Author: Jeremy Basch

Finally, it is beginning to feel like fall outside. The temperatures are dropping and so are the leaves. Autumn brings change and with it, the first wet weather in months has arrived. The area we live in is down nine inches this year. Rivers and creeks that once ran plentiful are down to just puddles. Hopefully this is not long lasting, but we certainly have noticed a change in our water quality. pH levels and water hardness are higher than ever, typical for a drought situation. Most of our fish have stopped reproducing but hopefully the change in weather will help.

As we come to the end of the year, the final fish events are upon us. The Ohio Cichlid Association Extravaganza is now in less than two weeks! This is the largest regional event and is attended by seasoned and new aquarists alike. If you truly want to learn about fish, be sure to go see the speakers. You will be stunned by all of the wonders of our world. Be sure to visit their website at: Ohio Cichlid Association for details.

With that, we will have a special list of available fish for this event. Please visit our http://www.amazontropics.com/availability-list/ page for everything we have available. Please note that some species are very limited on availability and pre-ordering we advised to secure those special fish. Hope to see everyone there!

It has been a summer to remember! We had a blast during the American Cichlid Association (ACA) convention a few months ago. It was great to see old faces and new. A big thanks to Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society (GCAS) for hosting! You did a fantastic job as usual.

And while we dealt with some presentation issues, we were excited to share our journeys to South America. One aspect that I really enjoyed, was judging the catfish group in the fish show. The ACA now has a few catfish classes which makes sense as many folks keep catfish with their cichlids. This idea was first done by the Ohio Cichlid Association (OCA) and has been adopted.

We hope fish shows can continue but we do realize it is stressful for both the fish and the aquarist. Hauling a prized fish to just share it in a show for a few days requires a lot of preparation as well as a watchful eye during the convention. Thankfully GCAS had tanks ready to go for all the show fish. The water quality was pretty perfect, and we cannot recall seeing many issues. Again, a great job by everyone involved! We look forward to the next big convention.

Speaking of which, the OCA Extravaganza is fast approaching. We plan to be in attendance for this event and can bring fish. If you have not been to this event and are within driving distance, please try to attend. This is a great event with around 400 attendees. This is not just a cichlid convention either as there are a number of catfish speakers and vendors that carry everything from plants and shrimp to killifish and livebearers. For more details, please visit their website: https://www.ohiocichlid.com/extravaganza/extravaganza-info.

The other event we plan to attend is the GCAS Fall Auction. If you are looking for rare fish, this is a great auction to attend that always has a great variety of fish, plants and inverts. If you see anything on our availability list you are interested in, please contact us at: jeremybasch@gmail.com. We can make arrangements for pick up at either event.

And that brings us to our last announcement. For serious buyers only, we are going to sell a group of 1 1/2-1 3/4″ Hypancistrus zebra. These fish are F1/F2 crosses! That’s correct, these fish have wild Zebra Pleco genes from a fish we imported before the ban many, many, many years ago. There will be up to 8 fish available. Please check our Fish Availability page for further details. Below are some images of the fish available for purchase. These fish are for pick up only at either the GCAS Fall Auction or the OCA Extravaganza. We will not be offering shipping so please do not ask.

Over the last several months we have been busy in the fishroom. We are working on moving fish around for more grow out space along with tanks for our pairs of discus. So far, we are at around ten 20H gallon aquariums that are ready for fry. The end goal will be twenty aquariums in total. This number may grow however as our needs change.

Our fish have also been busy. Our Apistogramma continue to produce offspring. Several notable species have started to reproduce including Apistogramma sp. “Abacaxis”, A. sp. “D37” and A. sp. “D39”. Other classic and iconic species also have fry, A. cacatuoides and A. agassizii. Most exciting might be that we now have a proven pair of discus, Symphysodon sp. from Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira. We have shared previous photos of each parent fish. More details about our discus can be found here: http://www.amazontropics.com/cichlidae/

Other updates include we are quite busy with the local fish club attempting to revive some of the fun activities of old. We have a rather full calendar and hope you can join us for some of these events. The next event we will be at will be the CAFE Swap next Saturday, May 11th. But we have other fun events planned including a club fishing trip and a fishroom crawl.

After this event, we will be the guest speaking at the OCA Extravaganza in June. We are filling in and helping as Lew Carbone assisted us with auctioneering duties last fall. If you happen to be in the area, please be sure to stop by. Details for this event can be found at the following link: Ohio Cichlid Association. Lastly, we will be guest speaking at the pillar of the aquarium hobby conventions at the American Cichlid Association convention in Cincinnati, OH. I highly encourage everyone to attend this event especially if you are within driving distance. This is one of the premier events in the country with guest speakers from all over. Our goal is also to bring some new and unusual species along for ride down to Cinci. Hope we see you there!

***Please note that the talk in Cleveland for OCA will not be the same talk that we present in Cincinnati for ACA.***

With all of the fish breeding, our fish availability should be very interesting in the coming months. Keep checking back for updates. For now, our fish availability list is up to date.

