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It's been awhile since I posted here but the new society thread and its complexity caught my attention. I thought I might be able to offer some necessary context to both sides of the discussion. I suppose I would be considered a real "old timer" in the Houston Aquarium Society (and hobby scene) as I was invited to join the HAS by its then President, Marian Van Zant, in 1970 and was insanely active until 1978-79. Actually, she called to invite me to speak to HAS on breeding killifish but when she discovered I was only a 12 year old breeder of killifish she suggested I just come to the meeting and join. She had heard from local stores that I was a "kille guy" but they had failed to mention my young age. (I started with killies at age 9 after seeing my first ones at age 7 on the opening day of the then new Neptune Tropical Fish (later Neptune Pet Centers) on Bellaire Blvd at Stella Link. Neptune's killies had been raised by Lee McCallister (who later went on to open the wonderful Lee's World of Pets on Long Point Road and, of course, Lee's specialized in killies raised by the fine breeder Ed Warner in Illinois) and by the killifish legend and founding member of the American Killifish Association, John Gonzales of Philadelphia. John was one of the great breeders of all kinds of fish in the US hobby, starting back in the 1930's (one of the first to raise neons on a commercial level) and in the late 50's and throughout the 60's he made his living raising and importing killies (and angels) and selling them nationwide. I understand one year he cleared $20,000 on killies, which was quite a sum in 1961-62 dollars. His ads appeared in the national magazines and Neptune used him as a supplier.
My first HAS meeting was an unforgetable experience. Marian had roped in the future Dr. Glen Collier, then a genetics student at A&M, to talk killies. Glen was a charter member of the AKA in 1962 and presented a fantastic program. He is one of the leading killifish scientists today, his DNA studies having redefined the family. I was already a member of the American Killifish Association, having joined in 1969, as, I believe, its youngest member up until that point in its history. That night, Glen suggested we start a local killifish discussion group and by July we were meeting at Dale McClenden's house in Seabrook to organize our group. It was part of HAS and became the first of the specialized clubs that HAS would spawn and sponsor in the early to mid-70's. These included a guppy club (that later joined the IFGA and became the Houston Guppy Club hosting enormous IFGA sanctioned shows in the area's malls in the early 70's), a highly popular cichlid club (mainly Rift Lake fish), a betta club and a native fish club. So besides the regular HAS meetings at the Museum of Natural History (starting in 1968-69 and running until the late 70's), there were 5 additional monthly meetings to attend every month during most of the 70's, 2 large mall shows, a Boat Show all species tank show every January, montly bowl shows, a picnic, a Xmas party, a monthly magazine, 12 monthly meetings with wonderful programs from talks to films covering all aspects of the aquatic world with many speakers being local professors and professionals engaged in research, monthly board of directors meetings, as well as 2 annual collecting trips - but no auctions at all, except for a small "Baffle" at monthly meetings. Raffles were illegal then so it was called a "Baffle". HAS probably had around 50-100 members during any given point during this exciting and expanding period and monthly meetings usually consistantly attracted 40 or more people. The influx of Rift Lake Cichlids made the hobby fascinating and lucrative and the rapidly advancing knowledge when it came to keeping killies, discus, show guppies, etc made breeding an adventure. A solid working/lower middle class economy led many regular "joes" and "janes" to enter the hobby to raise some fish for a bit of extra income or to satisfy intellectual impulses that went unsatisfied at work.
Under Dale McClenden, Ben Hale and Ed Maki, HAS put out a fine monthly magazine for the members, full of original articles and it was even sold in the local tropical fish stores. HAS had its own printing press - not copier - press and so the magazine had a wondeful professional look. Robert Christensen took it over after Ed Maki and although his work as editor was not on the previous three's level, he kept it going almost singlehandedly. I brought Bob into HAS through the Boat Show display as I would later bring in another future longtime fixture of HAS, Silva St. Germain. I talked them to death about fish so they had no choice but to join as they would later say.
HAS had a hot and cold relationship with some dealers but many local dealers were great supporters - the original Fish Ranch, Pasadena Aquarium, Cichlid Imports, the original Kidd's Aquarium, The Fish Bowl, The Reef, Tropical Fish Imports, Freelands, Houston Aquarium Supply, Billy Lomax, Roy Wellman, later Village Tropical Fish, etc.
