August Program

Date: Sunday, August 13, 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: Wild Bettas, a presentation by Steve Ehrlich. I attended this presentation when Steve gave in at the Coast Club, a few months ago. Steve has a wonderful knowledge of many Betta species, and slides of really beautiful wild fish. This will be a really good meeting.

Not Your Average Fish Show, part 2

Many of you commented to me on the article in last month's eBulletin about the New England Guppy Show, where over half of the entries died on the bench. The New England club and the International Fancy Guppy Association (IFGA) have both been trying to determine why they died ever since. But there is really no information. Here is an extract from the August column in the IFGA eBulletin by Alan Opdyke, President of IFGA. 

"I think the one subject on every one’s mind right now is the show in New England where, unfortunately, more than half the entries died on the bench or shortly there after. In my case I benched at 1 PM and by the time judging commenced 40% were dead, that evening more passed away and the ones I put in my jars to bring home were dead when I got back to Georgia. 

"I have checked with many of the people that have been around for years and no one ever remembers anything like this of this magnitude. This devastating loss is unsurpassed in our history. One person took some water home from the hotel and separated it into two tanks. One tank had the normal filtration (floss) like most of us and the other had charcoal (carbon) in the filter. The one with just floss died. This led some of us to believe there were heavy metal(s) in the water. However ET Mellor and the New England club had a complete water analysis done at Severn Trent Laboratories and the results did not show any elevated levels of heavy metals. I say all this so you will know that at this time the loss is still a mystery to all us at the IFGA. I have asked both Paul Gorski, who has taught chemistry in high schools and has a good knowledge of what we are looking for, and Dr. Jim Alderson to look at the lab results and neither of them see anything that stands out. If you were an exhibitor at the New England show and would like to see this twelve page report just e-mail me at oppie@fancyguppy.com and I will send you the PDF file."

Our hobby is full of mysteries. Why did one fish die and another not? Why have my fish quit breeding? We may have another one from this show.  Any time you are dealing with livestock, even plants, these things happen. We do our best and that's all we can do.

Charles A. Pratt

A Web Site to Check Out

In my never ending research, I came across a retailer with a LOT of good articles. The web site is Floridadriftwood.com. On the lower left, there is something to click on titled 'planted aquarium
information'. There are dozens of good short articles. You might want to send this out in the monthly reminder letter for members.

Barry Rothman