We've had two great speakers visit SFAS in the past two months. First Jimmy Nguyen (also known as Swhiskey on YouTube) spoke about taking photographs of aquariums and aquatic species. Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend (dangit!) but everyone I've spoken to said it was a great talk, if you were willing to brave the wet and rainy weather. Sadly I don't have many photos from the meeting for the blog either. If you have any photos you would like to share with the blog, please send them to me at sfas.jeff@gmail.com and I will post them.
Our outgoing Vice President Bill Fish organized an amazing spread for our annual holiday dinner. He volunteered a lot of his time and energy to make sure everyone enjoyed the food so if you see him, thank him for his work, not only for the dinner but also for managing and improving SFAS in general through his commitment as a board member. Bill made a ton of contributions improving the auction, from the way items are checked in and prepared, to recording sales and making sure the seller gets paid correctly. (Edit: I also want to point out Bill single-handedly created the current website when we lost the old one)
Sadly, two other board members are relinquishing their positions on the SFAS Board of Directors: Kate Jackson will be retiring as the Treasurer and Zenzo Tazawa will be moving on from his position as Speaker Manager. Don't worry he will still be attending meetings as a SFAS member! Thank you to all three of them for volunteering countless hours to SFAS and making the aquarium hobby a better place!
After the elections at the December meeting we are welcoming 5(!) new Board Members. Keegan Black, Howard Chen, Jerry Liang, Dimitri Stamatis, and Phil Ridinger were all elected as new directors to the board by the membership. Congratulations to them!
Last month we were visited by Charlie Mueller who spoke about his experiences breeding whiptail (Loricariinae) catfish. Being from Pittsburgh, PA, Charlie has the space for BIG tanks (unlike here in SF) and can keep some really interesting species. A self-proclaimed 'brown-thumb' he has a pretty neat remote control water change system in his fish room. Some interesting points I took away from his talk:
- Some species only spawn in water over 90° F
- Water changes and water quality are the key to breeding (up to 75% changes)
- They love sand and some of his fish will bury themselves in it
- You can use rooibos tea to add tannins to the water
- He used hydrogen peroxide(!) to treat bacterial infections in his fish. In fact, he applied a 3% H2O2 solution directly to the infected areas while holding the fish out of the water!
The auction (as always) saw some great fish and plants. Here's some of the interesting items I noticed:
- Flame moss $8 (haven't seen this one here before)
- Peppered corys x6 $15 (pretty good price for a nice group of pepper corys!)
- GIANT amazon sword $13
- Bucephelandra 'brownie' $9 (not quite sure the exact species, sometimes it's hard to ID plants at the auction)
- Microworm culture $10
- 3/4" rainbow fish 'melatolania x5 $41 (these were bred from eggs from Gary Lange)
- Bacopa carolinia $3
- Staurogyne repens $10
- Female dumbo elephant ear betta $10 (where have the bettas been lately?)
- Christmas moss $12
Next month (this Friday!) we have Cory from Aquarium Co-Op speaking about medicating fish. If you missed him last time, he gave an awesome talk about freshwater puffers. He's an expert on aquariums, plants, and fish, and I'm sure he will give us some useful advice about caring for them. See you Friday.
Jeff Jackson
SFAS Secretary