The Greater Portland Aquarium Society is a Portland, Oregon club of aquatic hobbyists dedicated to enhancing the enjoyment for members and guests, and advancing the aquarium hobby. Fish or Horticultural enthusiast, fresh water or salt, in the home or pond – all are the broad focus of the members that meet every month for talks, auctions, and general fellowship among like-minded people. Our meetings are open to the public and we welcome you to our monthly gathering.
Nate Crilly is a veterinary pathologist who has spent more than a decade providing care for aquatic animals in health and disease. Nate grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee where he also attended university.
From 2018 to 2024, he lived in Baltimore, Maryland, where he worked with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, National Aquarium, Maryland Zoo, and John Hopkins Medical Institute. In 2024, Nate relocated to Portland, Oregon, where he has been delighted to connect with the thriving aquarist hobby of the Pacific Northwest.
Nate’s main aquarium is a thriving 60 gallons colony of small red creatures, including cherry shrimp, chili rasboras, lizard catfish, and endler’s livebearers. Aside from fish, he also has two greyhounds and a garden full of blueberry bushes.
Nate’s talk is entitled “When Things Matter, It Matters How They End: Euthanasia in Ornamental Fish and Invertebrates.” He will be discussing humane methods of euthanasia in fish and other aquatic pets, centered around practical advice for hobbyists.
At the conclusion of the presentation Nate will host a Q & A and will be available to talk/answer questions during breaks as well.
Please join us GPAS in the return of our (hopefully) Annual Plant Auction. As usual the meeting will be held at the Moose Lodge.
Special Guest and local aquarium plant expert Jebriel Houdroj has agreed to join the meeting and will be available to answer questions about uncommon plants (or plants in general if there is time).
In addition to the plants that will be auctioned off by the club there will be the standard BAP/HAP and donations auction as well.
If you are a member and have items you wish to auction off items, please note we are limiting non-donation items to three. No exceptions will be permitted.
If you are a non member we are only accepting donations for this auction.
Finally please note that only fish/inverts/plants are allowed in the general auction. No hardscape, equipment, or tanks will be allowed due to the expected size of the auction.
Jebriel Houdroj, is a proud Lebanese American born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. He works at The Wetspot Tropical Fish in Portland, Oregon as a store manager and has been the plant specialist for 5 years.
He has been keeping aquariums on and off for over 12 years; though his love for aquatic flora didn’t start until about 7 years ago. In his free time outside of work, he cultivates and documents his process of (amateurly) dissecting species of bucephalandra and their inflorescences.
His interest in bucephalandra sp. started in 2018 due to finding out their endangered status and he has only grown since then. His goal is to help stop the misinformation spread in the hobby about bucephalandra and other rheophytic plants, and also inform people on the importance of cultivation over exploitation
Jebriel’s talk will be titled “Cultivation over Exploitation” and will discuss how to properly cultivate bucephalandra in the the aquarium in addition to how to properly identify (or at least try to) the species you’re keeping. Additionally he will detail some of his adventures in dissecting bucephalandra and how he was able to identify the species.
Jebriel will further share a ‘How To’ on growing bucephalandra terrestrially and cultivating emersed plants. He will cover the difference between ‘Epiphytic & Rheophytic’ plants and how we have been using the incorrect terms for years as well as the importance of cultivation.
At the conclusion of the presentation Jebreil will host a Q & A and will be available to talk during breaks as well.
Allen Barber was born in Johannesburg, South Africa immigrating to the United States in 1963. He has lived all over North American since, spending significant time in Dallas, Winnipeg Canada, Chicago and Los Angeles before moving to Battle Ground, Washington in March of 2024.
Allan has been an avid aquarist most of his life breeding numerous species of fish including anabantoids, ancistrus, corydoras and cichlids. However, his true love is Killifish of which he has bred in excess of 100 different species. His “killidiction” began in 1977.
Allen’s presentation will cover a wide array of topics relating to killifish including a brief introduction to killis, best practices in keeping killis, where killi populations are found, spawning killis, collecting eggs, raising fry and best practices for purchasing and shipping killis.
At the conclusion of the presentation Allen will host a Q & A and will be available to talk/answer questions during breaks as well.
Please join GPAS in welcoming OG B.i.t.C.H (Babes in the Cichlid Hobby) Caroline Estes for her speaking engagement on the History of Women in the Aquarium Hobby.
Caroline Estes has been in the aquarium hobby for over 42 years and a member of the American Cichlid Association since 1987 and is currently a fellow.
