Looking for Aquarium Fish Magazine April 1994

[Brontodon]

Hi All --
Back in the 1990s, I used to write the Aquarium Setup column for Freshwater And Marine Aquarium magazine (FAMA), as well as a variety of articles for FAMA and other magazines. I have posted most of my work for public viewing at:

Aquarium Setup | Steven J. Schiff | Substack

Discussions on setting up and maintaining a home aquarium. Click to read Aquarium Setup, by Steven J. Schiff, a Substack publication. Launched 4 years ago.

aquariumsetup.substack.com

Last week I posted an article for which I only had the text, but not the illustrations, because I had lost the original magazine. It was an article called "The Festivum Throughout History," and it appeared in the April 1994 issue of Aquarium Fish magazine. I'm wondering if any forum members have a copy of the magazine and would be willing to send me a scan of the article. What I would ask for would be a scan of the magazine cover, the table of contents, and then each page on which the article appeared.

I thank you in advance for any help you can provide!

Steve Schiff
Former Contributing Editor
Freshwater And Marine Aquarium

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Start by having a look here:
Free old aquarium fish magazines and books available
Summarized by AI from the post below


The check this out: https://books.google.com/books/about/Aquarium_Fish_Magazine.html?id=CXUVAQAAIAAJ

Aquarium Fish Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 3​

Fancy Publications, 1994 - Aquarium fishes

Also, Harper's Magazine Archive: An article titled "Go, fish" by Frank G. Anderson from the April 1994 issue of Aquarium Fish Magazine is indexed within the Harper's Magazine archive, suggesting that specific feature articles might be available through their digital archives.

 

[Innesfan]

Good sleuthing, @TwoTankAmin !

 

[TwoTankAmin]

You can call me Sherlock.

In the 1980s I was working in a division of my firm in NYC which consulted to large defined benefit corporate and municipal pension plans. When I joined the division they used an off-site mainframe, we had dumb input terminals. To get the printed client report created, somebody had to walk 3 blocks each way and to pick it up. The decision was made to migrate from the mainframe to an in-house PC network.

I had an old college buddy who was getting his PhD in computer science at M.I.T. I had him brought in to oversee the whole process. The role of our system was to take in a large amounts of varied investment related information and store it in various data bases. We also had a client database which included all their holdings. The challenge was to design the PC side of things so the various databases could be used in concert to produce our analysis. It had to allow the requisite databases to be queried to do the calculations etc. we needed. My friend designed the system and wrote the algorithms.

My friend also taught me about relational data bases and how to uses queries to get needed information. Fast forward 15 years and this brings me onto the internet and searching for information via Google. The key to doing that beyond the most basic stuff is how you word your search query. I know how to ask the right way to be most likely to get relevant answers. I still have to sift through the answers to make sure they are for what I asked and then that they are also trustworthy.

I would say I spent about 10 minutes for what I posted. I only started keeping fish in 2001, so I have little knowledge about tings prior to then. I do know how to use the Wayback Machine.

From Aug.5 2004. Scroll down to Freshwater Aquariums:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040805064644/http://boards.aaquaria.com/phpBB2/

Don't know the Wayback Machine which lets one "Explore more than 1 trillion web pages saved over time" --> https://web.archive.org/

On that site I met Barbie Fiorentino, Robert T. Rickets aka RTR and Pam Chin.There were a few other folks outside the USA on the site who helped me as well. It was where I learned about live plants and sidthimunki loaches, It was the second fish site I joined (Auqaria Central was first). But I used Tom's Place exclusively for a few years especially the chat room there.

 

[GaryE]

I always read @Brontodon 's articles back in the day. When I moved though, I recycled what felt like a ton of aquarium magazines. I had so many, going back 30 years. Back when TFH, Aquarium Magazine, Freshwater and Marine Aquarium and the European and Asian mags were all flourishing, the paper added up.

 

[Brontodon]

Start by having a look here:
Free old aquarium fish magazines and books available
Summarized by AI from the post below

Thank you for this! I have sent Mr. Sargeant a message on Facebook and will see what happens from there.

 

[Brontodon]

I always read @Brontodon 's articles back in the day. When I moved though, I recycled what felt like a ton of aquarium magazines. I had so many, going back 30 years. Back when TFH, Aquarium Magazine, Freshwater and Marine Aquarium and the European and Asian mags were all flourishing, the paper added up.

Thank you! It's nice to know someone enjoyed my work. I had the same problem with magazine and paper accumulation, so I scanned my work from the magazines and got rid of the original paper copies. In this particular case, I apparently neglected to scan the original.