In 1973, when it was HAS's turn to host the FOTAS Convention (there were 8 or 9 clubs involved then so the convention rotated over the entire state - even Amarillo with TWO clubs!), I convinced my fellow HAS board of directors to re-imagine FOTAS. Until then, it had been a rather local affair, a kind of good ol'boys (and gals) socializing event with a banquet speaker. (Al Klee accompanied by his good friend and fellow American Cichlid Asso. organizer Robert Goldstein had addressed the 1967 FOTAS Convention in Houston.) I wanted Friday and Saturday night speakers, 2 dinners, an all-day set of various workshops on Saturday and a national week long mall show and a large open auction on the closing Sunday. All the national specialty fish clubs sent in fish for show and auction and HAS set up a massive tank show in Memorial City Mall, down the Katy Freeway from the old Red Carpet Inn where the convention was held. I was able to get hobby legend Rosario LaCorte to come down and speak at the Saturday night banquet. Lou Harris covered the Friday night BBQ with a program on native fish and aquatic plants - her great specialty. (The early HAS years (1952 or so -1959) were characterized by a deep interest in the club in native fishes. This spawned the 2 yearly collecting trips - one freshwater, one saltwater - that HAS used to conduct around the state (often led by Lou) and also led to the publication of a special edition of the club magazine - The Fish Fancier - that was essentially a book length treatment of fishes of the Gulf Coast. I cherish my copy of this rare and informative manuscript from about 1954. This interest also led to the trading of native fish (long before that was habitual in the hobby) with the great California aquarist Gene Wolfsheimer by HAS leading light Walter Kirby. Gene wrote it all up in the premier hobby journal of the period, The Aquarium Journal out of San Francisco.)
The 1973 FOTAS Convention HAS carried out with great success set the new pattern that all future FOTAS conventions - up until today - would follow - basically the modern model the national specialty fish clubs had pioneered in the 1960's, particularly the first of those clubs - the American Killifish Association. I am immensely proud that I was able to initiate that massive change and that it has been more or less followed throughout the ensuing decades.
Also, at this FOTAS convention the first state-wide set of judging standards and judge qualifications for FOTAS societies was established - a long held dream of HAS's Hal Collins. I believe this is also when Keith Arnold first entered the FOTAS picture from the former Brazos Valley Aquarium Society.
Probably the most fascinating period of HAS's history is to be found in the 1950's, from its inception (I believe but would need to double check) at the E. Cullen building on the UH campus in 1950, 1951 or 1952 (need to check) until the early 1960's when the era of the 1950's officially ended. HAS boasted 500 members during this period. The membership was led by a group of upper middle class Houstonians from the West University, Montrose and Heights areas - particularly the Logans who lived on Sunset Blvd. Meetings later moved from UH to various bank buildings in downtown Houston. Such places, like the 70's meetings at the Museum of Natural History, lent an air of seriousness and organization to the proceedings. Much like the meetings of the Houston Orchid Society at the Garden Center in Hermann Park. The society was something special.
Houston contained an extraordinary collection of tropical fish stores then. Many were owned by society members and many bred and raised their own fish. D. B. Cosby was a leading retailer, HAS member and great fish breeder. So was Billy Lomax, who I believe originally worked for Cosby. D. B. Cosby originated the Cosby variety of Blue Gouramis, also known as the Opaline Gourami today.
The stellar store of the era was Fischer's Aquatic Gardens on Quitman in the Heights (right by the Freeway exit today). Fischer was a German immigrant who as a sailor had been involved in the pioneering German tropical fish business, collecting fish for the big German import/export houses such as the famious Aquarium Hamburg during his voyages (a great mostly untold story of the hobby). He was in the US when WWII broke out, so he stayed here and later turned his home into a fish lover's wonderland. His property was filled with goldfish and water lilly ponds. He brought the first koi to Houston in the 60's and the Chronicle told the story. He raised and sold live daphnia. He built a modern greenhouse full of tanks where he raised all his own tropicals. He was known for his large deep black sailfin mollies and a seemingly magical "riversand" for growing plants long before hobbyists discovered the special plant sands of today.