She co-founded Babes in the Cichlid Hobby (B.i.t.C.H.) in 1994, and has helped to raise well over $200,000 for cichlid conservation and research through raffles, a women run late night auction for featuring interesting cichlids (call the Babes live auction) and silent auctions of donated aquarium items.
Caroline likes to get her feet wet has collected native speciesall over Texas and Mexico. She recently got to spend two weeks on Lake Tanganyika with Ad Konigs and fellow B.i.t.C.H.es.
Caroline owned Amazonia Aquariums (AA) in Austin, Texas for 20 years. AA is a cichlid specialty store with 500 tanks that stressed conservation and breeding. Now happily retired from retail, Caroline spends her time being in a band, going to see live music, working on local political issues at the state capitol and collecting folk art, all the while thrilled to death to be out of the retail and back to enjoying cichlids as a hobby, and not as livelihood.
At the conclusion of the presentation Caroline quickly host a Q & A that will be limited in time to ensure she is able to catch her plane home.
Please join us as our club president, Ryan Mackey’s, home for our annual holiday party for an afternoon of fun, friends and fish talk.
As per previous years this will be a potluck style gathering, so please bring something to share if you plan on attending.
There will also be a gift exchange for those who wish to participate. Please limit the gift to $20. Also please don’t bring any “white elephant” gifts. While you may think it’s funny to bring a baby oscar to give to someone with a five gallon cube, it’s not. It’s not ethical and is not something we promote as a club.
For those wish to attend please RSVP (an email will be sent for this purpose) and let us know what you are planning on bringing and how many will be coming so we can plan accordingly.
Ryan’s house can be found here:
3576 Emerald Drive NW
Salem, OR
Dean Tweeddale is an accomplished breeder of aquarium fish and long-time member of the Greater Seattle Aquarium Society. Dean is well known for “Dean’s Fishroom” segments on social media and his speaking engagements at a variety of aquarium conferences and events. Coming to us from the Seattle area, Dean is like our cousin from up north! Be sure to catch Dean’s talk on August 13th at our regular club meeting time of 1200 at the Moose lodge. He has a “system” for breeding and raising fry that he will discuss and he might allow some question and answer time to share even more of his vast experience with attendees. We look forward to seeing Dean.
GPAS is excited to welcome Hans Evers to speak to our club, on Sunday, June 11, 2023 at the Moose Lodge. Hans’ topic for our Club Meeting has yet to be determined. Please take a peek at this bio from biopequariumproject website. Find link is below.
Hans-Georg Evers lives in Hamburg, Germany, and he has been an aquarist at heart since his first days. His passion began when he was a child, and growing up he specialised in African cichlids. In the early 1980s, his main interest switched to catfish, while today the Corydoradinae and Loricariidae are his favourite fishes, followed by the rainbow fish, tetras and any other imaginable freshwater fish. So far, Hans bred and raised more than 450 different species of freshwater fish in his tanks. He is now taking care of more than 50 aquariums in his house.
Hans Evers is a busy traveller, giving talks on fish and collecting species. He fluently speaks English, Portuguese and a bit of Spanish and Bahasa Indonesia, and he has already visited many tropical countries in search of new and interesting fishes and invertebrates species for his aquariums. He undertook countless journeys to the Amazon, mainly to Brazil, where he collected fish in all the bigger affluents of the Amazon river. He also worked in Peru, Colombia, Venezuela and the countries of the Paraguai-Parana-drainage, and he has often visited also some Asian countries, mainly Indonesia, Thailand and India. During the last 10 years, he concentrated on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, where he collected fish and shrimps all over the island, and on the Indonesian side of New Guinea. As a result, he has been able to scientifically classify new species: Oryzias eversi from Sulawesi and Corydoras eversi from Brazil are named after him.
Hans published 12 books about his experiences and findings, e.g. “Mergus Atlas vol. 6”, the two volumes of “Mergus catfish atlas” together with his good friend Ingo Seidel, and the “Identification Guide to Corydoradinae Catfishes” with Ian Fuller, and worldwide more than 1000 articles in hobbyist magazines and scientific papers. He has also written more than 1000 articles published in hobbyist magazines and scientific papers. From 2005 to 2008, he was the chief editor of the German aquarium magazine AMAZONAS. Today, he works for the American issue of AMAZONAS as an editor.
Hans Evers simply loves the aquatic nature. He decorates his personal aquariums as nature taught him to do. There is no other way to do it right.
