Extraordinary New Rainbowfish From Papua
Papua (formerly Irian Jaya) is a Darwin's paradise with almost every watershed separated for a long enough time to produce unique species of rainbowfish. After four trips to Papua we've managed to find 9 or 10 brand new species of 'bows. Some were quite easy to find as they were gifted to us by our missionary pilot friend. Others involved multi day trips by outrigger over the ocean and over eight hours up winding rivers to reach our collecting destination. Finally to get our prizes out and rendezvous with our boat captain we had to slog over five hours thru a pathless jungle. You be the judge to see if the leeches, thorns, mosquitoes and other punishment of the jungle were worth the effort to bring out these wonderful rainbowfish! This talk will primarily deal with our fourth trip to Papua plus the capture and breeding of the amazing Wapoga Red Laser rainbowfish.
Bio for Gary Lange
Gary has been keeping fish since he was 10 and has been associated with the organized hobby for the last 32 years. He is a member of the Missouri Aquarium Society (MASI) and has held various positions in the club. He is a grand master breeder in MASI, and has won "Best Fish In Show" on four different occasions, twice with rainbowfish.
In the fall of 1987, he started the Rainbowfish Study Group of North America (RSG). He got in fish photography mainly because there weren't many quality pictures of rainbowfish. He has had his photos published in FAMA, TFH and AFM and has published several articles for the Aquarium Fish Magazine and TFH.
In 2002, he was the first to import eight new rainbowfish into North America from the world explorer, Heiko Bleher, including the Millennium rainbow, the Zigzag and the dwarf parva rainbowfish. In 2003 he made his second trip to Australia and did some more collecting while there. In 2005 he took the rainbowfish collectors dream trip – collecting in West Papua (formerly Irian Jaya), the western portion of New Guinea. He made another trip back in 2008, recollecting Melanotaenia praecox. A third trip was made in 2010 and a fourth completed in August of 2012. He brought back fish that have never been seen in the hobby including Chilatherina alleni, both color varieties. With these trips he’s collected and brought back 9-10 different new species of rainbowfish and is currently working on their scientific articles. He is currently running over 90 tanks and keeping over 65 species and locations of rainbowfish and blue-eyes.