May 2024
Such a busy spring with lots of aquarium events going on! We will be attending a fish swap in Beaverton this coming weekend to publicize the club and Fishtoberfest, and we just had our monthly meeting and board meeting. Planning for Fishtoberfest is ongoing and it promises to be another fantastic event, with even more of the things attendees told us they liked about previous events; more speakers, more vendors, larger exhibition space, raffles, auctions,open house at the Cichlid Exchange, and most of all a really great group of hobbyists from across the country and up and down the west coast. Closer to home, I have been welding up some new stands for my buddy and fellow GPAS member Ben. Pics include cutting all the pieces, tacking up the frames in the jig, assembly and welding. One stand will hold 6 40 breeders and the other is for 12 20 longs. I just transported the last one to Ben’s house the other day. I’m looking forward to Findig next month and the ACA in Cincinnati in late July. Lookin like a busy summer. Keep in touch friends!
February 2024
As February draws to a close, I wanted to give a few updates and discuss some recent events. Weather forced us to hold a “Zoom” style meeting in January. I will thank those of you that were able to join us online for that meeting. Many of you were contending with the severe effects of our winter storm and we sympathize with you for the hardships and your losses. As a community, we should help our aquarium friends build back better as we are able. It was great to get back together this month for an in person meeting. I miss all the smiling faces. Cameron gave us a great talk on Loaches and our friend Bryce brought in about a dozen BAP including some very nice pleco species. Well done Bryce. The Board members got together to staff a booth at the fish swap a couple weekends ago in Beaverton. It was fairly well attended and included many of our vendors from Fishtoberfest. We took names of Vendors and hobbyists and encouraged folks to come try out a meeting with GPAS. There were also 4 saltwater vendors at this swap and I feel like we might want to give those folks some incentive to join us for Fishtoberfest in the fall.
I’m already looking forward to our next meeting. In March, we will get a talk from Lee Newman, a well seasoned aquarist from BC with a special interest in the South American Earth-Eaters. Lee has been the curator of tropical fish at the Vancouver Aquarium and will be vacationing in Seaside prior to giving his talk to GPAS. I can hardly wait! See you guys soon.
November 24, 2023
I wanna say a big thank-you to everybody who joined us for Fishtoberfest this year. We had a few challenges but for the most part, I was very happy with the outcome. Our show sponsors were great and really made it possible for us to generate a little profit for our efforts. Our club level sponsors like the American Killifish Association, Sacramento Aquarium Society, and the Greater Seattle Aquarium Society, all brought people and excitement to our show. Thank-you all. We look forward to strengthening our affiliations with you over the next few years. Our vendors brought a great variety of items for sale from our Friend Bryce of Plecolabs (Eugene), to our new friends Sam Scalz (California) and Harley of PNW Customs, all had great looking displays, interesting products, and beautiful art. The diversity of vendor offerings meant there really was something for everybody. If you were a shrimper, then Fishtoberfest was right up your alley! Finally I thought the speakers were great and I just wish we had a couple more of them! All will be lessons learned for next year. Speaking of next year,…
Fishtoberfest 2024 is already under way with some exciting new elements beginning to materialize. Next year we will hold our event at the Shilo Inn on the weekend of the 28th and 29th of September with the addition of activities beginning on Friday. We will be expanding the exposition space by about 40% and will move our auction and speakers to an adjacent room to accommodate a few more vendors and sponsors. We are currently planning to engage additional speakers and have already reached out to a couple folks I think you will find very interesting. In short, we are looking to have more of the things that made Fishtoberfest great and that includes you. We want to open up the walkways a little bit while adding another 12-15 tables. This event will continue to showcase the hobby and the businesses that support our hobby. It will also continue to bring together the clubs and the breeders that make our hobby about the plants and animals, but more importantly about the people.
We will hold a social gathering at my home on December 10th rather than a December meeting. If you are interested in coming by for a light meal and some fellowship, RSVP to the club email or contact me directly at ryan.mackey63@outlook.com to coordinate. Have a happy and safe holiday season and we will look forward to seeing you at the January meeting at the Moose Lodge on January 14th at noon.
September 29, 2023
Hoo Boy have we been busy getting ready for Fishtoberfest! Preparations are all finished, and I have a couple of moments to have my wife help me post a quick President’s Message before the BIG DAY!