 

[Archerfish]

Steve Schiff
Former Contributing Editor
Freshwater And Marine Aquarium

@Brontodon
Hi Steve,
I am a fellow FAMA writer. Sadly, two individuals who would most likely have that issue have passed. Jim Mortensen and Gene Lucas. I lost all of my FAMA issues from 1978-2000 so I am no help there. Ted Coletti started writing for FAMA in 1995 but might have that issue. Ted is in the North Jersey Aquarium Society so that might be a lead. Lastly, Gene was a prime mover in the International Betta Congress and may have donated his issues to them. You might contact them and see.
Anyway, sure hope this helps in your search.
I personally owe much to Don Dewey for giving me a start. He was a good guy.
Good luck!

 

[Brontodon]

@Brontodon
Hi Steve,
I am a fellow FAMA writer. Sadly, two individuals who would most likely have that issue have passed. Jim Mortensen and Gene Lucas. I lost all of my FAMA issues from 1978-2000 so I am no help there. Ted Coletti started writing for FAMA in 1995 but might have that issue. Ted is in the North Jersey Aquarium Society so that might be a lead. Lastly, Gene was a prime mover in the International Betta Congress and may have donated his issues to them. You might contact them and see.
Anyway, sure hope this helps in your search.
I personally owe much to Don Dewey for giving me a start. He was a good guy.
Good luck!

Thanks so much for this! I saw Ted recently on a podcast and I was thinking of contacting him. I'm also still in contact with a friend who is a member there, so possibly he can ask Ted.
Don really was great, although I never met him. He also gave me my start, with my first published article and then my regular column. I wish I had contributed something to his memorial issue but I did not realize what it was going to be and I never sent anything in, to my regret.
May I ask your name, and what did you write for FAMA?

Steve

 

[GaryE]

Old aquarium writers tend to be a discreet bunch. I only got your name @Brontodon , from your link. I think there are a few writers from the magazine era here. I may have had one article in FAMA - I was a TFH and Aquarium Fish writer. But there was something beyond the info I loved about FAMA - it had that old fashioned, no concession to 'modern' layouts format - just text and image heavy layouts.

I used to be able to get it in any of the magazine stores in Montreal, and would go from work at lunchtime and pick up the monthly mags as they were delivered to the shops in Montreal. My colleagues would accuse me of buying fish porn.

 

[Brontodon]

Old aquarium writers tend to be a discreet bunch. I only got your name @Brontodon , from your link. I think there are a few writers from the magazine era here. I may have had one article in FAMA - I was a TFH and Aquarium Fish writer. But there was something beyond the info I loved about FAMA - it had that old fashioned, no concession to 'modern' layouts format - just text and image heavy layouts.

I used to be able to get it in any of the magazine stores in Montreal, and would go from work at lunchtime and pick up the monthly mags as they were delivered to the shops in Montreal. My colleagues would accuse me of buying fish porn.

I was writing for FAMA just at the dawn of the internet era and when computer graphics and design were becoming accessible to personal computers. I remember FAMA used to have some very funky covers using this computer technology just because they could! Most of the covers were not like this, but some did appear:

 

[Archerfish]

Hi Steve,
I am glad I could help! As @GaryE said, we are a reserved group. Don published a feature I submitted in the 80's about keeping turtles with fish. He was most kind to accept the work! I think I had another 'how to' one published in the 80's too but memory is 'evaporative' as time goes on. I used to have the FAMA index and could be more precise but that too was lost. Oh well. My job at the time required much travel and I didn't write again for over ten-years. I did correspond with Don because I knew one day, I would want to resume writing. Thankfully, I was able to explore many streams in Central America and a couple in South America during those years. I was keeping fish like crazy in those days. Tanks everywhere. Of interest to me was brackish water. I contacted FAMA in the late 1990's telling them I had quite an extensive background with brackish water and also had been (making messes!) growing all sorts of aquatic plants. Playing with CO2 injection and having a blast. I was set to begin and then disaster hit. As you know Don suddenly died. Like you, I did not know about his memorial and was very sad. I contacted FAMA and talked with Susan Steele who was a wonderful person. Susan got me back as a contributing editor. As you know, FAMA was purchased by BowTie and then resold to I-5 Publishing. As it turned out, I was asked to write their 'Aquabotanist' monthly plant column for FAMA and AFI which, I think were combined at that time. Six years of monthly column and features writing went fast. The publishers were very good to me. I think they appreciated that I never wrote about anything I had not kept or wasn't keeping. I also am a scuba instructor so I was able to dovetail my writing for the scuba industry with the aquarium hobby. Features that come to mind were mudskippers, bumble bee gobies, archerfish and some marine/reef features for their other magazines. I am a pond keeper so they also tapped me to write about my successes and failures for one of the pond magazines. It looks like some of my work was sold to Chewy because now and then, I find it there. They kindly credit me for the work which is nice. I also wrote for Reptile Magazine. Yeah, I was very busy running the scuba thing and my aquarium and pond hobby. I mentioned Dr. Gene Lucas earlier. He was a wonderful person. Drake University was reluctant to give him publishing credit for his monthly articles. His genetic research was cutting edge. Go figure. Gene and I talked and corresponded over the years and I was thrilled when he invited me to spend an entire day at his home. We were like two kids with their first goldfish. Wow, sorry that this was a long response. It was all bottled up and thankfully, you pulled the cork! Anyway, it is great connecting with a fellow FAMA alum. GaryE is also an alum too. A very small group for sure. Let me know if you get down to Florida. We can walk Jupiter Beach and I'll show you where the red mangroves I raised from propagules are happily growing. The largest one was 8 feet tall when I donated it to the restoration project. I wish you well.
Stephen Noble

