Dear Aquarist,
Our final event for our fiscal year ended with great success. We had Ruben Lugo as our guest speaker. I think Ruben is the “pied Piper” of breeding pleco, cory and other types of catfish. His presentation was on “My Adventures Keeping & Breeding L-Number & Other Fish That Suck.” It was a great talk that broke down the complex barriers so that novices could understand the various techniques he used to get them to spawn. It was fascinating and I for one really learned a lot. Ruben was generous and brought several bags of livestock as well as Repashy fish foods to our auction.
For the second time, we had multiple auctioneers to introduce our livestock and dry goods to our attendees to help all of us get home at an earlier hour. Our Bill Amely started it off but had to leave early and Dan Puleo, Mike Roman and even yours truly jumped in to help out. I think everyone enjoyed it and it certainly helped to move the auction at a faster pace. This event we had runners to bring the items to our members and prevent a clog at the auction table. This worked out well to eliminate the auctioned items confusion at the tables. It’s your donations that keep us successful, so please keep them coming.
June is also election night. This is where we vote on members to fill the much needed officer and Board member slots. I am grateful for the volunteering of our members who stepped forward and are willing to help us out. We finally have several positions filled and the open vacancies on our Board list have mostly been filled. Our new Treasurer is Al Turrisi; our new 1st Vice President is Gene Kogan; we may have a new Exchange Editor, but I am waiting for a firm commitment first. We also have several new Board members that I would like to welcome – Leon Perry, Wayne Sinckler, Larry Whitfield and Ronald Wiesenfield. All new positions take effect at our July 7, 2017 Board meeting. Thank you and welcome to all!
As always, we will have free parking and free refreshments. Our regular monthly event auctions have great items available, but they do go quickly. In response to your requests, we have changed our routine. Doors open at 7:30 pm for viewing of auction items. The speaker will go on at 8:00 pm, so be on time, and last for one hour. Our auction will commence within 15 minutes after the speaker concludes, with the goal of having the meeting end earlier than it has in the past. Our new auction routine is that you raise your hand when the auctioneer calls an item that you want to bid on. Please keep your hand up until it goes past the amount you want to spend for it.
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, which would include healthy livestock of fish, corals or plants, we always welcome the donation. If anyone has any topics they want to hear an expert speak about, or any specific speaker, please tell us.
We wish everyone a fun, happy and safe summer! We will see you again at the September 8, 2017 event where we shall have Joshua Wiegert as our guest speaker and his topic will be “Brackish Water Species.” See you then!
Steven Matassa
President