Keeping Fish, Then Vs Now

Happy Monday to all!
So I take care of a 10gal fw community tank for my parents. It includes:
- 2 platy
- 5 cardinal tetras
- 1 nerite snail
- 1 mystery snail
- 4 amanos
Aqadvisor puts this at 102% (fwiw) and recommends a weekly 30% water change, which I do for them (regular vac as well). There do not appear to be any health or water quality issues over the past 2-3 months that the tank has been running (I admit I don't monitor their parameters as much as my own, and go mostly by fish behavior). But that's not where I'm going with this thread.
When my mum was a kid/teen (we're talking about the 60's), her family had a community tank, and she says they never did water changes or regular cleaning. Any top up water was simply left to stand (gas off Cl, come to room temp) before adding to tank - no conditioner. Cleaning was a biannual thing: net and set fish aside, tear tank down and wash/rinse everything, put it all back together. There were live plants (to take up/reduce nitrates?), but no idea what.
So I'm trying to get mum on board with water changes and vacuuming (dad wouldn't really care either way the tank were gone), so I don't have to do it for them all the time. What are the differences in the hobby between then and now that lead to such a difference in fish keeping practices? Or, were they (her family) doing it wrong even for that time?
Do we now simply expect that keepers provide a higher standard of living for the fish in our care? Is tap water that different (where chloramines added then)? Were the fish hardier? Was there just less knowledge among keepers/owners?
How do I get past the "it worked then, why do it different now" mentality? Any real life experiences are especially appreciated.
This is especially relevant since she just added 2 guppies over the weekend, bringing the stocking to 122% and recommended wc to 41%.
Thanks in advance!

 

When I started keeping fish in the '60s I had two books, one was the Innes book and the other was a small guide from the fish store. I remember the books saying I should change 25% per week. I thought that seemed like a lot of work and wasn't very good about doing it. I killed a lot of fish back then, for whatever reason, and the lack of water changes might have had something to do with it.. lol

 

My parents kept one in the late 90s when I was a child. Only once a year would she do a water change and it would be a complete one during the summer. She had a 75 gallon filled with all sorts of fish. She didnt have an issue until one fish litterally killed off the entire tank due to aggression. No search was done to see if the fish could live together just bag floating for a half an hour...water conditioner when she could remember. No QT period...

She thinks I over do it with water changes and research--and that's my issue and why things are dying besides my "bottom feeders". She also comes by my apartment and drops random things into my tank every once in awhile. (Snails, mollies, cherry barbs..) Somehow everything she adds dies.

 

Both of the above provide some context, and prior experience, but if my mum's experience had been like those, it wouldn't be hard to convince her now that the current way of doing things (dechlor, monitor/test, wc's, vacs, etc) is better (is it? omg did he actually say that? :wideyed.
But her experience was supposedly fine. I wonder if maybe she managed to accidentally create a walstad tank, bypassing any need for WCs, and that just happened to be what worked for her. Is that possible with gravel?
Great thoughts, keep 'em coming!!

 

Both of the above provide some context, and prior experience, but if my mum's experience had been like those, it wouldn't be hard to convince her now that the current way of doing things (dechlor, monitor/test, wc's, vacs, etc) is better (is it? omg did he actually say that? :wideyed.
But her experience was supposedly fine. I wonder if maybe she managed to accidentally create a walstad tank, bypassing any need for WCs, and that just happened to be what worked for her. Is that possible with gravel?
Great thoughts, keep 'em coming!!

My mom had her tank running for 7 years before the aggression occured with an odd ball she had just added to the tank.

Before I was born she had 3 angels in said tank with no issues other than them eating their own fry. (Imo its not an issue but she was trying to breed them for money).

 

