With our upcoming auction, we want to take some time to hear directly from you.

What’s working well? What could be improved?

We’re opening the floor for feedback on our current auction rules and process. If you have suggestions for rule changes, ideas to make things run smoother, or even questions about how things work, this is the place to share them.

We’re especially interested in:

• Rule changes you’d like to see
• Anything that felt confusing or unclear
• Ways to improve flow, fairness, or timing
• General feedback from buyers, sellers, or volunteers

Our goal is to make the auction as smooth, fair, and enjoyable as possible for everyone involved. Your input helps us get there.

Drop your thoughts below!

As our club continues to grow and evolve, we want to open the door for more member involvement, especially when it comes to something that affects all of us: where we meet.

As everyone knows, we don’t currently have a permanent home for our general meetings. Because of that, we’re looking to form a small “Location Committee” made up of members who are willing to help us scout and evaluate potential meeting spaces.

We’re looking for:

• Suggestions for possible locations
• General thoughts and preferences on what makes a good meeting space
• Volunteers willing to visit locations in person and report back

When checking out a location, here are a few key things we need:

• Pricing and rental details
• Availability (especially consistency month-to-month)
• Reliability (we want to avoid venues that cancel or change dates last minute)
• Space considerations (seating, tables, accessibility, parking, etc.)

If you have ideas, opinions, or are interested in helping scout locations, please reply to this thread. Even small suggestions can go a long way in helping us find a great long-term fit for the club.

Thanks everyone for helping shape the future of the club!

If you put you name on this list you aren't expected to have every tour your room. We will send out a call for tours at least a month ahead of time so you clean up your mess first.  

If you are interested let me know.

     Tim Eckerley

We all remember receiving our very first aquariums, some as enthusiastic adults, many as overjoyed children. Our thoughts raced at the prospect of creating that underwater masterpiece that we had sequestered in our mind’s eye over the preceding months and years. Now, with an aquarium at home and a fist full of fish money we trek to our favorite aquarium shop to start assembling that yearned for masterpiece. The excitement reaches a crescendo as you enter the store and make your way to the tank bound aquatic treasures lining the aisles and you are greeted by a knowledgeable (hopefully) employee. You inform them that you are there to start your aquatic adventures in fish husbandry and they hit you with the obligatory questions that bring you back to reality, “What kind of fish are you looking for?”, “How big of a tank do you have?”, and “How much experience do you have with aquariums?”. This is our first head-on confrontation with the aquarist continuum.

That question, “How much experience do you have?”, does not have a reliable answer. If you live in a peer group that has zero interest in the natural world and you are always the one pointing out critters, or you are just addicted to “Shark Week” and its kin, you maybe the resident expert on all things fishy. This can easily lead to the Dunning-Kruger Effect a cognitive bias leading you to believe you know way more about a subject than you actually do. Conversely, if you tell the pet store employee that you used to raise African cichlids from Malawi and fancy goldfish like orandas and ranchus, they may assume you are very experienced and not realize that you have no knowledge of soft water or acidic water loving species. Back in my pet store days I once had a customer that moved here from Florida and had always had marine aquariums, but they had no knowledge of water chemistry or tank cycling. I found out they would just go to the beach a couple times a week and get a couple buckets of water to freshen up their 10-gallon marine aquarium! This is why I refer to experience as a continuum as opposed to discreet, achievable aquarist goals that magically open doors to new species.

So, what do we do about this cognitive conundrum? We embrace it and look at in wonder. No matter who you are, or how many years you have been an aquarist, or even how many species you have kept and successfully bred in your state-of-the-art fish room, there is always something new to learn, species that have never graced your tanks. NEWS FLASH - our often-exalted experts are also beginners when it comes to certain species. That awareness can bring us together as aquarists, not beginners and experts, but a continuum of aFISHianados. Tap into this resource, imagine that dream aquarium in your mind’s eye and start researching how to make it come alive in your living room. Do not be discouraged by setbacks, learn from them and charge ahead and in no time, you will be an “expert/beginner” too.

Currently, we have mollies with quite a few fry, a gazillion ram's horn snails, 5 rabbit snails, some rather sneaky trumpet snails recently discovered, 4 kuhli loaches, 2 peppered corydoras (bought from petco and 4 died), some cherry shrimp (hard to tell how many since they hide so well), ghost shrimp (not sure if there are many left, looks like at least a couple have died, also petco), a hillstream loach, and a fragile hold on mom's sanity.

Here are some questions we'd like some input on:

1. How many ram's horn snails are too many?
2. How wary are you of buying aquatic creatures from Petco or other major chains?
3. Who in the group would be interested in selling him some more peppered corydoras (or other ones)?
4. What should we know about posting when looking to buy more aquatic life?
5. What question would you recommend we ask that we haven't?

Thank you!
Rachael