 

[emeraldking]

Hi & welcome to our forum...
I hope you'll find that particular issue...

 

[Brontodon]

Hi Steve,
I am glad I could help! As @GaryE said, we are a reserved group. Don published a feature I submitted in the 80's about keeping turtles with fish. He was most kind to accept the work! I think I had another 'how to' one published in the 80's too but memory is 'evaporative' as time goes on. I used to have the FAMA index and could be more precise but that too was lost. Oh well. My job at the time required much travel and I didn't write again for over ten-years. I did correspond with Don because I knew one day, I would want to resume writing. Thankfully, I was able to explore many streams in Central America and a couple in South America during those years. I was keeping fish like crazy in those days. Tanks everywhere. Of interest to me was brackish water. I contacted FAMA in the late 1990's telling them I had quite an extensive background with brackish water and also had been (making messes!) growing all sorts of aquatic plants. Playing with CO2 injection and having a blast. I was set to begin and then disaster hit. As you know Don suddenly died. Like you, I did not know about his memorial and was very sad. I contacted FAMA and talked with Susan Steele who was a wonderful person. Susan got me back as a contributing editor. As you know, FAMA was purchased by BowTie and then resold to I-5 Publishing. As it turned out, I was asked to write their 'Aquabotanist' monthly plant column for FAMA and AFI which, I think were combined at that time. Six years of monthly column and features writing went fast. The publishers were very good to me. I think they appreciated that I never wrote about anything I had not kept or wasn't keeping. I also am a scuba instructor so I was able to dovetail my writing for the scuba industry with the aquarium hobby. Features that come to mind were mudskippers, bumble bee gobies, archerfish and some marine/reef features for their other magazines. I am a pond keeper so they also tapped me to write about my successes and failures for one of the pond magazines. It looks like some of my work was sold to Chewy because now and then, I find it there. They kindly credit me for the work which is nice. I also wrote for Reptile Magazine. Yeah, I was very busy running the scuba thing and my aquarium and pond hobby. I mentioned Dr. Gene Lucas earlier. He was a wonderful person. Drake University was reluctant to give him publishing credit for his monthly articles. His genetic research was cutting edge. Go figure. Gene and I talked and corresponded over the years and I was thrilled when he invited me to spend an entire day at his home. We were like two kids with their first goldfish. Wow, sorry that this was a long response. It was all bottled up and thankfully, you pulled the cork! Anyway, it is great connecting with a fellow FAMA alum. GaryE is also an alum too. A very small group for sure. Let me know if you get down to Florida. We can walk Jupiter Beach and I'll show you where the red mangroves I raised from propagules are happily growing. The largest one was 8 feet tall when I donated it to the restoration project. I wish you well.
Stephen Noble

>> As you know, FAMA was purchased by BowTie and then resold to I-5 Publishing. <<
Actually, I didn't know that. I know the magazine continued for a few years and then went out of business.

>> Let me know if you get down to Florida. We can walk Jupiter Beach and I'll show you where the red mangroves I raised from propagules are happily growing. <<
That is a very gracious offer and I'll let you know if I ever get down there, although it's not common for me to be in Florida. Thank you!
Steve

 

[Brontodon]

Hi & welcome to our forum...
I hope you'll find that particular issue...

Thank you! So far, no luck...