Last, we leave you with news that we now have juveniles from our Corydoras sp. “CW107”! We collected this species in the Rio Cudaryi, a tributary of the Rio Vaupes near Mitu, Colombia. We think you will like this lovely colored female, enjoy!

 

Well it is almost spring, and we have not had a chance to post in recent months. The fishroom has kept us quite busy with baby fish and normal maintenance. We are currently working more with Apistogramma and Corydoras but fear not as we plan to keep plugging away at other groups of fish soon. Additionally, Jeremy has taken on the president duties of the local fish club once more. Add to that a day job now working on some project work and you can see why we have been unable to post very much.

If that was not enough, we are also hard at work on our presentation for the Catfish Study Group’s annual convention. This is a meeting of the great catfish minds that takes place every year in the United Kingdom. We are truly honored to be going this year after having to cancel last year due to illness. It should be a jam-packed weekend with lots of talk on all things catfish. We cannot wait to meet everyone and talk about the fish we love so much! We hope to see everyone in England for this great event. If you happen to see us, please be sure to stop over and say hello! For now, here is sneak peek on the presentation we are working on.

It’s almost that time of the year! And we do not mean Christmas. We are less than a week from the Ohio Cichlid Association (OCA) Extravaganza. We are busy preparing for this special weekend.

This event is perhaps the largest gathering of fish lovers in the country. With guest speakers, a vendor room, a cichlid and catfish show, a swap and fish sold from hotel rooms, what more could you ask for? A special note, everyone should go to the speakers. We often are asked how we learned so much about fish and well, this is one of the ways. It is also the best way to learn about the newest fish species (there are so many and growing by the day)!

The plan this year is to assist a friend with their fish sales. So if you are wanting some fish of ours, you would be best off to pre-purchase the fish. For a full list of our availability, please visit our availability page: http://www.amazontropics.com/availability-list. For details on the Extravaganza, visit the OCA’s website: https://www.ohiocichlid.com/extravaganza/extravaganza-info.

See you there!

Fall is in the air and temperatures have quickly fallen in the last few weeks here in the Midwest. The local club recently had their auction. Hopefully everyone enjoyed our involvement with the New and Rare portion of the auction. There happened to be a bunch of neat plecos including Leporacanthicus joselimai, Hypancistrus sp. “L401”. H. sp. “L501”, Peckoltia sp. “L076”,  Panaqolus sp. “L397” and Ancistrus claro. A special thanks to our friend Todd Welch for providing these excellent fish!

Along those lines, we will be sharing a room with Todd at the upcoming OCA Extravaganza. This is perhaps the largest freshwater event in the nation with speakers, vendors, a showroom and aquarists from all over selling rare fish from their hotel room. Todd and I plan to have some amazing fish available for this event so be sure to check our room out while you are there. Please come visit with us November 16th-19th in Strongsville, OH.

Our big move to the new house is complete. While I cannot say that the fishroom will be larger, hopefully it will become more organized. It was fairly organized in the last house but there is always room for improvement.

However, it is going to be a while before we can say anything is organized. Whenever making a big move, the largest concern is the well being of the fish. And for that, careful observation during and after are required. It is stressful on both the fish and the keeper.

To add to the stress level, you have to prepare the new  fishroom with electric, water and air. Plus some of the overall sizes and weight of the aquariums must be tackled when moving. These were just some of the challenges we faced.

Some issues still exist in that the final air lines need to be run and a reverse osmosis system installed. But for now, the fish have settled and are safe. Fortunately we experienced only a limited amount of casualties. They include a few juvenile Corydoras, a single female Ageneiosus magoi, Tatia gyrina and our lone wild male Duringlanis romani. The Ageneiosus was particularly surprising because the fish were moved in very short order from the old location to new within a few hours. Plus the other fish that were in the same bag showed no signs of stress. The Duringlanis was unfortunate because we had personally collected this fish in Colombia in early 2019. His offspring live on however and we hope they go on to produce many more offspring.

With that, we will draw this update to a close. Below are a few images of the new fishroom. These were taken midway through the the move. Most of the tanks are now 10s and 20Hs. We still have some other sizes though including 30s, 65s, a 100, a 125 and a 150. The total number of tanks is at a comfortable 106.

The next events we plan to attend will be the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society (GCAS) Fall Auction, the Columbus Area Fish Enthusiasts (CAFE) Fall Auction and the Ohio Cichlid Association (OCA) Extravaganza. Hope to see you at one of these fantastic events!

We are on the move! We are starting the process of physically moving our fishroom to our new home. It will take pretty much the rest of the month to move all the fish tanks. We apologize if we are unable to respond but will update once complete. We can’t wait to be in our new home!

We can’t wait for this special event! And we get to visit some friends in the process. Perhaps we will even take a little vacation. See you there!

We apologize for not updating our website last weekend. We ended up prepping some things for the move and visiting with family. We will work to update the website as soon as possible.