HAS's magazine The Fish Fancier was edited by "Crickett Jones" and he produced a fine magazine. I have most of the issues from between around 1950 and 1954 and then from 1962-1969, all given to me by a friend who. She was one of the founding and leading members of HAS. Jones held the society together through thick and thin. His death in early 1970, right before I arrived, set HAS on its new course throughout the 70's. He was a monumental figure. The Fish Fancier from these 2 "Crickett" periods are a treasure trove of Texas aquarium keeping history.
One of the popular projects of the 50's was installing and maintaining aquariums in local hospitals by HAS members. This was an enormous undertaking for which many in the club volunteered. It was discontinued at the end of the 50's but Hal Collins, the grand old man of HAS, would keep its spirit going in local schools throughout the 1990's and into the early 2000's.
Another early HAS project was the push to build a public aquarium in Houston. A member of HAS discovered in the early 50's a small local worm that could be easily cultured and used as a good live food source for fish. The club devoted itself to raising the "HAS dwarf white worm" and in the early to mid-1950's it was sold nationwide by HAS. All the magazines carried articles introducing it and it was a big success. All profits were donated to a public aquarium fund that was later given to the Houston Zoo when it opened a small public aquarium in the late 1970's. At the same time, early-mid 1950's, a hobbyist in Sweden introduced to the hobby a small white worm that was named after her - the Grindal Worm. It is hard to say if today's popular grindal worms are Mrs. Grindal's or the "HAS dwarf white worm". I suspect they are mostly the HAS worms as they sold well all over the country and do well in heat; whereas, one would think a Swedish worm would need at least some period of cold much like the old larger white worm of the hobby. Today's "grindals" do not need cold temperatures.
One of the highlights of the early HAS was the visit of Dr. Myron Gordon of swordtail and play fame from the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. Gordon was a poineer in cancer research using Xiphophoris species he collected in Mexico starting in the 1930's and was by that time one of the true legends of the fish keeping hobby - and still is to this very day. He was in Houston because of his cancer research. He met with members of the HAS. Of course, today, Dr. Gordon's original lab is the famous Xiphophorus Center at Southwestern State University in San Marcos.
The hobby in Houston was on such a level by the early 60's that Bernard Halverson, a leading HAS member and a national figure in the hobby then, was invited to be one of the 6 or 7 founding members of the American Killifish Association in 1961-62. The AKA laid the foundation for all the other national clubs. They all used its model and do so to this day. Bernard is a friend.
A startling part of the hobby history in Houston is that one of the early successful but still unknown discus breeders in the 50's - when almost no one was breeding discus with regularity - was an HAS member - Louis Joeris. Louis was a fine fish breeder raising great killies outside in the summer in rain barrels and he raised at least 5 generations of discus in his Heights home. He gave up breeding when a power outage wiped him out one winter.
So, Houston once supported a notable society that was great fun, well organized, full of members, with monthly meetings and magazines and it was extremely active in the national hobby as a whole as well as locally. This all started to die off in the 80's and continued to do so through the 90's when I became active again for a number of years. By the end of the 70's Houston started to lack the kind of serious hobbyist breeders the still successful clubs have and HAS once had. The people with a 100 tanks, full of many species, who go on collecting trips, write, attend the national conventions, seriously correspond with other hobbyists all over the world, trade/sell home grown fish, introduce new species and varieties and have a specially outfitted room devoted to the process. Maybe the lack of basements explain this loss but the houses are certainly big enough for fishrooms or even backyard fish houses like in Great Britain. Without these deeply serious and committed hobbyists it is hard to have an intensely active club. They provide the backbone and excitement from their obsession. Houston supported/produced/attracted people like that once but I don't believe there are too many of those hobbyists today. These kind of people are like dog breeders/showers or orchid growers with greenhouses full of 100's or 1000's of plants. No one can force the development of these kind of hobbyists but they do seem to still exist here in the East and in the Mid-West. By the end of the 70's, they were getting few and far between in Houston - except maybe when it came to Rift Lake Cichlids. So Houston has developed something else today. Maybe a critical mass of such people will once again appear in some form.
