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- Introduction
- Greater Chicago Cichlid Association’s Cichlid Classic 2007 (May 2007)
- Happy Holidays! (December 2007)
Greater Chicago Cichlid Association’s Cichlid Classic 2007 (May 2007)
Just back from the Cichlid Classic. For some strange reason I was convinced to rent a van and drive down so other fellow cichlid nuts could tag along for the ride instead of flying down so I could give a talk. Somewhere in the middle of Wisconsin I do believe I started to question my line of thinking.
Winnipeg to Chicago is just a short 1350 km, a mixture of flat boring fields to almost as boring slightly rolling hills with a couple hours of construction in Minneapolis to experience in the middle of it all! Once again, whose wise idea was it to drive?
We departed at 10 PM and got to the border at around 11. Close to 1 AM after they finished “inspecting” John Sabo and his Geophagus iporogensis we were finally on our way again.
I had planned on stopping in to visit Pelvicachromis / dwarf cichlidnut Ted Judy as his place was only a few miles off the interstate towards Chicago in Wisconsin. Ted greeted us all perky and full of a goodnights rest that morning, while the rest of us had been up nearly 36 hours at this point and didn’t quite meet him with the same fervor.
Female of Pelvicachromis taeniatus “Moliwe”
It was great to see someone who likes so many small fish on his own! Usually when I see a hobbyist with these interests they have some over powering spouse behind them that do not let their fish get out of a closet or some secluded area of the house they can close off immediately upon company coming over. Their hatred of the fish does not typically allow for them to get big tanks with cool fish, but Ted has a big fishroom nicely laid out with… all small fish! (and by the sounds of it has a nice wife, albeit she was at work while we were there!) The man actually likes small fish on his own though! Amazing I tell you. I heard of people like him, just never believed they actually existed.
Not only does Ted love his fish!
Upon arriving at the hotel the Classic was being held in I met up with a huge host of familiar faces from previous American Cichlid Association conventions. Chicago itself has a number of extremely well known and great hobbyists. In the afternoon John Sabo and I took a tour of Rick Perez’s fish house which I must say is definitely the anti-Ted room…. Everything in there was tank busters! Rick’s place is so big (at least a 150 tanks I would say) and full of tanks that it is nearly impossible to take a picture of it to do the place justice.
For those who have never been to a big Cichlid show the GCCA classic is definitely a good choice for a first time show. They are a big show which always has great participation, a load of great speakers and a massive auction on the Sunday. It happens annually on the American Memorial Day weekend. (For us Canadians that makes it a week after we celebrate the old dead Queen in May)
Some of the show tanks for the all cichlid show
Later that evening a group of us stole my favorite fish speaker of all time, Dr. Ron Coleman from the parking lot as he entered the hotel to go off and dine on my favorite kind of food… Churrascaria!!! (Brazilian Steakhouse) This evening’s choice was Texas de Brazil. Due to the highly competitive market of these new restaurants in the states the buggers would not let me take any pictures of the feast they put before you. While in Southern Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia or Uruguay this is the normal fare you eat every night. Check out their Web site - Vegans beware!
The Friday before the lectures began we decided to see some of the town. With the amount of time it took to get into and back out of downtown Chicago we were only left with enough time to check out this dead zoo place they called the Field Museum. Never have I seen so many dead animals. Be it the size of a whale or African elephant or the tiniest of birds they had it all. Even had a big collection of stuffed dead extinct animals and dinosaurs galore! I wonder to myself though if the curators here would call themselves zookeepers?
Not only was it a dead zoo but the basement was full of dead people from Egypt. Now call me crazy but I do not think I want a few thousand people parading by me every day taking a peak after I kick it.
This place was huge though, someone wise once told me that if you were to glance over all the captions in the museum you would have to come at least ten consecutive days and stay for the entire time they are open to take it all in. I on the other hand just kept thinking to myself… this would be the coolest place ever to play hide and go seek!!!
The Dead Zoo (The Field Museum)
Some gender confused relic from New Ireland
The Ostrich family – note the rhea in the front… much easier to photograph while stuffed and mounted in a glass case!