Happy Monday to all!
So I take care of a 10gal fw community tank for my parents. It includes:
- 2 platy
- 5 cardinal tetras
- 1 nerite snail
- 1 mystery snail
- 4 amanos
Aqadvisor puts this at 102% (fwiw) and recommends a weekly 30% water change, which I do for them (regular vac as well). There do not appear to be any health or water quality issues over the past 2-3 months that the tank has been running (I admit I don't monitor their parameters as much as my own, and go mostly by fish behavior). But that's not where I'm going with this thread.
When my mum was a kid/teen (we're talking about the 60's), her family had a community tank, and she says they never did water changes or regular cleaning. Any top up water was simply left to stand (gas off Cl, come to room temp) before adding to tank - no conditioner. Cleaning was a biannual thing: net and set fish aside, tear tank down and wash/rinse everything, put it all back together. There were live plants (to take up/reduce nitrates?), but no idea what.
So I'm trying to get mum on board with water changes and vacuuming (dad wouldn't really care either way the tank were gone), so I don't have to do it for them all the time. What are the differences in the hobby between then and now that lead to such a difference in fish keeping practices? Or, were they (her family) doing it wrong even for that time?
Do we now simply expect that keepers provide a higher standard of living for the fish in our care? Is tap water that different (where chloramines added then)? Were the fish hardier? Was there just less knowledge among keepers/owners?
How do I get past the "it worked then, why do it different now" mentality? Any real life experiences are especially appreciated.
This is especially relevant since she just added 2 guppies over the weekend, bringing the stocking to 122% and recommended wc to 41%.
Thanks in advance!

That's pretty much my family growing up too. It worked, and it's why I tend to overstock my tanks pretty heavy to this day. The only difference is now I do regular weekly water changes, and I don't do a full break down of the tank 2-3 times a year.So when people stress out at others because their tank is slightly overstocked or incompatible, I sort of roll my eyes. Don’t get me wrong, things have definitely improved upon, but sometimes I think people overthink and complicate things.
Sometime the best way to approach fishkeeping is the same way to approach life:

 

In the 60's ''animal care'' was virtually non existant. Let me give you an example: when you see those animal protection commercials about large animals in tiny dirty cages. That was the acceptable standard back then.
If you could go back in time and talk to a phd biologist in the 60's you would be speaking scifI mumbo jumbo and would probably be disregarded as a raving lunatic.

In the last decade internet access have become commonplace which leads to even the average hobyist having access to knowledge that was reserved for experts in the old days. Not to mention we get updated information constantly from the latest research in any field that interests us enough for us to visit forums.

 

When I got my three gallon and heater for my betta, my mom thought I was going overboard. She showed me a picture of a betta her family kept in a VASE with some marble gravel and a fake plant. Thankfully my family let's me spoil my fish without too much gripe. My betta has since upgraded to a 20 long with a snail...parents and family members still think I'm crazy...until they see the tank lol.
I think fish have been bred for looks and not so much health anymore. Perhaps back then they were tougher and could handle a heck of a lot more but now people just want pretty fish so that's what they're bred for. Now fish are sensitive and things had to change to acclimate them. That's my theory.

 

That's pretty much my family growing up too. It worked, and it's why I tend to overstock my tanks pretty heavy to this day. The only difference is now I do regular weekly water changes, and I don't do a full break down of the tank 2-3 times a year.So when people stress out at others because their tank is slightly overstocked or incompatible, I sort of roll my eyes. Don’t get me wrong, things have definitely improved upon, but sometimes I think people overthink and complicate things.

scarface I really appreciate the similar example, it's my first connection to an identical practice from back then, and exactly the feedback I was hoping for. At least now I have some idea - from someone who's been there - that the stories I hear from mum represent a norm and their practice was not a one-off or an exception. Also, you "rolling your eyes" re slight overstocking/incompatibility is exactly what I get from my mum (her lived experience vs. my "instant internet expert"), and now a) I see better where she's coming from, and b) I feel more confident telling her that it's not just the practices that have changed, but the practitioners have changed too (for the better).

In the last decade internet access have become commonplace which leads to even the average hobyist having access to knowledge that was reserved for experts in the old days. Not to mention we get updated information constantly from the latest research in any field that interests us enough for us to visit forums.

IRTehDar So true, and relevant I think. Here we all are talking/sharing methods and knowledge literally from one minute, hour or day to the next, which is the only way I can imagine having learned as much as I have in the past 6 months (short of camping out in the lfs fish room with a notepad, and becoming either the best friend or personal bane of their employees ), yet if I'd started in the hobby just 20 years ago, knowledge would come from lfs first, and library second. And peers/mentors/clubs, for some.

 

In the late 80's and early 90's we had a 10gal guppy tank for awhile. I don't remember how long we had it (at least a few years though), but I know my parents never did weekly water changes. They were breeding and multiplying like crazy, and then one day the whole tank was gone. We got 3 hamsters after that (they got weekly changes). I think my mom viewed the hamsters more like cats in a sense they needed fresh bedding/bathroom quarters. Where as fish live like this in the wild and no one takes care of them, so they will be low maintenance and easy to care for.