Please see the the new letter from the Society Chair; there are many exciting activities afoot. We have added the capability to use PayPal for multiyear new memberships and renewals. See this page for details. We apologize for several ISP outages at the end of 2001; aside from the Web site being down, there have also been problems with forms and counters. Rest assured, if these problems continue into 2002, the GFSA will find a more stable provider.
If you have a 2002 event planned with rough or exact dates, please let us know. You can use the (hopefully) convenient submission form on the events calendar page. We are also still looking for local clubs that would like to hold goldfish events. If you are interested in discussing this, please drop an email to the .
The November/December Goldfish Report is out. In it are requests for member feedback and participation in a number of areas. Two key activities are the standards/judging program and the revision of the society by-laws. Please review the requests and provide your thoughts: your opinion is important, but only if we know it. To quote Woody Allen, "the world belongs to those who show up".
The membership application now includes a field for "membership number" for renewals. Don't have a number? Don't worry, nobody does yet. The GFSA will be providing these along with membership cards in the near future. We are doing this to help implement a program of discounts on products, services, and events for GFSA members. Stay tuned.
Contribute something to the Goldfish Report! Please provide any articles, news items, photos, comments and requests to the editor, , for inclusion in the Report. Vince has offered a set of topics for future issues, to try and get all of you to dig back in your trove of experiences and create a contribution for the Report. These are listed below, with the first on the list due for the next issue:
Want to do faster water changes? Have multiple tanks? Try attaching tubing to a submersible pump and then drop the pump into the tank to empty. Make sure the intake is well protected to prevent a fish from getting caught. A 200-300 gallon per hour (750-1000 liter per hour) pump is the right size for a large aquarium and will remove 40 gallons in about 10 minutes. Large powerhead pumps and small pond pumps work well.
Just be careful not to empty the tank ... bad for the pump and the fish. You can also use a plastic garbage can to condition fresh water to go into the aquarium and then drop the pump into it to pump the new water into the tank.