I went tonight to do a pickup for an older couple moving cross country. Just a community tank, with nothing evil, dangerous or otherwise in it. Total cake. The woman who kept them, told me on the phone that she had been keeping fish for 20 or so years. What I wasn't prepared for was that this was with the exact same tank and same gear she bought 20 years ago.

Penn Plex 55g Under Gravel Filters. 20 year old hang on the back heaters, an air pump that looks like it was from the 70s or at least the style was a leftover from then. Top of the line gear from 20 years ago. She even still had the boxes from some of the stuff.

Everything was running just fine too, she did weekly water changes and put in fresh carbon into the under gravel filters once a month. The fish all looked perfectly healthy to boot. Not that they're not in quarantine here right now, mind you.

It was such an amazing history lesson to see just how far things have come while the things from back then still work.

Nice ! I think half the old stuff is way better than the new stuff. They built things to last back then. Now its built to be replaced regularly so the co. can make more money for a cheaper product.

Cool story!

Awesome, it is cool when you run into things or situations like this one. I agree with detroit...things are made cheaper these days....Hope you can have some fun with some of it. But, you didn't specify..what fish did you end up with in the setup? Anyway sounds interesting, and the best thing is the history lesson you gained!

Handful of the skirt I think tetras that I always forget the name of, some swordfish and a small, as in stays on the small side, spotted L number pleco. I gotta look it up, but she said she got him a few years back and at the time made sure to get one that could fit in that 55 forever.

How many rescues do you do a year, give me a guess S/F?

Hrm. Yearly? I'm not entirely sure. Spring and summer is the biggest time of the year for us, but it's all random from a year to year basis. This year was a bad year for cars, so we had a bunch of ones that needed patching.

This year, we found homes for 37 red ear sliders (there's 3 left from the summer and two more are here now from a week and a half ago), around a dozen box turtles, some koi, (tho I still have more here still), as well as took in a good handful of tropical fish, mostly SA cichlids. There are also some flowerhorn here, two left, though one should be going soon a handful of Parrots. Mystery, tho she's gonna be breeding feeders

and Snappy the snapping turtle.

My specialty is turtles, if you didn't figure that one out, but fish and most other reptiles are welcome too.

Awesome story, saint!

When I was setting up my fishroom there came a point, once I had progressed past 10 tanks or so, that I decided power filters on all these tanks was gonna cost me a small fortune to run. Starting out in this hobby back in the late 60's, so I decided to return to my past, and decided to go with a large air pump and just do the simple box filters and/or sponge filters....in the smaller tanks anyway. I was totally unprepared for the problems that I ran into locating what used to be the staple of every tank "back in the day". No local store carried them. Ran into a couple situations where the employees working in the stores weren't exactly sure what I was even talking about. Finally I was able to locate some through a catalog....but geesh, who woulda thunk? LOL