolor lost points.

Fish foods then were ground up dog biscuits, seriously! At least that's what it looked like. I began making my own from ground up liver, oatmeal and other items to supplant the infrequent availability of live food in the winter months.

Next: Meeting & buying from Paul Hahnel, the Guppy master of the ‘50s

Fish keeping in the Fifties.

In some previous articles, I confessed how I became entangled in the tropical fish hobby over 50 years ago. As a young teen I explored a lake and became interested in fish. I had brought home some fish in a milk jar caused that first tank to turn soup green and later expanded to a room full of fish in the basement of my home.

I described the crude, by today's standards, equipment I used and improvised. It was the days before plastic bags, Styrofoam, Tetramin flakes, power filters and many of those things we take and use for granted. Filters then were a plastic box at the bottom of a tank with a plastic stem for air. There weren't even underground filters. There was no polyester filter material, ‘glass wool' was the material ‘du jour'. I soon discovered that foam rubber made an easy to clean filter material.

Brass air valves are identical to those I had then but I sort of recall them costing about a quarter! Plastic air line was available and more expensive then than it is today.

By the time I had installed fluorescent lights and added a compressor for air in my new fish room downstairs, my father was noticing the increase in his electric bill. I soon made a deal with him that I'd pay for the entire bill. ( Today's electric usage and rates far exceeded that era's! I don't recall the amount each month, but it was single digits.)

With several pairs of angels producing on a continuing basis, I had wholesalers dropping by and leaving with several cans of fish once or twice a month. New York City didn't issue Jr. drivers license's. You had to be 18 to drive, none of my friends had cars, so there was no pressure to do so. I was still using my bike to get around, and it wasn't possible to deliver more than a few fish to local pet shops. In my after school and summer hours, I caddied at some of the posh Long Island golf courses where caddie fees were high enough to allow people to earn a living at it. Between my caddying income and my fish money, I'd often have a large amount of cash that my father found hard to believe.

My bettas were also cooperating in the reproduction area, I had scores of pint and quart jars lined up on the walls holding the males as their fins grew out. I'd listened to the old timer that sold them to me and assured that only the purest colors were bred to the same color mate. Queens County and Nassau County fish shows and the County fair were venues where I displayed these fish and I'd always win the top ribbons for the bettas. Many bought the bettas from me for $2 to $7 each.

In the early '50s one of the club members of the Queens Aquarium club took me to meet Paul Hahnel in the Bronx. The aquarium world was captivated with his large showy tailed and multi-colored fish. They were much unlike the guppies that had been sold before, and very much unlike the common guppies in my dad's radiator tank. Paul Hahnel lived in an apartment and had about 6 medium sized tanks in a spare room, Both of us bought guppies that day that sold for the then astounding price of $25 a pair. Minimum wage was about $1 an hour, and I was earning $4 a bag on a 2 bag, 18 hole round of caddying. So this amount represented a couple of days' pay. But we got the pick of the best superba tail guppies on the market. Most of these veiltail guppies had tails at about 50-60 degree flair, a very few approached 90 degrees, these were the top ‘superba' tail guppies. At the time, all were varied multi-color with similar body colors. All had a ‘chain-like' pattern from the eye showing their common roots.

Paul didn't employ line breeding with his fish, but he did show us how he culled them. He pulled out an inferior male guppy from one tank and threw it to his cat, which was one of the fattest cats I'd seen!

My friend and I agreed to trade fish and back up each other should we lose the female before obtaining young. Fortunately, that wasn't necessary. The guppies did what guppies do and soon both of us had several tanks of male guppies that were showing great colors and fins. I did him some favor that earned me a pick of any of his upcoming fish. I picked a huge male that hadn't yet developed as much fins as the others. Months later, after it grew out, I teased him about the trophy and ribbons that male won for me. Unfortunately that male was sterile but the other guppies were doing well and I raised and sold many pairs for years.

Fish raising went well for several more years and when I was 18, old enough to apply for a driver's license. I bought a car, which allowed me to make more regular runs for daphnia and deliveries. Even though it was a beat up old ‘37 Chevy, it ran well until I blew the engine. By then I was looking into renting a place to set up a breeding operation. It was tough going because Uncle Sam was still running the draft – not cold air, but the obligation every over-18 year old had hanging over them. It made it difficult to plan a future. Between a steady job, dating and other concerns, the fish took a back seat for a few years but the dream continued and I was still saving my money for that future hatchery.

I finally went into the Air Force and began saving money in earnest. I was going to build that hatchery on Long Island when I got out in 4 years. When I was discharged, those earlier mentioned exotic Asian countries had supplanted the Florida hatcheries with their year round warm temperatures and next to nothing wages. Airfreight costs dropped dramatically making shipments from Florida and foreign lands cheaper than shipping by rail a few years earlier, and plastic was everywhere! Metal shipping cans disappeared, plastic bags had supplanted them. The economics of running a tropical fish hatchery in a cold climate with the now lower wholesale prices for the fish in the mid '60s convinced me to forgo the hatchery.

I tried importing & selling fish and supplies but by then it was no longer possible to run an importing business on a shoestring. Large companies were establishing name brands and I was really more interested in breeding fish than importing and selling them.

Though I didn't follow that dream, I had other prospects that took its place. Other than a few years when I had an apartment, I've managed to keep a tank or more, and in retirement I'm back to a full fledged fish room again – but this time, no furnace for heat and no stripping asbestos insulation from steam pipes. I still mix and make fish foods but it's easier now with a blender. Oh yes, and I have a milk bottle in the garage and at least one tank with green water. I am reminded of how all this started.