It's been awhile since I posted here but the new society thread and its complexity caught my attention. I thought I might be able to offer some necessary context to both sides of the discussion. I suppose I would be considered a real "old timer" in the Houston Aquarium Society (and hobby scene) as I was invited to join the HAS by its then President, Marian Van Zant, in 1970 and was insanely active until 1978-79. Actually, she called to invite me to speak to HAS on breeding killifish but when she discovered I was only a 12 year old breeder of killifish she suggested I just come to the meeting and join. She had heard from local stores that I was a "kille guy" but they had failed to mention my young age. (I started with killies at age 9 after seeing my first ones at age 7 on the opening day of the then new Neptune Tropical Fish (later Neptune Pet Centers) on Bellaire Blvd at Stella Link. Neptune's killies had been raised by Lee McCallister (who later went on to open the wonderful Lee's World of Pets on Long Point Road and, of course, Lee's specialized in killies raised by the fine breeder Ed Warner in Illinois) and by the killifish legend and founding member of the American Killifish Association, John Gonzales of Philadelphia. John was one of the great breeders of all kinds of fish in the US hobby, starting back in the 1930's (one of the first to raise neons on a commercial level) and in the late 50's and throughout the 60's he made his living raising and importing killies (and angels) and selling them nationwide. I understand one year he cleared $20,000 on killies, which was quite a sum in 1961-62 dollars. His ads appeared in the national magazines and Neptune used him as a supplier.
My first HAS meeting was an unforgetable experience. Marian had roped in the future Dr. Glen Collier, then a genetics student at A&M, to talk killies. Glen was a charter member of the AKA in 1962 and presented a fantastic program. He is one of the leading killifish scientists today, his DNA studies having redefined the family. I was already a member of the American Killifish Association, having joined in 1969, as, I believe, its youngest member up until that point in its history. That night, Glen suggested we start a local killifish discussion group and by July we were meeting at Dale McClenden's house in Seabrook to organize our group. It was part of HAS and became the first of the specialized clubs that HAS would spawn and sponsor in the early to mid-70's. These included a guppy club (that later joined the IFGA and became the Houston Guppy Club hosting enormous IFGA sanctioned shows in the area's malls in the early 70's), a highly popular cichlid club (mainly Rift Lake fish), a betta club and a native fish club. So besides the regular HAS meetings at the Museum of Natural History (starting in 1968-69 and running until the late 70's), there were 5 additional monthly meetings to attend every month during most of the 70's, 2 large mall shows, a Boat Show all species tank show every January, montly bowl shows, a picnic, a Xmas party, a monthly magazine, 12 monthly meetings with wonderful programs from talks to films covering all aspects of the aquatic world with many speakers being local professors and professionals engaged in research, monthly board of directors meetings, as well as 2 annual collecting trips - but no auctions at all, except for a small "Baffle" at monthly meetings. Raffles were illegal then so it was called a "Baffle". HAS probably had around 50-100 members during any given point during this exciting and expanding period and monthly meetings usually consistantly attracted 40 or more people. The influx of Rift Lake Cichlids made the hobby fascinating and lucrative and the rapidly advancing knowledge when it came to keeping killies, discus, show guppies, etc made breeding an adventure. A solid working/lower middle class economy led many regular "joes" and "janes" to enter the hobby to raise some fish for a bit of extra income or to satisfy intellectual impulses that went unsatisfied at work.
Under Dale McClenden, Ben Hale and Ed Maki, HAS put out a fine monthly magazine for the members, full of original articles and it was even sold in the local tropical fish stores. HAS had its own printing press - not copier - press and so the magazine had a wondeful professional look. Robert Christensen took it over after Ed Maki and although his work as editor was not on the previous three's level, he kept it going almost singlehandedly. I brought Bob into HAS through the Boat Show display as I would later bring in another future longtime fixture of HAS, Silva St. Germain. I talked them to death about fish so they had no choice but to join as they would later say.
HAS had a hot and cold relationship with some dealers but many local dealers were great supporters - the original Fish Ranch, Pasadena Aquarium, Cichlid Imports, the original Kidd's Aquarium, The Fish Bowl, The Reef, Tropical Fish Imports, Freelands, Houston Aquarium Supply, Billy Lomax, Roy Wellman, later Village Tropical Fish, etc.