I’m really excited about Fishtoberfest art and new club T-shirts! Can’t wait to share them with you at the show. T-shirts are $20.00 for M-L-XL and $24.00 for 2XL-3XL, all men’s sizes. Send us an e-mail if we should include women’s sizes and a V-neck!!.
We have original art donated to us by the artist available for purchase at the show. All pieces are signed by the artist, Erica Dorondo; be sure to get yours!
A couple of our sponsors, Sera and Swiss Tropicals, arrived early this week to make sales calls on local aquarium shops. We traveled with them to Eugene, to Pisces Aquaria and then to Ninkasi for a glass of beer and lunch. On Wednesday this week, we raced to Bend to visit John Vahee to see his fishroom and all of his exotic South American Cichlids and Loricariids. His baby zebra pleco were cute as the dickens!
On our travels we also visited Aquatopia of Bend. The shop looked great, their saltwater reef tanks were beautiful and they have a very nice selection of fresh water fish. Be sure to visit them next time you are in Bend.
This AM we are getting ready to pack up our supplies to travel up to the Shilo Inn at the Airport to prepare for Fishtoberfest opening tomorrow AM, September 30, 2023. Hope to see you there!
July 2023
Summer is flying by! I celebrated my 60th birthday on July 3rd with Bourbon and BBQ as any old fish-guy would. Thank-you to those who came by and helped me mark the occasion.
On July 12th, we departed PDX for Madison, Wisconsin to enjoy the “Combo Plate”, which was the conventions for the American Cichlid Association and the American Catfish Association. The flights were tolerable but the company was fantastic! If you get the opportunity to attend these events, do it! I made excuses for years about how I was too busy and there were plenty of more important things for me to do. The truth is there is no better time to join fellow hard-core aquarists to talk fish and enjoy some of the best company to be found. You’ll go for the fish, but you’ll return year after year for the friends you make there. I met so many new folks this year, I couldn’t begin to list them all. On the first morning we were there, I managed to get my roomie up early enough to go have breakfast and we met a fellow we had heard of named Ivan Mikolji. He wrote and provided photographs for a beautiful book entitled “Fishes of the Orinoco in the wild”. Ivan has had many adventures in the amazon and plans for a series of books to follow. There were a few copies of his book available at the convention and I was lucky enough to score an autographed copy.
While we were in Madison, our friend Erik Osborn held the club picnic at his home outside Mulino and I have reports that everyone had a good time. Thank-you Erik. We continue work on Fishtoberfest and have a string of speakers coming to the club as well. Dean Tweeddale, of Dean’s fishroom fame, will be speaking to the club at the August meeting. 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.
June 2023
We have decided to publish a periodic column on the GPAS website to discuss recent and upcoming aquarium events and the people we meet along the way. My wife had the idea and, since most of her ideas are good ones, I’m gonna run with it. The summer started off with a bang when we hosted Hans Evers for a couple talks. Steve and Marcie organized a whirlwind tour of the Northern Oregon Coast for myself, Steve, Hans, and Stephan Tanner of Swiss Tropicals and Amazonas fame. We started from Vancouver and drove to Depot Bay for whale watching. There was one young Humpback whale that obliged us and we followed it for about an hour as it gorged itself in waters teeming with krill. The boat ride was pleasant as the water was calm and the tide low. Depot bay has a narrow inlet that was a bit exciting to exit and enter.
After whale watching, we stopped at my favorite coastal restaurant in Depot Bay, Tidal Raves, and enjoyed a delicious meal and lively conversation. After lunch, we headed north up 101 towards Pacific City and a quick pint in the sun at Pelican Brewery. The beer was cold, the sun was warm, but we had miles to go before dark. Again, we headed north up 101 making frequent stops for Hans to take photographs of the scenery and many native birds (Hans is a rabid birder). Our final stop of the day was in Manzanita for dinner and an overnight at a nice rental home. We started early with breakfast and then again headed north to Cannon Beach for the promise of more seabirds including puffins to photograph. Cannon Beach is a well-known Puffin hangout. Below is a picture from 2021 of Steve and Viral Surati in Cannon Beach with one of the larger Puffin specimens.
We made a final stop at Fort George Brewing for another quick pint before racing back to Portland so Hans could talk with employees of the Wet Spot and the Cichlid Exchange about Clown Loaches. Saturday, we enjoyed a relaxing BBQ in Salem prior to Hans presenting his newest talk on Cory catfish and changes to the Genus names to GPAS. The following day, Steve and Hans headed up to Seattle for his next talk to the GSAS. Thank-you Hans
