May 2005

GFSA Info

For info and updates on the Goldfish Report, take a look here for info from the editor on upcoming issues of the Goldfish Report and the publication schedule.

If you have let your membership lapse or have been thinking about joining the GFSA, now is a great time - here is a form you can print. To submit material for the Goldfish Report to editor Matt Lyon, please see the updated society contact info. Articles and photos in electronic form are particularly appreciated.

The current line-up of people filling the GFSA offices is on the society officers page. 

Interested in joining the GFSA but still not sure? We have two sample Goldfish Reports available to download, to demonstrate that every issue is packed with thought provoking information and pictures available nowhere else. We are also promoting an electronic membership option that significantly lowers the cost of membership.

Seasonal Advice

"Seasonal Advice" will try a new tack for a little while. We will try to solicit short lessons-learned from hobbyists: events that left you possibly sadder, but measurably wiser. Have a good one? Please send it to the  . Here is our first one ...

Neatness counts: As you add more tanks, air pumps, heaters, lights and other electrical devices, you will probably use an assortment of plug strips and extension cords to hook them up. Often this evolves slowly, becoming a tangle of cords and strips-plugged-into-strips. You've probably added a timer or two, to turn the lights on and off. Other than not exceeding the electrical capacity of the cords and outlets, and using a Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI) this would probably not seem like a real issue.

However, such a mess can sometimes lead to surprising problems. I discovered, rearranging things a while ago, that I had unwittingly plugged the filter for one tank into a plug strip that was attached to the light timer. For at least a year, the filter had been going off with the lights for 12 hours each night. Unfortunately my notes were not good enough to see if this correlated to any fish problems. In any event, I had no clue this was happening, since I did not look at the tanks when the lights were out, until I started cleaning up the tangled snarl of cords.