In 1973, when it was HAS's turn to host the FOTAS Convention (there were 8 or 9 clubs involved then so the convention rotated over the entire state - even Amarillo with TWO clubs!), I convinced my fellow HAS board of directors to re-imagine FOTAS. Until then, it had been a rather local affair, a kind of good ol'boys (and gals) socializing event with a banquet speaker. (Al Klee accompanied by his good friend and fellow American Cichlid Asso. organizer Robert Goldstein had addressed the 1967 FOTAS Convention in Houston.) I wanted Friday and Saturday night speakers, 2 dinners, an all-day set of various workshops on Saturday and a national week long mall show and a large open auction on the closing Sunday. All the national specialty fish clubs sent in fish for show and auction and HAS set up a massive tank show in Memorial City Mall, down the Katy Freeway from the old Red Carpet Inn where the convention was held. I was able to get hobby legend Rosario LaCorte to come down and speak at the Saturday night banquet. Lou Harris covered the Friday night BBQ with a program on native fish and aquatic plants - her great specialty. (The early HAS years (1952 or so -1959) were characterized by a deep interest in the club in native fishes. This spawned the 2 yearly collecting trips - one freshwater, one saltwater - that HAS used to conduct around the state (often led by Lou) and also led to the publication of a special edition of the club magazine - The Fish Fancier - that was essentially a book length treatment of fishes of the Gulf Coast. I cherish my copy of this rare and informative manuscript from about 1954. This interest also led to the trading of native fish (long before that was habitual in the hobby) with the great California aquarist Gene Wolfsheimer by HAS leading light Walter Kirby. Gene wrote it all up in the premier hobby journal of the period, The Aquarium Journal out of San Francisco.)
The 1973 FOTAS Convention HAS carried out with great success set the new pattern that all future FOTAS conventions - up until today - would follow - basically the modern model the national specialty fish clubs had pioneered in the 1960's, particularly the first of those clubs - the American Killifish Association. I am immensely proud that I was able to initiate that massive change and that it has been more or less followed throughout the ensuing decades.
Also, at this FOTAS convention the first state-wide set of judging standards and judge qualifications for FOTAS societies was established - a long held dream of HAS's Hal Collins. I believe this is also when Keith Arnold first entered the FOTAS picture from the former Brazos Valley Aquarium Society.
Probably the most fascinating period of HAS's history is to be found in the 1950's, from its inception (I believe but would need to double check) at the E. Cullen building on the UH campus in 1950, 1951 or 1952 (need to check) until the early 1960's when the era of the 1950's officially ended. HAS boasted 500 members during this period. The membership was led by a group of upper middle class Houstonians from the West University, Montrose and Heights areas - particularly the Logans who lived on Sunset Blvd. Meetings later moved from UH to various bank buildings in downtown Houston. Such places, like the 70's meetings at the Museum of Natural History, lent an air of seriousness and organization to the proceedings. Much like the meetings of the Houston Orchid Society at the Garden Center in Hermann Park. The society was something special.
Houston contained an extraordinary collection of tropical fish stores then. Many were owned by society members and many bred and raised their own fish. D. B. Cosby was a leading retailer, HAS member and great fish breeder. So was Billy Lomax, who I believe originally worked for Cosby. D. B. Cosby originated the Cosby variety of Blue Gouramis, also known as the Opaline Gourami today.
The stellar store of the era was Fischer's Aquatic Gardens on Quitman in the Heights (right by the Freeway exit today). Fischer was a German immigrant who as a sailor had been involved in the pioneering German tropical fish business, collecting fish for the big German import/export houses such as the famious Aquarium Hamburg during his voyages (a great mostly untold story of the hobby). He was in the US when WWII broke out, so he stayed here and later turned his home into a fish lover's wonderland. His property was filled with goldfish and water lilly ponds. He brought the first koi to Houston in the 60's and the Chronicle told the story. He raised and sold live daphnia. He built a modern greenhouse full of tanks where he raised all his own tropicals. He was known for his large deep black sailfin mollies and a seemingly magical "riversand" for growing plants long before hobbyists discovered the special plant sands of today.
