Mike's Moments
(March '96)

Hrumph!! . . . Boy I thought the cold weather was about done. I hope your fish made the trip to Alaska in good shape . . . I don't know . . . 27 degrees . . . in Florida . . . I think I need to go further south.

Remember last month I ended with my discus eating a perfectly good spawn of young so they could spawn again? Well . . . as I said . . . if it weren't for bad luck . . . the other night our power went out at 3 in the morning and when it came on again it went from absolute darkness to bright lights AND the 5 HP blower came on and my big good male discus tried skydiving . . . I found him in the morning but it was much too late. I am not whipped, I will proceed. I put my other male in with the better female, but there has been some serious, serious getting to know each other banging of fins . . . so to speak! I will not be beat after being so close. You know I could be spawning Blue Gularis instead . . . but as of yet . . . Ba DA Bing . . . no females. I'm telling you I am thinking of putting the 3 Blue Gularis males in with the discus females . . . I know they can see them from across the room. A couple of guys from the club found a place to order fish from in "Jersey" and he says he has some Blue Gularis, but it seems the temperature is worse than the north pole so he can't ship just yet . . . maybe by June the way this weather is going.

Shipping fish . . . we'll talk next month! I have received . . . ohhhhhh! . . . 10-12 shipments of fish, and I have shipped maybe 3-4 times . . . no loss of fish. We'll talk about it. Piece of cake!

Products . . . it's been a while since I've talked products. The other day a friend of mine and I were talking about pH and test kits. We found out what you might expect, but it really was a bit disturbing . . . the test kits are not, I repeat NOT accurate. Now I don't mean that a pH of 6.7 will read 8.6, but there is enough of a difference to make you wonder what to do. In the aquarium hobby it has been long known that thermometers are not exact, but stability is what is necessary. Does it matter if the temperature is 79 or 81 degrees F as long as it is stable? But listen to this . . . one pH kit read 7.4 and one read 7.9 . . . not the same kit reading twice, but different kits reading at the same time. That's really close to being a bit of a difference. The names of the two kits are really not necessary, but you should try all of your test kits out with some sort of standard . . . they may be off a bit . . . not only from company to company, but package to package within the same company and when you are dealing with something as important as pH then we need to expect some sort of standard.

I must tell you a story . . . my first teaching job was in Lafayette, Indiana and my first experience with a tropical fish club was in Lafayette, Indiana . . . GO PURDUE BOILERMAKERS . . . anyway, I met some of the nicest people in the world there at GLAS . . . Greater Lafayette Aquarium Society. Some people who took me under their wing and showed me how to really raise tropical fish . . . Walt and Marge . . . forgive me after 26 years . . . Whitman?? . . . but Marge and Walt, Plantenga's Pet Palace that still is standing and going and the owners Jo and Ralph Plantenga . . . they gave a college kid some responsibility and allowed him to grow into a young man, but most of all there was Bill Dyer . . . Bill was a few years older than I was, but it didn't seem to matter to him because I think maybe all Bill saw was a young guy who couldn't get enough of fish . . . all fish . . . big fish . . . little fish . . . fish that refused to spawn . . . fish that spawned and you had to DRY OUT THEIR EGGS, OR PICK THEM OFF A MOP WITH YOUR FINGERS . . . killies!!! I was fascinated with killies and Bill showed me the right way . . . patience, TLC, water . . . and a little luck. 26 years have passed and a set of circumstances beginning with joining OUR club drove me right back into killies . . . I joined the American Killifish Association last month and with the roster of members, I immediately looked up ol' Bill and after 26 years and a call, Bill and I were talking fish as though it were just last week when I killed a Blue Gularis I had gotten from him . . . it was really, really neat. We promised to exchange fish when the weather breaks up there . . . and by the way, Bill still has his same strain of red-eyed swordtails that he had 26 years ago . . . that's the patience of ol' Bill. To think that it was the joining of AKA that renewed an old friendship . . . I have so much to tell him!