Later that evening the lectures began. First up was Ariel Bornstein speaking on the beautiful brown fishies of West Africa, Queen B.I.T.C.H. (Babes in the Cichlid Hobby) Pam Chin was next talking about a trip to Tanganyika and the fish itself. I ended up speaking third. Just prior to the Classic weekend though they informed us all that we had only 1 hour time slots counting speaking, questions and set up. They booked me to speak about Uruguay and in attempts to fit into the 1 hour time slot I shed 117 slides from my talk. Dr. Ron Coleman also was dealing with the same issues and was perplexed on what to lose out of the talk. However luckily for us the two speakers before us both ended up going under time and gave us both an opportunity to push it to 65-70 minutes. I managed to show 717 pictures of Uruguay in 64 and a half minutes though I am proud to say! I think the folks are still dizzy.
Saturday featured a full day of fish talks starting at 9 am, vendors and fish sellers galore haggling their wares off on the visitors to the show. The afternoon featured not one, but two lectures on fish disease!!! They even had a full fish pathology procedure which Adrian gleefully volunteered to participate in. A new method to his carving skills! (for those who do not know is my business partner in the studio, check out his cool stuff) Apparently though fish disease is a big problem in Chicago!
Thankfully though the folks running the show did not select either one of these presentations for the banquet. To this day I still can’t forget the glorious topic of “Diseases of Discus” for a banquet talk at a Texas Cichlid Association show I once spoke at.
The chore of doing the banquet talk was left to me of course. My supposedly good friend Charley Grimes from Indianapolis was originally slated to do the banquet. When they found out that the two of us do a duet it was suddenly changed to that and I was weaseled into doing it, then Charley decided his love of live flake food (Killiefish) was far greater and blew us all off to attend the live food convention (AKA) in Milwaukee that same weekend. Which of course meant I was left to fly solo on the banquet.
Banquet talks are always the most challenging as you typically have a room full of people who are more than tired of listening to fish talks all weekend and have somehow convinced to bring their spouses who typically could care less about the fish. This was further emphasized by one of their executive members, Rick Borstein in the club who introduced me pointing out that this was the first time in years that he was able to convince his wife to come out to listen to a talk and it was on me to make sure she went home happy and satisfied. (Probably so he could sneak more fish tanks into the home without grief I suspect) Luckily for me though this woman had the biggest and loudest laugh in the entire room and I managed to give this fine fellow hope of expansion of his hobby. I was even more surprised when she came up after and said she thought it would be a good idea if her husband would go on a collecting trip with me! Another converted I say!
The winner of the big show this year was a beautiful big exCichlasoma pearsi (well over a foot in length) brought in from Cleveland by Ron Georgeone. Ron for those of you who do not know is probably the most decorated fish show guy ever.
Excichlasoma pearsi – one of the water cows of Central America. At first glance most would think that this is a meat eating fish which it does readily accept such diet, however in nature it feeds predominantly on vegetation and mimicking this allows it to reach full potential in the aquarium.
Later that night that Rick Borstein and his son held a Cichlid poetry jam (I sh*% you not!) bongos and banjos abound they fired jams of cichlid poetry well into the wee hours of the night in the hospitality suite. The fish hobby never ceases to amaze me… never did I think these three things would ever come together!
The following day was the auction; they had a fair sized auction that started at 10 AM. I would roughly guess they easily had enough to go well past 6 PM of just cichlids only. The crew of us gathered local member Mike Helford in our futile attempts again to take him out for lunch. Mike for those of you who do not know is so nice you almost want to scream. Unfortunately we lost once again.
After yet another feast we packed up and headed back. On the way home Adrian stopped at a gas station in Minneapolis which I kid you not was a porn shack with some gas pumps. Strangely enough the guys didn’t notice this at all as they were more concerned about using the washroom. It did however have over 25 cents a gallon cheaper gas than anywhere else! Guess the porn was paying the difference. On the road home the guys loaded up with at least two hundred fish they bought through the weekend or was given to them. Thankfully the Canadian border folks are far more understanding of our hobby then the Americans. Though personally I was routing for the woman to give John the glove!
Next time I think I will plant this picture of John before inspection…..
