CCA – Ron Nielson – March 2008

March 10th, 2008

Capital Cichlid AssociationOn Saturday, I attended the Capital Cichlid Association’s March meeting. The speaker for this month’s meeting was CCA member, Ron Nielson, who gave a presentation on the “Conservation of Malagasy Cichlids,” which is the precursor for the same talk he will be giving at the American Cichlid Association’s yearly convention in Atlanta, GA later this year.

Since Ron will be giving a very similar talk at the ACA convention, I don’t want to post many specifics about his presentation. I will say that it was quite interesting because prior to the meeting, I could not name a single cichlid from Madagascar. Many of these fish are on the endangered species list, or not far from it due to the terrible loss of habitat in the country. Introduction of food fish to the rivers have further threatened the native species.

Paretroplus nourissati

For this reason, it’s great that Ron and others are doing their best to stimulate interest in this group of fish, and provide details about how to successfully keep and breed them in our aquariums. Most of the available cichlids (various Paratilapia, Ptychochromis, and Paretroplus) require large tanks to keep, but Ron has managed to keep some of them happily in much smaller quarters than conventional wisdom suggests.

Paretroplus menarambo

I don’t know if I am going to be able to make it to the ACA convention this year, but for anyone that does, you definitely don’t want to miss Ron’s presentation. I promise you’ll learn something! For those that can’t, you can visit Ron’s website at http://fishpost.com to learn more about these great fish.

Additionally, CCA announced that later this summer they’re hoping to host a swap meet in the area, which will allow all of the local clubs, vendors, etc to setup tables to sell items. Any hobbyist looking to obtain plants or fish that are otherwise hard to come by, this will be the place to do it. The date will most likely be July 13th, but that’s still somewhat up in the air.