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July Program

Date: Sunday, July 9, 2006
Place: Room 101, Casa del Prado, Balboa Park
Time: 7 pm.  Arrive at 6 pm to sell items at the monthly auction; Auction begins at 6:30
Program: Questions and Answers by Richard Stratton, the TFH Freshwater and Marine Q&A man.

Not Your Average Fish Show

Pictures and notes on the 2006 New England Guppy Show by Charlie Pratt
Mike Leva on the left was a great help in many phases of the show. He is shown with Greg Billings who handled registration of exhibitors and fish with an Excel program.
Left to right, Paul Gorski, Harold Morgan, Tom Allen, and Alan Opdyke are assigning points to the fish to be used in the Visual Test for applicants for the Judge position.

A large sales booth such as this is unusual at IFGA shows. It is a development that should be encouraged. This display is by Ken's Fish, a supplier who carries a wide variety of foods and equipment.
The after show auction was a terrific event, with many top strains of guppy for sale, as well as Bushy Nose Plecostomus, and albinos, and paleatus catfish marbled and albino, longfinned.

Near the end of the judging seminar at the New England Guppy Show ET Mellor who had earlier been a seminar speaker returned to the room and announced. “I am here to inform all of you that we have had much greater losses among the fish on the bench than normal.

I didn’t hear the rest because I was moving fast and out of the room. In the show room it was immediately obvious that we had a disaster of unprecedented proportions on our hands. Approximately half of the fish that had been benched were dead or dying. The symptoms of damage to the fish were very obvious. Many of them were jumping, trying to get out of the water. If they weren’t jumping they were hanging at the surface, red gills pumping, many almost vertical with their tail hanging down. As they died they mostly drifted to the bottom of the tank. I had put my fish on the bench at 10:30 a.m., and gone over to the Judging Seminar. It was 12:30 a.m. when ET made his announcement. Only one of my fish was dead at that time, though two more looked very bad. I changed the water on those fish to what I was told was new water.

This was the New England Fancy Guppy Association show in Connecticut on June 24th. It is the regional show of the International Fancy Guppy Association, ordinarily held once a year. Much of the information in this article will be applicable to any fish show, and hopefully will be a caution to people involved in putting on a fish show.

While I changed water on my fish, ET was testing the water in the containers where fish had died. He checked ph, chlorine level and ammonia level. Nothing negative was found. At ET’s request those people who had not entered their fish into the show stopped putting them into the existing prepared water. More water was prepared, and then people began using it. Later I heard from one of the people who used the newly prepared water. Their fish lived though the judging, but did not reach home. My own fish that I took off the bench and put into newly prepared water all died. Some exhibitors found other sources of water. Drinking water or other bottled water. Some people had brought water with them. But most of the fish were left in the same water. We waited to see what would happen. Fish continued dying. At 5:00 p.m. we began the judging. Fish were dying all around us as we judged. 

During the entire day it was a little difficult to know what everyone was doing. There was no clear system of making information available to those of us who were there. Rumors were the order of the day. I spoke with ET several times and found him very concerned, very sorry about what was happening, and as much at a loss to explain it as any of the rest of us. I probably was as much aware of what was going on as anyone, as ET and all the officers and members of the New England club knew me as Editor of the IFGA eBulletin and did their best to keep me informed. But there just was no information. People began to propose hypotheses. I heard that the hotel had been sprayed Friday night for insects. Local people said that the tremendous amount of rain they had had in recent weeks may have caused agricultural runoff containing pesticides and fertilizers to run into the water supply. When I first heard that I did a double take and put down the glass of water I was drinking. Hotel employees said they were no longer drinking tap water, as they continued serving it to us in pitchers.

My understanding is that the New England club treated the water going into the display containers in much the way that every IFGA club does. They ran it into large garbage cans, added AmQuel, and let it sit overnight to warm up. They certainly followed established procedure as far as I observed.

On Sunday morning I asked ET if he had any thoughts he would share about the cause of the losses. He replied that there were three possibilities being assessed:

  1. The theory about the hotel being sprayed. He had contacted the facility manager who had denied that.
  2. The pesticides and fertilizer in runoff theory. There had been no sign from the water department that any such thing had happened.
  3. Purposeful or accidental sabotage. The show room was not secure on Friday night. There was no way to lock it up. Anyone in the hotel could have entered.

ET was a rock through these two days. Already a friend who I admire and respect he demonstrated a quiet responsible demeanor while expressing sorrow to those who had lost fish. He did everything I could think of at the time that he could have done to find out what had happened. I believed right from the first that whatever hit the fish was too strong for any large number of the fish to survive. Once guppies demonstrate the symptoms these fish did it is to late to save them.

Many of us lost all the fish we brought to the show. Among those with total losses, myself, Jay Crane, Luke Roebuck, Mike Kahlid. I am sure there were many more.

This disaster leads to many questions. What can we do to prevent this ever happening again? What should we do if it does? Should we create a disaster recovery plan for this situation? What minimum security guarantees on the room we use should we expect at night from a hotel? My only real suggestion at this point is that there could have been more communication to the exhibitors and attendees. Perhaps a Blackboard or Poster Board could have been designated for new information and an update put on it every couple of hours.

Read Part 2