Back when I got my first tank, people didn't cycle tanks. Things were very different then.

You bought the tank, all the decorations, gravel, and so on. The helpful person at the local fish store told you to get it all set up and let the filter run for at least 24 hours before adding fish.

"What??? You mean I can't put them in there tonight? Why?"
"Because the water needs to age. Longer is better, if you could hold out a week..." Nobody did. Not a whole week!

Some of the cutting edge people actually proposed using some magic elixir that would remove the chlorine and let you stock fish right away. I'm sure they were branded as heretics by their peers and fiercely scorned.

So people anxiously aged their water (whatever that meant), then returned to the store with cash in hand (no debit or check cards back then either - and no magnetic strips on credit cards) and they selected their fish. Freshwater, of course - you had to have a tank the size of one of the Great Lakes and a Master's Degree (PhD preferred) in chemistry to be able to do saltwater. Oh, and a really fat bank account. Bill Gates style - well, Nelson Rockefeller back then.

The fish were taken home and the bag was plonked into the tank. After the eternity of 15 minutes or so, the fish were released into the tank. You could go from an empty space to overstocked in 24 hours!

Within a week or so, fish started to die off. The cloudy water killed them, no doubt. "But why do I have cloudy water?" "Because it's a new tank. That happens. Sorry about your fish - too bad you're out of the 24 hour warranty period. You have your check book with you, right?"

The best thing you could do for your fish was a water change, and of course remove and replace all of your filter media. After all, look how dirty it looks! That can't be good... It's full of bacteria!

More fish died. You must have done something wrong when you cleaned the filter. Or your lights are on for too many or too few hours a day. Just buy more fish, it'll be OK...

We didn't cycle tanks back then - we cycled fish and cash. Paycheck in, Dead fish out, Money out, live fish in.

Today it's sooo much easier. There was no internet then. There is usually more knowledge logged in a forum at any given time than you could find in all the pet stores combined in a major city. A lot of fish have died over the years to get us where we are today. What's considered an appalling loss of fish today was normal back then - all part of keeping fish. The wisdom spread slowly, until the internet that is.

Trust me on this folks, I know it seems like it takes forever to cycle a tank - but that bit of patience is orders of magnitude better than the way things used to be... If this is your first tank, remember, you've lived your entire life without one - what's another few weeks to do it right?