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AquaMania 2 Speaker - Rusty Wessel

dogofwar

CCA Members
Who's speaking at AquaMania 2 (The Big Fish Deal)?

Rusty Wessel is!

Who's Rusty?

Rusty maintains over 8,000 gallons of freshwater aquariums in a state of the art fish house constructed specifically for fish. The 90 plus aquariums predominantly contain cichlids and livebearers, which he successfully raise and breeds. Rustys specialty is Central American fishes.

He has taken his hobby to a point where he has successfully collected fish from the countries of Africa, Belize, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama , Mexico and Uruguay, from 1983 to the present, for over 100 trips to this date. Considered by many to be the ultimate collector, he has introduced many new species of fish to the aquarium hobby. If it lives in the water, chances are that Rusty has either caught it or been bit or stung by it. Dr. Robert Rush Miller, emeritus professor of the University of Michigan named a beautiful and elusive cichlid discovered during one of his expeditions to Honduras, after Rusty in the June 1996 edition of Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine, Theraps wesseli.

Rusty is as well a prolific author and photographer, his writings or photographs have appeared in a wide distribution of specialized publications, like Aquarium Fish Magazine, Aquarist and Pondkeeper, Buntbarsche Bulletin, Cichlid News, Ad Konings Cichlids yearbooks, Freshwater and Marine Aquarium and Tropical Fish Hobbyist.

Rusty is past chair of the ACA board of trustees (1990) and past convention chair (1992). In addition, he is an active solicitor for the Guy Jordan Endowment Fund (A fund set up under the ACA to grant endowments for cichlid research). On the local level, he is currently treasurer for the Louisville Tropical Fish Fanciers. Rusty has been awarded with the greatest honor the American Cichlid Association gives to its distinguished members, the ACA fellowship in 1997.

Make sure to check out Rusty's presentation at AquaMania 2 (The Big Fish Deal) from 9:30 - 11:00 AM on Sat, Mar 1!

Hang out with Rusty during AquaMania, including Friday and Saturday Night Hospitality Suites with free food and beer (Thanks PVAS and The Hydra Forum!)
 

jonclark96

Past CCA President
I'm looking forward to seeing Rusty's presentation. I was fortunate enough to get a tour of his fish house during the ACA convention in 2012. It is the absolutely to most amazing collection of New World cichlids that I've ever seen. Even more impressive is that a majority of the fish he has he collected himself.
 

dogofwar

CCA Members
If you're into New World Cichlids, I can't imagine having Rusty in town giving a presentation and missing it.

Seriously. Dude has a fish named after him ;)

Matt
 
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