When this hobby started it was so easy. No computers or cell phones so you did anything you wanted and if it worked, it worked,if it didn't, you bought another blue devil or domino which were about the only fish imported.
Of course I lived near the sea so I could always get baby flounder, eels, minnows, fiddler crabs, hermit crabs and everything else in the New York sea.
Those tanks were very interesting and when those creatures got big, I could bring them back to the sea and find something else.
If one of your very expensive blue devils laid eggs like this male over his nest in that barnacle shell
, you yelled and screamed, but no one heard you because no one with in a hundred miles had a salt water tank and the stores would call you for advice. I did write a few articles in a Magazine (FAMMA) but it took a long time for your article to come out and by that time you got married, had kids and were planning retirement.
His eggs.
When these guys were imported it was like Wow as they, along with arrow crabs were the first crustaceans sold.
Then these two laid eggs and they hatched. There was no controlling me but again, no one to tell so I was a legend in my own mind. ;Meh
Then someone invented computers and it was all downhill from there. Thats when diseases started and all the different and sometimes ridiculous treatments.
Not as ridiculous as some of the stuff I used. ;Nailbiting
But there was nothing except Alka Seltzer and maybe Vaseline.
Eventually we got a little better at it and our tanks looked a little like the ocean.
Then we could open a beer and relax.
