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well sort of indirectly... theres an aritcle in the paper today on aquariums! it seems mostly OK, aside from a few small errors its pretty informative for novices....

but they mentioned aquarank, and seeing as we're #1 on there

Sweet!!

FP should get more notoriety tho.

Devon what paper was that posted on? You are from mass right?

its in the boston globe from thursday march 17

Well probabally to late for me to get it now. We usually have the enterprise sitting around here.

I paid for access to the Boston Globe's archives and I don't see mention of FP in these two articles published on the 17th, so help me out here....


WE DIFFERED ABOUT PETS, BUT WE ALL CAME TO LOVE THE FISH
Author(s): Carol Stocker, Globe Staff Date: March 17, 2005 Page: H6 Section: Life At Home
I was about 11 when I got a tropical fish aquarium. I think it was because my cat had died and my parents were resisting all pleas for another major mammal such as a second cat, or better yet a dog, or best of all a horse!

Mom and Dad were unyielding: Even when my aunt gave me a kitten for Christmas, they made her take it back. "The Morgans have a dog!" I announced with indignation. "That yappie thing. I wish it would get hit by a truck," my father replied. This was unlikely as we and the Morgans lived on a dead-end street, but the point is this: My parents were not animal lovers. They did offer a parade of consolation prizes, creatures that did not require much upkeep but that I found unfulfilling as companions. Tiny pet store turtles expired under their plastic palm tree. The hamster escaped to the cellar, where it was found, mummified, years later behind the hot water heater. The ant farm didn't work out well, either.

So I was feeling pretty pet-deprived when they next suggested tropical fish, and away we went to Rhode Island Aquarium. It was an unimpressive cinderblock building on busy North Main Street in Providence near the funky Rhode Island Auditorium, where years later I would attend my first rock concert, the Rolling Stones.

But when I entered, I found myself in an underwater world. The narrow aisles were lined with banks of glass tanks taller than I was. Each held a miniature forest of swaying green plants and a metal diver, sunken castle, or treasure chest that periodically emitted bubbles to aerate the water. The whole shop gurgled.

Colors looked different underwater. Brighter and more intense, like couture silks and satins. The fish were amazingly beautiful. I was won over.

Each tank contained a different type. Wafer-thin angel fish drifted as elegantly as geishas. Fancy male guppies flicked shimmering fantails larger than the rest of their bodies. Schools of tiny neon tetras raced from one side of their tank to the other like competitive swimmers, their electric blue stripes flashing with each reverse in direction.

These were all fresh-water fish native to tropical rivers such as the Amazon. In those days, saltwater tanks were considered so technically difficult to maintain that they were found only at zoos like the New England Aquarium.

We purchased a 5-gallon tank, the smallest size, several inhabitants netted from large tanks and plopped into plastic bags of water, gravel, an aerator, a heater to keep the water temperature right, and a pamphlet on how to care for it all.

It was all intensely exciting. This wasn't the purchase of another small helpless animal waiting to die. It was the creation of a whole other world. And I was ready to dive in.

Soon the tank was set up and the pamphlet was dog-eared.

Ours was a so-called "community tank" of assorted fish who could live together without eating each other. The orange male swordtail liked to jump, and we found him on the floor several times. After he made his fatal leap, we bought a cover for the tank. Otherwise, things went along swimmingly. Individual fish did die occasionally and were mildly mourned, but there was no tragedy as long as the tank and its overall population stayed healthy. It wasn't about having a pet, it was about maintaining an environment, and it was a new way of thinking for me.

I began reading books on tropical fish and telling people that I just might grow up to be an ichthyologist, a scientist who studies fish. But the big surprise was that everyone else in the family was almost as interested as I was. We put the tank in the TV room next to my father's chair and he would make himself a drink and watch fish glide for half an hour after he got home from work. He said it was soothing. Soon he was picking favorites and recounting their activities. I couldn't believe it.

Trips to R.I. Aquarium to buy new fish became great events. We bought a second, bigger tank so we could get more.

I began buying fancy guppies, which are ridiculously easy to breed. In fact, they have some of the same biological parts as humans, and there was a lot of sex-education talks around the fish tank.

Unlike most fish, guppies don't lay eggs, but instead give birth to very small, wriggling guppies. About once a month, as I recall. These would immediately try to hide as they were the preferred food for all the residents of the fish community, including the mother. So there would be a family guppy watch when she looked ready to deliver, or, as we used to say, "pop."

