Volume 3, #1, January 2017 

 

Editor: Alan R. De Angelo

[email protected]

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New Year’s Greetings and Salutations!

After last week’s ice storm and freezing rain, the 40 degree rainfall is a blessing. Washing away the snow and ice of last year, everything will have a new start. Of course, I fully expect to get more snow dumped on us and more cold weather but at least the accumulations are gone. I don’t know about you, but April cannot come too soon.

At the Indy Convention, I purchased six Amatitliana nanoluteus as one-inch fry. I put them into my office 90 gallon, bow-front, corner tank with cardinal tetras, marbled hatchetfish and albino ancistrus. Now, I have five fish remaining, two males and three females and they have been breeding constantly in the 90 but with the trickle filter box, all of the fry were being sucked down into the filter so none survived. When I injured my back, my 200 gallon show tank at home took it on the chin, big time. I couldn’t walk downstairs to do much with it much less change the water, etc. Many of the fish were lost. If there is a silver lining to this, I have now put the five A. nanoluteus into the 200 with a few pencilfish, yellow delta-tailed guppies, two extremely old, giant sized, albino Ancistrus and two pair of Pelvicachromis silvae. It will be interesting to see if they can raise fry in that environment. They should do well.

Have you ever thought about keeping Madagascar cichlids? No? Yeh, me neither, until I saw a wonderful talk and slide/video presentation by Jim Cummings who hails from Winnipeg. He was sponsored by the Greater Chicago Cichlid Association and I had the good fortune to be able to attend the meeting a few weeks ago. Paretroplus nourissati, the lamena, is an absolutely gorgeous, red/orange fish that rivals any saltwater fish out there. Who needs a Harlequin Tusk fish when we cichlidists have this fish. Keep them in groups and big tanks as they can get aggressive. Rather than tell you more about that fish, and the many other beautiful cichlids, I urge you all to get informed about Madagascar cichlids any way you can. And keep them! You can also look on the CRC website for photos and other hints about keeping these fishes.

BOT

This year marks my fourth term, seventh year, as a member of the ACA BOT. It also is my first year taking over the responsibilities of ACA Chair. The past few years have seen a resurrection of the ACA and things are going smoothly. Jan Benes, our Chair for the past two years, left things in great shape and running without a hitch for me. Thanks, Jan!

Starting this year, a new position has been created on the ACA Cadre, Social Media Liaison. Peter George will be the first person at the helm of this position. The ACA has two FaceBook pages titled American Cichlid Association and ACA Convention. We also have a Twitter account which may be renamed, so I will not give that name out yet.

All three of these pages were being run by different people and after finding that they were all run independently, I said, “Hey, let’s get things in synch so we can be more effective!” I swear, those were the exact words I said to myself. After a brief discussion with the involved parties before I became Chair in January, I Propped having a new cadre position formed and we voted on Peter George, who graciously volunteered, to take the first plunge. Thank you, Peter! You can see the new Props on the ACA website, cichlid.org.

And, no, even though I am BOT Chair, I will not be Tweeting to the membership daily. But, as the Editor of the AN, I do control the content of the news you all receive. My diabolical scheme is unfolding! LOL!

2017 CONVENTION

Be sure to make your plans for the ACA Convention this July in Novi, MI. Time seems to get away from us at times and convention time will be here before you know it. As always, it will be a great convention, full of fun, great conversation, camaraderie and fish!

 

ACA PHOTO CONTEST

Wow! What a year it has been for the Photo Contest. Some awesome photographers have competed with fantastic images of their finny charges. And how about Scott McLaughlin who took an idea and made it grow into something wonderful. Thank you, Scott. A new Photo Contest begins on February 1st.

Let’s not forget the input of Mo Devlin and the generous support of the contest from our sponsors. Daryl will be covering the Photo Contest a bit more in-depth in the next BB.

Speaking of BB … send your articles to the BB Editor at: [email protected]. That way you’ll have something to read besides the next installment of Adventures in Cichlidom.

That’s about all for now. As your new Chair, I am exploring a few other things and I hope that I will have more to report on in the next month or two.

 

Cichlid Power!

Alan

 

 

MONTHLY PHOTO CONTEST

ACA Photo Contest: Goto cichlid.org > Community > Photo contest.

LOCAL CLUB EVENTS

Send your cichlid-related news/events to [email protected] and we will be happy to spread the word for you. Allow six weeks lead time. Thank you.

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