HAS's magazine The Fish Fancier was edited by "Crickett Jones" and he produced a fine magazine. I have most of the issues from between around 1950 and 1954 and then from 1962-1969, all given to me by a friend who. She was one of the founding and leading members of HAS. Jones held the society together through thick and thin. His death in early 1970, right before I arrived, set HAS on its new course throughout the 70's. He was a monumental figure. The Fish Fancier from these 2 "Crickett" periods are a treasure trove of Texas aquarium keeping history.
One of the popular projects of the 50's was installing and maintaining aquariums in local hospitals by HAS members. This was an enormous undertaking for which many in the club volunteered. It was discontinued at the end of the 50's but Hal Collins, the grand old man of HAS, would keep its spirit going in local schools throughout the 1990's and into the early 2000's.
Another early HAS project was the push to build a public aquarium in Houston. A member of HAS discovered in the early 50's a small local worm that could be easily cultured and used as a good live food source for fish. The club devoted itself to raising the "HAS dwarf white worm" and in the early to mid-1950's it was sold nationwide by HAS. All the magazines carried articles introducing it and it was a big success. All profits were donated to a public aquarium fund that was later given to the Houston Zoo when it opened a small public aquarium in the late 1970's. At the same time, early-mid 1950's, a hobbyist in Sweden introduced to the hobby a small white worm that was named after her - the Grindal Worm. It is hard to say if today's popular grindal worms are Mrs. Grindal's or the "HAS dwarf white worm". I suspect they are mostly the HAS worms as they sold well all over the country and do well in heat; whereas, one would think a Swedish worm would need at least some period of cold much like the old larger white worm of the hobby. Today's "grindals" do not need cold temperatures.
One of the highlights of the early HAS was the visit of Dr. Myron Gordon of swordtail and play fame from the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. Gordon was a poineer in cancer research using Xiphophoris species he collected in Mexico starting in the 1930's and was by that time one of the true legends of the fish keeping hobby - and still is to this very day. He was in Houston because of his cancer research. He met with members of the HAS. Of course, today, Dr. Gordon's original lab is the famous Xiphophorus Center at Southwestern State University in San Marcos.
The hobby in Houston was on such a level by the early 60's that Bernard Halverson, a leading HAS member and a national figure in the hobby then, was invited to be one of the 6 or 7 founding members of the American Killifish Association in 1961-62. The AKA laid the foundation for all the other national clubs. They all used its model and do so to this day. Bernard is a friend.
A startling part of the hobby history in Houston is that one of the early successful but still unknown discus breeders in the 50's - when almost no one was breeding discus with regularity - was an HAS member - Louis Joeris. Louis was a fine fish breeder raising great killies outside in the summer in rain barrels and he raised at least 5 generations of discus in his Heights home. He gave up breeding when a power outage wiped him out one winter.
So, Houston once supported a notable society that was great fun, well organized, full of members, with monthly meetings and magazines and it was extremely active in the national hobby as a whole as well as locally. This all started to die off in the 80's and continued to do so through the 90's when I became active again for a number of years. By the end of the 70's Houston started to lack the kind of serious hobbyist breeders the still successful clubs have and HAS once had. The people with a 100 tanks, full of many species, who go on collecting trips, write, attend the national conventions, seriously correspond with other hobbyists all over the world, trade/sell home grown fish, introduce new species and varieties and have a specially outfitted room devoted to the process. Maybe the lack of basements explain this loss but the houses are certainly big enough for fishrooms or even backyard fish houses like in Great Britain. Without these deeply serious and committed hobbyists it is hard to have an intensely active club. They provide the backbone and excitement from their obsession. Houston supported/produced/attracted people like that once but I don't believe there are too many of those hobbyists today. These kind of people are like dog breeders/showers or orchid growers with greenhouses full of 100's or 1000's of plants. No one can force the development of these kind of hobbyists but they do seem to still exist here in the East and in the Mid-West. By the end of the 70's, they were getting few and far between in Houston - except maybe when it came to Rift Lake Cichlids. So Houston has developed something else today. Maybe a critical mass of such people will once again appear in some form.
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