The future demise of our hobby

[TwoTankAmin]

Last night my fish club met having taken of July. The attendence was pretty sparse as many were still onvacations. The speaker was James Perrenod the owner of Discus R Us. His topic was. "The Flat Lining of the Tropical Fish Hobbyist." It was a back and forth presentation with the club members able to ask questions and to participate in the presentation.

The thought is that the hobby is slowly dying. The membership of many fish clubs is now older people. Those in their mid 30s to their 70s. What is lacking is new younger folks entering the hobby. A lot of the blame was placed on social media. Also the decline of local fish store was also discussed. Jim argued that not enough is being done to encourage younger folks to get into the hobby. The discussion also talked about how many clubs are not making enough of an effort to encourage the youth of today to enter the hobby. It was also noted that the costs involved were rising and that one way to do this was to offer younger folks some of our used equioment instead of selling for pretty little money at auctions or online. Give a kid a tank and some equipment and this may be enough to get them onterested. A lot of the blame was also put on the addiction to smart phones so prevalent in today's youth. A lot of the discussion was about what clubs and existing fish keeper might do to change things.

My club now has a couple of kids who do attend meeting with a parent or other relative bringing them. A while back I gave a bag of of red chrry shrimp to the kid who now regularly attends our meetings. At last night's club auction he bought three small containers of Sera foods. At the end of the metting he came over to me and said, "You keep shrimp, right?" and I said , "yes" He then asked if I would be interested in buying the Sera Shrimp food for $5. Now I knew had had won for a bundle ofl 3 different small containers of Sera food that Jim P. had donated to the club for the auction.

Of course I said OK. I knew he had gotten all 3 for $5, but I had no problem giving him a $5 bill for just the shrimp food. One reason was Jim had brought a bag of Sera foods and he asked us to answer a few Qs about the history of fish keeping. The first Q was who in history were the earliest fish keepers. I happens to know it was the ancient Romans in the BC era and that won me a small container of the Sera Bottom feeder tablets. I also knew the answer when Jim asked who were the first people to breed tropical fish. I also guessed it was the Chinese but only said so to the club officer and his wife sitting nex to me. I was right. Jim sells Sera foods and the price was on the lids of the two containers with which I went home. The shrimp food was $7.99 and the tablets were $9.99. So I was happy. Plus I hoped this made the kid happy as well.

A lot of the discussion during the presentation dealt with what we as fish keepers and what clubs in general could do to encourage more young people to get into the hobby. There was a second young man about 15 at the meeting as well. Jim asked them both if any of their friends saw their tanks when visiting and they both said yes. Then he asked if any of them got a tank of their own. Yhe old boy said yes one of his friend had gotten a tank but the younger bou said no, none of his friend showed any interest or inclination to get a tank.

Basically, Jim's point was that if those of us in the hobby, and most club members, have a lot of good knowledge which we could share with new members just getting into the hobby. We could also do some things to encourage new people to "take a look." Mst importantly Jim suggested it was up to we the older folks, to make anyody new feeling to feel welcomed if they attended. We need to do our part.

So I will say once again, if you aee not in a club, at least attend a meeting to see what goes on. Our club, as do most clubs, welcomes new people to attend a meeting without having to join just to see what it is all about. It was also agered that it is up to those of us us already deep into the hobby, if we can, to encourage the younger generation to "Give fish a chance."

 

[connorlindeman]

I think most new hobbyists tend to not join local clubs. I am not part of a local club.
I think of lot of new hobbyists tend to find their community on the internet rather then in the real world.
Forums like ours are also dying down.
Subreddits are booming. r/aquariums has 1.4 million members
r/plantedtank has 384k members.

 

[GaryE]

What's killing the hobby? The economics of it say it's in trouble, with store closings and manufacturer's sales dropping in the west (but climbing in China).
The old progression was to add a few tanks after you bought a house, when you could dive into the hobby a bit as you stayed home more. Now, younger aquarists lack the stability needed. Who wants to expand a set up and have to move? I've done it, but when my housing was precarious I stayed at very few tanks, and a portable set up. I enjoyed the hobby, but I didn't 'get into' it.
Many independent adults don't have room, and employers are demanding more and more time from their workers. Less leisure, more instability, rising costs of living, dropping wages. It's a deadly formula for a lot more than the fish hobby.

Our local club is young. I stick out as one of four members over 50. The younger members love the hobby as much as previous generations did, but like previous generations, they have to watch the bottom line in their lives. You see a big gap between the ones who still live with Mom and/or Dad (those kids can often follow their interests more, but when they 'launch', they vanish from fishkeeping for a few years), the ones who are scrambling in the workforce and the ones who have bought or inherited homes and have stable jobs. In our 3 year old club, that latter group is moving toward multi-tank set ups.

It's hard for pastimes to compete with gaming and social media, although the latter can allow excellent connections and networks to develop. We have 3000 members on Facebook, but 25-30 show up at meetings, with a core of about 20. There about 30 floaters who attend one or two meetings per season. It's like that for most clubs.

Gardening is thriving around here, although you have to have space with dirt to make that work. Fishkeeping is like gardening in a great many ways. If you don't have the space, money and stability, what can you build?

 

[WhistlingBadger]

I have to respectfully disagree, TTA. I do believe our hobby is changing drastically, and I could agree that face-to-face fish clubs might be on the way out, for many of the reasons you mentioned and several more that I can think of. But clubs in general are less and less of a thing. My town doesn't seem to have a "running club" or "mountain bike club" anymore, but I still see plenty of people out tearing up the trails.

