Dear Aquarist,

Happy New Year to all! Our first event for 2017 was a rousing success. The snow and ice stopped to allow our guest speaker Michael Barber to present his talk without all of us worrying about the elements. Michael’s talk was titled “Tropical Fish Collecting & Wildlife Expeditions.” He has partnered with our good friend (and a person we know well since he spoke in Brooklyn on several occasions) Ian Fuller, the international corydorus expert. Michael, Ian and others take aquarists on expeditions for collecting South American species, mainly from Peru. Whatever your personal favorite species that you want to collect in the wild, they will take and also ship the specimens back for you. They specialize in catfish, cichlids, killies and characins such as tetras and hatchetfish. For anyone that wants to collect fish and stay in a modern facility with experts in their various fields, then Go Wild Peru is the place to go! Get a group of friends together and contact Michael Barber at Michael@GoWildPeru.com. I know you will love it!

For February, our friend and sponsor returns – Pat Donston, owner of Absolutely Fish in Clifton, NJ. Pat’s topic for the evening will be “Biodiversity Practices for Reef & Planted Exhibits.” Pat has been our guest speaker many times over the years and is an expert in his field. I know that you will thoroughly enjoy his presentation.
February is also our 106th birthday! On Valentine’s Day, 1911, our forefathers created our great society. Make sure you come down and wish all of us a very happy birthday and many, many more.

Doors open at 7:30. As always, there’s free parking and refreshments. Remember, we can always use help. If anyone wants to help out in any way, please let us know. See me personally or any officer or board member. If anyone has any topics they want to hear expert speakers on, or any specific speaker, please tell us that also.

We would like to thank our members and our sponsors for their constant generous donations that keep us going. Anyone who has any aquatic items, supplies or equipment, and that would include healthy livestock of fish, corals or plants, we always welcome the donation.

Thanks and see you next month!

Steven Matassa
President