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If you want to bring out the best colors in your fish and condition them for breeding, nothing works like the offering of live foods. It's fun to watch the fish eat them, too! Get excited about our June meeting because we have a very special guest speaker. Mike Hellweg, author of the new book Culturing Live Foods, will be here to teach us about all the delicious and squirmy goodies that we can feed to our fish. He'll cover how to collect them, how to culture them, and how to spoil our fish rotten with them. Microscopic infusoria, crustaceans, worms, mollusks, and feeder fishes-- he'll cover it all. This is going to be a great talk!
As always, the admission is free. There will be refreshments, door prizes, and a mini auction. Come learn something and make some friends in the hobby. We hope to see you there!
Bio: Mike Hellweg has been a hobbyist since he was nine years old. He is the only person to reach the rank of sixth level Grand Master Breeder in his local club, the Missouri Aquarium Society, Inc. (MASI) He has convinced more than 250 species from more than 25 families to breed, and successfully raised their fry. Mike is also his club’s only fifth level Grand Master Aquatic Horticulturist, having propagated more than 200 species of aquatic plants, many of them by seed.

He is active in the organized hobby – having served on the Executive Council of the Missouri Aquarium Society since 1989 and is in his 13th term as their president. He has also served on the BOD of the American Livebearer Association (including two terms as their Vice Chairman), and has served as the Historian of the Aquatic Gardeners Association for many years. He is the moderator for the American Killifish Association’s Foods and Feeding Forum.

Mike presents programs on various hobby topics to local schools as well as hobbyist organizations, shows, and conventions around the country. A prolific writer, he has written many articles for local and national hobbyist organizations and is a regular contributor to Tropical Fish Hobbyist and other magazines. He writes "Adventures in Fishbreeding," a monthly column in Aquarium Fish International, and with Ted Judy co-writes a monthly breeding column in Tropical Fish Hobbyist as well. His first book, Culturing Live Foods, was published by TFH in June of 2008. His second book, Raising Live Foods: Complete Herp Care, has just been released by TFH, with more to follow. He currently owns and operates Exotic Aquatics, selling uncommon fish, live foods, his own line of flake and pellet foods, and aquatic plants both to local hobbyists and to hobbyists around the country.

Here's a printable flyer you can distribute to friends, post on bulletin boards, and so forth. Everyone who can, please help our club by distributing this flyer and making this a successful talk for our guest.

We will be taking our guest speaker, Mike Hellweg, out to dinner before the club meeting. Everyone is welcome to join us and we hope that you will! (You will be responsible for your own meal check, which is around $10 for buffet and drink.) The restaurant is a new and very large Chinese buffet (largest in the area). They even have a Mongolian-style grill where you can pick your raw ingredients and they will cook them up into a fresh dish for you. There are also American food items-- roast beef, mashed potatoes, ham, etc.-- and the usual fruit and salad bar, desert bar, and so forth. They even have some good sushi for the weirdos like me!

The restaurant address is listed above, but for those familiar with the area, the restaurant is located right in front of Walmart #1 on Walnut St. (Rt. 12) in Rogers-- in the former Ryan's Steakhouse building.

We may try to make it for the meal (us) and then just me for the meeting if someone can haul me to the meeting from the restaurant and then back to the motel in Rogers. Still working out details but if I knew i could get to and from the meeting it would help me in my planning.

Thankns,
Jack

Jack, we will make sure you have a ride from the restaurant to the meeting and back to the motel. You're welcome to ride with me.

Just a quick note regarding the dinner. If you're planning to attend, please help us out by telling us the number in your party by Friday the 11th, so we can make reservations and get our group seated together.

If you forget to do this, it won't prevent you from attending and eating, but it might force the restaurant to seat you somewhere else in the restaurant where they can find room!

Sharon and I will be attending.

Gail and I are planning to go to dinner. Denny

my wife and I will be coming over from Oklahoma and we plan to be there for dinner. I've met a couple of your members and hope to meet more. I'll also be bringing some fish for your auction, probably some livebearers, cichilds, cherry shrimp and maybe ancistrus.. Kyle Osterholt

anyone interested in a couple female Pseudomugil tenellus? Or someone that has an extra male or two? If so, I can bring my females to the meeting or pick up a male at the meeting. looking forward to coming, Kyle

Tulsa will be attending this;

How many of us show up I have no idea however we will make the attempt.

Laura and I are coming to the dinner and me for the meeting possibly her too there.

Jack

if its not too late to rsvp, my mom and i plan on going.

It's not too late. And, by the way, if someone does post after I've taken a last look, feel free to show up anyway and we'll get them to squeeze you in as best they can.

Great meal, meeting and seeing you all. hope I can return again some time and do it again. Great too that the corys and fire fins made it home alive. Still have only seen one fish room down there but holding out hope that an invitation or two will surface some trip down the road.

Jack

Yes Jack,,,,, by the next time you're this way, please stop by. My fishroom should be ready to accept guests again. Don't forget the 50 cents for the tour.

thanks for having us over guys, it was well worth the trip. Can't wait to get my book from Mike when they come in.

I'm glad the fire-fins made it home, I figured they should. In the case anyone got any fish from me that didn't make it for some reason, let me know because I have more of everything I brought to the meeting.

till next time, Kyle

Jack, I don't have a fishroom. These days, I only have a couple of large, heavily planted tanks running that are worth looking at. But you are welcome to see them anytime. Next time you're down here, remind me. I was so busy setting things for Mike that I forgot to extend an invitation.

Then we'll all jump in my truck and drop in unannounced at Michael Gaines mystical fishroom and won't leave until we see a fish, probably blah colored.