Central Virginia Aquarium Society

Just like any "new baby," my fellow hobbyists and I are still trying to get our aquarium club on a schedule. The holidays proved to be too busy of a time to try to meet, so we finally managed to get most of the board members together and Sunday, February 26, 2012 is on the calendar for our next open meeting. This will be held at Cichlid Solutions, the business of Mark Snead, one of our board members.

He has very generously donated his shop to our club in the past, and it proves to be very well suited to our needs, so a big Thank You to Mark for his willingness to play host. Our members can bring livestock and float bags in his tanks, and it is always fun to see what species might be coming through the door. We also decided on a swap-type item exchange (bring something, take something) so we can all clean out our fish rooms and hopefully someone will find use for items we no longer need.

Our members are also invited to bring along livestock or items that they wish to sell, not swap, and this gives them an opportunity to network and sell some fish, plants, snails or equipment that they might have to place a Craig's List ad to sell. Our auctions have proven to be very successful in the past as well, but they tend to eat up quite a bit of time, and we need to streamline the process.

We typically have members from our sister chapter, the Tidewater Virginia Chapter, attend our meetings, and this is a boon for us; they are a group of dedicated hobbyists with a lot of knowledge and much to offer, so we appreciate them driving to Richmond. Our Central Virginia Chapter members also try to attend the Tidewater meetings as they get their own club off the ground. They'll be meeting this coming Saturday, 1/28, and since they're planning every-other-month gatherings we thought we'd schedule ours for February so there'd be no overlap.

The other item of business at our board meeting last night was getting our website off the ground. Mark has offered to work with me on it, and I do need some help. A related matter, and quite pressing, is the creation of a logo for the club. There are SO MANY options of how to go with this, so we're a bit stymied. We need some samples or mockups that we can look at to determine what type of logo we want. Do we want to go with something official looking, like the outline of the state of Virginia with our club name/initials inside it, and maybe the silhouette of a fish? Do we want something modern and stylized, maybe our club initials formed into the shape of a fish? We're not sure!

We could agree, however, that our logo ought to have the outline of a fish, and we settled on a freshwater angelfish, P. scalare, as a readily identifiable shape that anyone can identify as an aquarium fish. Many other species are simply torpedo-shaped, and could represent a sport fish, for instance, so we want to be clearly associated with the aquarium hobby in our logo somehow. The common goldfish would also work, as a backup plan if we can't utilize an angelfish. We decided that the board itself will come up with the logo (most of our members are on the board anyway!) and present it to the club once we have an image finalized, rather than have all our members try to agree on a design.

We can then get our website finished and also use the logo for a Facebook page, since that will prove to be a great resource to communicate with our members and announce meetings. We are certainly dragging our feet with this club, but we still manage to stay in touch and hold things together, so there's hope! Everyone has things going on in their lives that causes delays, but we'll get it established, I think. I'm always optimistic after a board meeting! We've got some great folks involved.

Figure 8 Puffer

Here is a dim and grainy photo of Otis' tank. I've had him about 4 years now, and not too long ago upgraded him into a 20-long, which suits him very well (if you click on the pic you can see him at the bottom near the left archway). I am currently having a bit of a falling out with my camera and he is too fast for me to capture a clear image.

The tank is empty-looking, for sure, but this is a messy, busy fish that is constantly exploring and poking around the rocks, and keeping the tank clean is a chore with a smaller tank. Even so, I have a constant battle with diatom algae and hair algae.


The tank is open on all sides, sitting out on a desk, so the rockwork is stacked in the center of the tank, and Otis goes through the openings from one side of the tank to the other. He does not seem to have a preference for one part of the tank or the other, and he's never still that I can see. From time to time I rearrange the rocks in a new formation to keep him interested, and to change his paths of travel.


Otis will actually come up out of the water if you put your hand over the top, and he will also splash the surface with his tail to get my attention to be fed, even if he has recently eaten. I know fish are pets, but this fish is the most pet-like of any I have ever owned.


This is a brackish tank, and this is not a problem at all to maintain. The only complaint I have is "salt creep," which means caked salt accumulates around the rim of the HOB filter, and will literally travel, adding onto itself, until it flakes off onto the desk. The heater cord also is a conduit for salt crystals, and it will travel down the entire length of the cord, if I let it. I generally keep on top of it by flaking it back into the tank as it accumulates. I keep an eye on the salinity and keep it brackish, which means my water changes will utilize varying ratios of fresh to marine mix water. As the water level in the tank goes down due to evaporation, the salt that used to be in the evaporated water is still in the tank, so you can't simply use the same ratios every time. 


Fortunately, he can tolerate some fluctuations in salinity (many swear these are full FW fish and keep them that way, though I'm convinced they are happiest brackish) so it is not terribly challenging to maintain a brackish tank for him.