"The guppy had her babies!" became a frequent family alarm as we would converge on the tank to scoop up the tiny fish and move them to another tank. Eventually we learned to sequester the pregnant mother in a nursery tank inside a contraption with a slit in the bottom so the babies could drop into a separate compartment.

My fascination with tropical fish receded quickly with adolescence. I don't think I ever set foot inside R.I. Aquarium again after that Rolling Stones concert. But my family's fascination was more enduring and my younger brother took over the fish tanks, along with my father.

One day when I was home from college, my parents remarked they had gotten rid of the tanks. I barely noticed. My world had vastly expanded and I had newer enthusiasms. But I was enthralled by tropical fish for a while when I was young, and, most importantly I realize now, our family shared that fascination.

The Rolling Stones don't play Providence anymore and the old hockey arena was torn down years ago, but Rhode Island Aquarium is still there and so is the proprietor, Larry Popkin. He says business is good.





THE AGE OF AQUARIUMS
Author(s): SANDY COLEMAN, GLOBE STAFF Date: March 17, 2005 Page: H1 Section: Life At Home
[PUBLISHED CORRECTION - DATE: Friday, March 18, 2005: Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story about aquariums in yesterday's Life at Home section incorrectly stated where Bill MacIndewar teaches. He is a teacher at Parker Middle School in Reading. ]
Every night Linda Genovese sits for hours in the big, comfortable, leather chair in her family room watching little dramas unfold. Spike gets mad when his territory is invaded. Bruce bosses his counterparts around. Dory just hides a lot. But Genovese isn't watching her nearby giant screen TV. She's looking at something more interesting - the fish in her 120-gallon saltwater aquarium. o All the characters have names - well, except for the lionfish with the poisonous sting that no one bothered to name. And they all have personalities that Genovese knows as well as she knows her six children. She knew right away when Tad, the annularis angle fish, was sick and not quite himself recently because his eyes were cloudy. "You do get attached to them," said Genovese, who lives in Hingham. "The lionfish, when I'm watching TV, will come right over to me and look at me." o For enthusiasts like Genovese, keeping sea life goes way beyond sticking goldfish in a bowl and placing them next to a lamp on an end table; she has developed enough expertise to recreate the conditions of the ocean right in her living room. Fellow fish lovers have pushed their passion even further.
Karen Randall of Holliston is an aquatic gardener who keeps fish and grows aquarium plants that are found in the lakes and streams of the tropics. Bobby Branon, a 15-year-old Melrose High student, has African cichlids in his bedroom tanks and has filled a room next to the pipes and furnace in his family's basement with 11 fish tanks ranging from 10 to 30 gallons. He breeds freshwater fish and then sells them at auctions or conventions where hobbyists gather. Bill MacIndewar, Branon's mentor and a science teacher at a Melrose middle school [SEE ATTACHED CORRECTION], also has a fish room where he has 25 tanks full of more than 1,500 fish from catfish to yellow and black bumblebee fish.

Joe Scavo, who lives in Weymouth, maintains a live coral reef in his aquarium. Tony Pinto, a Brighton systems engineer, keeps 20 to 30 small tanks for conservation and personal study. Michael Kauffman, the CEO of Predix Pharmaceuticals Inc., paid a professional aquarium designer about $40,000 to create a 180-gallon tank for the dining room and a 500-gallon tank for the great room of his Concord home. Amy Rogers, a day-care teacher and a volunteer at the New England Aquarium, spent $20,000 to build her 450-gallon tank into her basement wall. She has 60 fish, mostly black shark fish (they only look like sharks). She has named every one of them, and has had many of them for 10 years. Each hobbyist's tank is as individual as a thumb print, but they do have traits in common. Perhaps surprisingly, many of the aquarium owners say they eat fish, even sushi. They all have to know how to spell; it's a must when you have such fish as aphyosemion bivitattum and fundulopanchax gardneri from Nigeria in your tank , as Pinto does. They know their way around the Internet, where sites help them learn about fish. They will go almost anywhere to get the fish they want. (Randall, an education advocate, once brought back a rare fish she found in Oregon while on a speaking engagement by carrying it on a plane in a bag with oxygen tanks attached.)

They know how to bargain and trade to keep the expenses down. (Pinto makes his own fish food by blending beef, liver, and shrimp with carrots.) But, they are willing to pay high prices for the fish or plants they want.