I don't believe the hobby of keeping fish in glass boxes is going anywhere soon. Indeed, for me, living in a rural area with nary a fish clubs in sight and only one rudimentary local fish store within over a hundred miles (really), we're living in a golden age of fish keeping. I can find just about anything I want online if I'm willing to wait a while and pay shipping. That is a vast improvement over most of my life.

So, is the hobby changing? Definitely. Some of the changes aren't for the better? Sure. Dying out? I really don't think so.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

The question is where will the hobby be 20 or 30 years from now? I am also a somewhat unusual fish keeper. I set up my first tank at the and of Jan. 2001. I was still 53 at the time. It was not all that long after yhay when I became financially secure enough to afford pretty much anything I wanted/need re keeping fish, within reason. How much that was increased over the years. This is not where younger folks who night be wanting to get their first tank are by any means. I had 28 running AquaClear Hang-ons at my peak. I seem to recall that I paid $9.99 for my first AC 100, now called a 20. You can get one on Amazon right now for the mere price of $38.99.

Last night the other part of it was a discussion about what clubs needed to d0 today to attract new younger members. A lot of the answers involved using the internet more as a tool for doing so.

But, if you want to find an unending supply about misinformation relating to our hobby, the best place to go is onto the internet and social media sites. This is why for so many years ago my go to place for a lot of information was Google Scholar. It is the reason my join date here is 2004. At that time the Scientific Section was just that and it was active. When things began to degrade, I walked way from here for many years.

Heck, there is more than just a small amount of "poor" information here. But, there are also a number of members with many years of hands on experience keeping all sorts of fish and finding good ways to do things and who are willing to be helpful where they can.

When I set up my first tank there was no social media and smart phone use was almost non-existent. The smart phone era, imo, got its first real boost when Apple introduced the IPhone in Jan. 2007. And it was still years before devices became ubiquitous.

So, here is what I know. My club has a fair percent of it's member who have been breeding all sorts of fish for many years. Some of them have national reputations for what they do. Many of the fish and plants I have purchased over the last few years we bought at the auction held at the end of my club's meetings. It is announced whose fish or plants is being auctioned in the description of the item. When I buy a bag of fish, I know who bred them. Sometimes I arrange to buy fish in advance and this happens ourside the auction.

When I get home, I am usually willing to skip Q and to put the fish directly into their permanent home. I will not add any new fish to tanks where I cannot afford to risk the current inhabitants no matter how small the odds. But, most of what I buy goes directly into my planted community tanks. So far, this has worked out fine. I wonder how many folks here are willing to buy something online for their tank(s) and then place it directly into an established stocked tank on arrival? I absolutely do Q any fish bought online.

This is one good reason to be in a club that folks addicted to being online neverl never even know exists. Here is a list of what I have bought at my club auctions:
Hoplisoma oiapoquense
Super red BN
Long Fin Albino BN
Albino Osteogaster aenea
Osteogaster aenea
Inpaichthys kerri (some direct purchase)
Huge Microsorum pteropus aka Java Fern
Limnobium laevigatum aka Frogobit (last night a big bag for $3).
Black color form Osteogaster schultzei
Neocaridina davidi- variety Blue velvet
Large Bolbitus heteroclita Difformis (direct trade)

Also one of the club officers always shows up with a styro full of the 1 lb slabs of frozen foods- blood worms, brine shrimp, mysis shrimp amd something more on occasion. The cost per slab is less than I can buy them for delivered to my home as part of a decent size order. The club holds a general auction open to the public every January. I have volunteered to help with that and have bought two things. I got a wall clock with 12 fish pics instead of numbers and a bag of pond bred (by a club member) white cloudThey were actually the very last item offered in the auction. I autioned some of my fish and plants at last years aution as well and donate a pair of SW 236 100% for the club.

And then there is this. The very first time I heard Hans-georg Evers speak, it was at an NEC weekend event. Hist topic was the sebra pleco and diving where they ;ive inthe Big bend of the Rio Xingu. This was fairy early on in my working with this species. The event was chaired by a woman who was and officer in the club which I finally joined years later. She was on the NEC Board as well. They were an umbrella org, whose member wer regional fish clubs and any of their member. Without thos orgs I never would have been able to follow Hans around like a little puppy asking him Qs about zebras. He was gracious about it all fortunately for me. This could never have happened if not for fish clubs.

And where else can you spend a weekend talking fish, listening to some major folks in the field and then talking to them. Spend the evening into the wee hours talking face to face with all sorts of fish folks. You will not run across many pretenders there the way you often do on the net. Most weekend events are hosted by a local fish club or sometimes a few will work together. Club members all work for free to make an event happen.

Most of the US population lives in fairly densely populated regions. I live about a 40 mile NNE of New York City. There are at least 6 clubs whose meetings I could reach by car in an hour or less. If I add 30 more minutes each way, I could add a few more.

The every other year All Aquarium Cafish Convention attracts people from all over the world but has only been running for over 2 decades. The original host clubs had to give it up and it moved from theVA location when a club from Vermont stepped in to take it ove last year. I did not go

 

[Back in the fold]

I agree with @WhistlingBadger . People just aren’t club joiners these days and I also believe that we’re in another golden age of fish keeping and the reason I think that is because of the great selection of things there are in the fish hobby . ZooMed is bringing out more products and different products and there seems to be as many manufacturers now as there’s always been . A lot of serious hobbyists are holed up in their fish rooms doing great things and if you are doing similar things you will eventually cross paths with them thanks to the marvel of the internet . My little backwater burg has two LFS’s but no club . The club died more than fifty years ago and the number of independent fish shops has always fluctuated but there’s never been a time when there wasn’t one . Anytime I’m in one of those shops I strike up a conversation with anyone who’s looking at the fish and ask about theirs . People love to talk about their fish .