A little about "Birdfish" ...
"Birdfish"
I started keeping fish when I was 12-years-old,
some 40+ years ago. I sold my first batch of
personally spawned and raised fish at age 14 ...
thirty Pearl Danios to a T.G.& Y. (dime store)!
By the mid ’70’s I had kept and spawned several
mouthbrooding African Cichlids, amongst other species
such as Angelfish, and dwarf cichlids. A small group of
us teenagers in high school kept fish. I was nicknamed
"Axelrod" for my ability to quote and cite anything
he ever wrote. It was quite an honor, actually, together
with my other nickname "Spock" ... I was the teenage
science officer and a parents worst nightmare!
I have since spawned about a hundred species of
freshwater fishes and several marine species.
I've watched Monodactylus sebae spawn in my tanks,
as well as Giant Clams (Tridacna derasa).
After a stint as a speaker cabinet shop foreman,
I took the plunge and went to work for one of the
largest freshwater wholesalers around LAX ... scrubbing
and siphoning tanks for near-minimum wage.
This was in the mid-to-late 1970’s. Quickly, I was
foreman of the fishroom, some 800+ tanks of everything
in the business (turtles were still legal then).
After a couple of years I went to work for a saltwater
wholesaler, eager to learn about marine fish and corals.
It was sometimes frustrating as a hobbyist to see the
profit and dollars mean more than a life. I left the
industry in my early twenties swearing I couldn't work
in it until I made the life and death decisions, when
the animal would always be put first. By then, in the
late 1970’s I had my first saltwater tank, with fish
and corals. Low-tech is an understatement, if you can
only imagine how little we knew back then.
After a decade (the ’80’s) travelling around the U.S.
selling signs to businesses (and birdwatching), I found
myself back in L.A.; and, following a failed venture with
a bad partner in a cabinet business, went to work
selling fish for a large wholesaler-transhipper again.
I rekindled relationships with most of the major
importers and made new ones. After a couple of years,
with a couple of the biggies in L.A., I again felt
the misgivings about someone who doesn’t have a tank, and
probably never did, making the life or death decisions
about the animals as if they were bricks or cabbage.
It was just a product to sell to them. So, I started
my own company with a hope and a prayer, but no money.
If you were asked "who were the biggest coral farmers in
the U.S., in the 1990’s?" I bet I can provide invoices
showing I supplied them when they were starting with
broodstock. Most of my clients were retail fish stores
and these "original farmers;" including the best-known
oceanarium in the country. I’ve sold them all.
I'm afraid to use names for fear of lawsuits ...
(can’t mention them without permission.)
Besides having maintained 500-1000 tank systems,
I have had a 5,000-gal. outdoor vat which is where I
watched my clams spawn, and grew corals onto the walls.
But not being a "retail" hobbyist, I know little of
all the latest high-tech gadgets invented to sell you
something else. They weren’t needed to spawn clams!