Genovese spent $3,000 to set up her tank with fish, a complex filtration system, and seascaping comprised of a large formation of rocks from the Fiji Islands that cost $9 a pound. (One rock alone cost $100.) A full-time mother who gives private piano lessons, she has 10 fish in her aquarium that cost a total of $400. The most expensive one, the Cuban hogfish, set her back about $200. A blueface angelfish that cost about $230 died.

It is worth the expense and the trauma that sometimes comes with losing one of the delicate saltwater fish, she said. At age 43, she has not been without a tank since she was 12 years old. Her first one sat at the end of her bed and she would go to sleep watching it.

"I love animals. I probably should have lived on a farm," said Genovese, who lives in a sprawling Colonial and has two golden retrievers, several birds, seven rabbits, a cat, and a chinchilla as pets. The gurgling tank on a black stand in the corner of her family room soothes her family and gives them a place to linger around beautiful creatures, she said.

The relaxation factor seems to be the one that hooks all hobbyists. (Maybe it's that factor that explains why aquariums are often in hospital waiting rooms and doctors' offices.) Enthusiasts say they keep tanks because watching the fish brings quiet sanity at the end of a crazy day. Ultimately, it is a game of ego and skill. They win when they successfully recreate the natural habitat of living creatures and have them thrive. If they can get them to breed, it's validation that they are really good at the hobby.

"It's just cool," said Branon, who became interested in aquariums when he saw a photo of his dad with one in a family album. He's sold 50 baby fish so far online at aquabid.com. He brings some to auction at his club meetings as a member of the Bjoy doing," he said.

Pinto, the society's vice president, fell in love with tropical aquarium fish as a teenager when he found a book about them while living in the Middle East. He's been keeping and breeding fish for more than 25 years, and specializes in killifish and air-breathing labyrinth fish . He has traveled to Southeast Asia and South America to study and collect tropical fish in the wild. He also writes articles on them for publications such as Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine.

Randall, who is on the board of the Aquatic Gardeners Association, manages to combine her love of gardening and marine life with her aquatic gardening. The 125-gallon, 6-foot tank in her dining room is longer than her dining table and took four men to carry it into the room. "My husband calls it my coffin. He says he's not taking care of it after I die. He says he'll just bury me in it," said Randall, laughing.

It was Kauffman's love of scuba diving that drew him and his wife back to his childhood hobby. "We just go to the ocean and it's just gorgeous and you just want to have a piece of the ocean. You want to bring the ocean to you," he said. He started off with a 50-gallon tank, moved to a 70, then 180, 300, and finally the 500-gallon tank that weighs as much as a piano and required a crane to deliver. "It's sort of like living art. When the fish are healthy it's just great. Instead of having to go diving to get the fix and beauty, you get it looking at it in your own living room. I get home from work and I just spend 20 to 30 minutes looking at them. It's a little ridiculous."

Warren Gibbons, the owner of Gibbons Aquaria Inc. in Lynn, built and maintains Kauffman's tanks. Although Gibbons's business has focused on creating high-end custom aquariums on the commercial side, he said homeowners are becoming more interested in custom tanks that begin at $25,000 and go up. The pricey tanks come with a remote filtration system to keep noise levels down, a computer monitoring system that notifies the company of any problems with the tank, and a backup generator is available if there is a power failure in the home.

Scavo speculates that movies like "Finding Nemo" and "Shark Tale" have inspired aquarium keepers. Everyone wants a clown fish like Nemo, he said. But pet owners have to be responsible enough to find out what they need to do to keep such fish alive, said Scavo, who has heard of people buying a saltwater fish and putting it in a freshwater tank. That kills the fish.

"Within the last 10 years, the hobby has jumped significantly because there is a lot more communication," said Scavo. "The Internet has provided a huge communication tool. Organizations for hobbyists such as the Boston Aquarium Society and the Boston Reefers Society also have helped cultivate interest in aquarium keeping.

Scavo cofounded the Boston Reefers Society in 2001 with 10 members. There are now 200 paid members and more than 500 subscribers to the group's Internet bulletin board. The group recently hosted a trade show in Boston that drew 1,200 attendees, he said. my living room. It was different from what everyone else is doing. It was very captivating. It's also an intelligent hobby. . . . You would get bored keeping gold fish in a bowl."

Empty chairs at empty tables, the room silent, forlorn.