We have a thread for 'What did you do with your tanks today,' we have a thread for 'Members' fish pics,' but we don't have a thread for members' fish stories. So I'm thinking that this could be a place where we can share our 'Fish tales.' Prior experiences in the hobby- how you got started, adventures along the way, successes (and failures) in fish keeping and breeding, how interests have changed over the years, just about anything hobby related- past, present, or future- could find a home here. I don't know whether this thread will work or not, but to give it a little push-start, here's a Fish Tale from some years back that was inspired by my finding this little piece of ancient history in amongst some old fish paraphernalia-
And so-
One of the first things I did when I moved to New Haven (a. k. a. 'Elm City') in 1975 was to contact an ACA Board member in the area to ask him about local fish clubs (this being the pre-digital age, everything was done either by telephone or in person). He directed me to the Elm City Aquarium Society, which met every month in the basement of a local American Legion Post (or was it VFW? Or Elks?). I contacted them and went to the next meeting, which was attended by ~50 enthusiastic members and featured a 'Bowl Show,' a slide presentation, and lots of fish talk. It was fun. After we adjourned the real fun started, with the die-hards meeting at the bar upstairs for beers and more fish tales. It was there that I met Lee Finley, a key figure in the ACA during the early days of the 'African Invasion,' and one of the first people in the country to specialize in Tanganyikans, and breed Tropheus and other rare (at the time) fishes.
For the next monthly meeting I brought my own entry for the bowl show, an unknown Malawian that had come in as a contaminant in a shipment of Pseudotropheus zebra 'Red Top.' He looked like this-
This species eventually came to be known as Pseudotropheus macrophthalmus 'Orange Shoulder;' today it is known as Tropheops sp. 'Chilumba.'
I looked for a female for my pretty male for years, hoping to breed this rare new fish, but never found a suitable mate. This was no doubt due to the fact that I was expecting the female to be a mostly silver fish with a similar shape; in fact T. sp. 'Chilumba' females are brilliant orange-yellow, like this-
And so, this particular Fish Tale didn't have the hoped-for happy ending, but I enjoyed keeping that single male T. sp. 'Chilumba' in my 150g Mbuna community for several years nonetheless.
And so-
One of the first things I did when I moved to New Haven (a. k. a. 'Elm City') in 1975 was to contact an ACA Board member in the area to ask him about local fish clubs (this being the pre-digital age, everything was done either by telephone or in person). He directed me to the Elm City Aquarium Society, which met every month in the basement of a local American Legion Post (or was it VFW? Or Elks?). I contacted them and went to the next meeting, which was attended by ~50 enthusiastic members and featured a 'Bowl Show,' a slide presentation, and lots of fish talk. It was fun. After we adjourned the real fun started, with the die-hards meeting at the bar upstairs for beers and more fish tales. It was there that I met Lee Finley, a key figure in the ACA during the early days of the 'African Invasion,' and one of the first people in the country to specialize in Tanganyikans, and breed Tropheus and other rare (at the time) fishes.
For the next monthly meeting I brought my own entry for the bowl show, an unknown Malawian that had come in as a contaminant in a shipment of Pseudotropheus zebra 'Red Top.' He looked like this-
This species eventually came to be known as Pseudotropheus macrophthalmus 'Orange Shoulder;' today it is known as Tropheops sp. 'Chilumba.'
I looked for a female for my pretty male for years, hoping to breed this rare new fish, but never found a suitable mate. This was no doubt due to the fact that I was expecting the female to be a mostly silver fish with a similar shape; in fact T. sp. 'Chilumba' females are brilliant orange-yellow, like this-
And so, this particular Fish Tale didn't have the hoped-for happy ending, but I enjoyed keeping that single male T. sp. 'Chilumba' in my 150g Mbuna community for several years nonetheless.