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.
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.
Andreas Tanke (Andy) began keeping fish at the tender age of 10 and is a member of several aquarium societies based in Germany. Andy has made multiple trips to South America for fish adventures and has kept dwarf cichlids extensively; particularly the Apistogramma. His current infatuation is with the Panaqolus catfish of which currently, he maintains about 10 species. In addition to his adventures in Surinam, Brazil and Peru, he has guided a tour group to Venezuela with the company JBL. Andy will speak to the club starting at 3pm on September 10th at The Moose Lodge. His presentation is entitled Northern Brazil-Origin of Ornamental Fish. We look forward to seeing Andy and hope you all can join us.