December - Hill Country Cichlid Club

3
Editorial
First off, to all HCCC members and other clubs that
we exchange publications with, let me apologize for
the lengthy lapse between Lateral Line issues. 2012
has seen some changes in the club and 2013 is going
to see even more. I feel the time of growing is
fantastic for the longevity of our organization and
I’m very confident that the future will bring only
better changes to the Hill Country Cichlid Club.
While from the outside looking in it might seem as
though 2012 was not an active year for us and for
some that might be true. For others, it was more
than busy enough with club business. We held
three successful auctions with a ton of new faces
attending. We have actually changed some aspects
of the auction including the methods of payment
and greatly shortened the time that sellers receive
payment. Diane Tennison has almost solely been
responsible for revamping the system and deserves
all the credit for our success in this area.
Another hugely active area of involvement within
our club has been the HCCC Facebook site. Our
presence here has allowed us to reach a much larger
audience as well as publicizing our existence to local
hobbyists who had no idea there was a cichlid
club here. If there is a dark side to the Facebook
site is that it has become so active that it has actually
taken away some of the activity that we traditionally
seen on the HCCC message board. What I
would like to see is someone step up and publicize
informative posts received on Facebook to our
HCCC forum and vice versa.
I would like to recognize one of the pillars of our
group, Dave Schumacher of Dave’s Rare Aquarium
Fish for what he does. Dave borrowed a great idea
that the East Coast Cichlid bunch do at their auctions.
This was the catfish raffle. I was told this
was well received and is something we want to incorporate
into future auctions as well. Dave provided
the fish for the raffle and together with his
wife Amanda, secured our permanent location for
club auctions. Starting in 2013 we will be holding
our first ever Swap Meet here as well. I will make
the information on this available just as soon as I
can.
Dave and Amanda have been searching for a location
where we will permanently move our meetings
to. The plan is to have an HCCC meeting every
second month at the same day and time (ex. every
second Saturday at 6pm). The meeting will include
a BAP and members auction, a speaker that will
present on a subject relevant to our members interest,
and snacks for all. The plan is to turn our
meetings into an event that anyone with even a
passing interest in cichlids that lives in the area,
would not want to miss. We were hoping to have a
location locked in by now but we are still searching.
Ideally we would like to find something on the
Northside of San Antonio, Shertz, New Braunfels
or San Marcos…..or anywhere in between. If you
have an idea for a location or know of someplace
we could frequent, please let us know. I fully expect
that we will eventually need meeting space for
100 people. The club is willing to pay for a location
willing to house us but it must be reasonable.
In speaking with Dan Schacht, our BAP Chairman,
BAP entries have been slow in coming this year. I
know by seeing some of the species that people
have breeding on our Facebook site, that next year
could be a record breaker.
Troy Veltrop is not only our club CARES Chairman,
but also the CARES Preservation website
master. He has asked, told, beg and asked me again
to update my CARES species and I am yet to do
that. Some shining example I turned out to be! I
will be doing that and sending my information in to
him and I would urge those of you already registered
to do that same. Those of you with CARES
species that have not registered them should do so.
You can reach Troy on the HCCC website. A listing
of CARES fish can be found at http://
www.carespreservation.com.
On the CARES bandwagon, three HCCC members
recently appeared on the Under The Sea Radio
Show. These shows are all archived and can be listened
to at your leisure anytime. All had both CA-
RES and HCCC content. Artist/ Paleontologist/
Aquarist Ken McKeighen painted three works and
donated them to the CARES program. These beautiful
paintings are in my procession right now. One
will be auctioned at the North East Council of
Aquarium Societies Convention in Cromwell CT.