by xeniaforever | Oct 20, 2022 | Cephalopods
Jeanne Villepreux-Power was never expected to be a scientist. Born in 1794 in a French village more than 100 miles from the ocean, she pursued an improbable path that brought her to the island of Sicily.… by Saltwater Smarts | Oct 17, 2015 | Equipment, Fish, Science, Tanks
The Avant-Garde Marine Aquarist – now available in print and eBook formatsThink you’ve got equipment woes? Imagine what it would have been like trying to equip a marine system back at the dawn of marine fishkeeping! Well, hobby pioneer Paul “Paul B” Baldassano doesn’t have to imagine that because he was there to witness it. (Actually, he may have been there when our first human ancestor slithered out of the primordial ooze—we’re looking into it.) To get a sense of the equipment challenges early hobbyists faced, check out this excerpt from the first chapter of Paul’s new book, The Avant-Garde Marine Aquarist: A 60-Year History of Fishkeeping, now available in both electronic and print formats:Equipment limitations Early tanks had other concerns besides parasites, and the majority of those concerns were due to the aquarium hardware at the time. As I said, tanks had metal corners up until the early 60s, which was when all-glass tanks were sold. That led the way for larger tanks to be manufactured. My first all-glass tank was a 40-gallon, which was considered large then by Saltwater Smarts | Oct 5, 2015 | DIY, Fish, Science
What do supermodels, the Vietnam War, and the right front fender of a 1955 Oldsmobile have to do with marine aquariums? Absolutely nothing—that is, of course, unless you’re hobby pioneer Paul “Paul B” Baldassano and you’ve just published a book on your six decades of aquarium keeping.Well, he is and he just did! Paul’s new tome, titled The Avant-Garde Marine Aquarist: A 60-Year History of Fishkeeping and produced in collaboration with your friends here at Saltwater Smarts, is anything but your typical aquarium reference book. With his signature tongue-in-cheek style, familiar to anyone who follows his posts here or on other sites around the web, Paul offers his unique, eye-of-the-beholder, and possibly hallucinogen-inspired thoughts on: His earliest encounter with marine organisms (hint: it wasn’t in the ocean) The history of our hobby How to buy fish in good health and keep them that way Fish biology, including his revolutionary insights on fish immunity Methods for maintaining healthy aquarium water How to manage algae, pests, and common diseases How to succeed with certain hard-to-keep species How he would set up a tank from scratch today A whole host of easy-to-construct, cost-cutting DIY projects And much, much more! A section of Paul B’s 44 year old reef aquarium Paul, a resident of Long Island, New York, has been immersed in aquarium keeping since the 1950s. In fact, his current 6-foot-long, 100-gallon reef tank has been in operation longer than many of today’s hobbyists have been alive—44 years as of this writing. Much of Paul’s remarkable long-term success can be attributed to his ever-curious, self-reliant, innovative nature, which has led him to create a wide range of ingenious inventions and DIY projects to make the aquarium-keeping experience easier and cheaper
