Zooman
New Member
- Messages
- 2
- Location
- Moliwe, Cameroon
Hello you all Apisto-lovers!
My name is Willy Bijker, also known as Zooman from Facebook in several groups, under which my own group "The International Dwarfcichlid Forum", and the Dutch "Aqualovers".
I am in this hobby since i was about 14 years young, so that is about 38 years now.
Even since that time, i started to write articles from aquarium-magazines, later on internatioanl also.
I write for the Dutch Aquarium and Terrarium Association(NBAT), for the Belgium Aquarium and Terrarium Association(BBAT), the Dutch Cichlid Association (NVC, Cichlidae), the English Cichlid Association(Cichlidae),
Cichlid News USA, and in Germany for "Aquarium Live!".
When i have the time and energy, i do give lectures in the Netherlands also.
Next to that i do sell ornamental tropical fish from home for several reasons.
It started of a long time ago with the sale of my own offspring of my own fish.
Of course you come in contact with a lot of other aquarists of course, and then you start to hear the strangest things sadly enough.
This is mainly because a lot of pet-shops do not provide in the proper information to especially the new aquarists, and they do sell lots of fish which shouldn't be in our tanks in the first place because they grow far to big.
Secondly they don't ask enough which tank somebody has, and what kind of fish this person has already, so this person can make a proper combination in his tank, good for fish and owner!
And then they sell lots of stuff which is not neccesary at all, or just in a minor way, and only in some cases.
So my mate and me decided to start our "home-business" up to another level, to fill up this gap of information, and try to keep this people into our beautifull hobby, because when people are having lots of dis-appointments in the first months, they are mostly lost forever in this hobby.
The fact that i write articles, have my own pages and giving lectures is aslo to bring and spread the information to the people!
Next to that, we have very friendly prices, because we think, even when you have a regular shop, the prizes don't need to be that high as they are.
So we are still private-sellers, and we try to get our own costs from the sales, nothing commercial.
We have about 56 tanks running at the moment, and around 170 species at home, besides the species we keep for ourself of course, which are mostly not the species we have for sale.
My own livingroom-tank is 200x70x60 cm, with biofilter a little over 1000 liters.
This was a West-Africa tank first, then i kept big Central-American cichlids, the angelfish with company of several little species, then big South-American cichlids, like oscars(Astronotus occelatus) en Cichla occelaris, and i am renovating this tank now to go back to West-Africa again, and make it i jungle-creek stream habitat and biotope with mainly dwarfcichlids from there.
So i only have pics from my tank as it was before last year with those big South-American cichlids.
My mate has a marine-tank.
Why i am here on the Apistogramma-forum?
Because dwarfcichlids are truly my biggest love, specially the Apistogramma-genus and the West-African Pelvicachromis genus.
Hope to see you here and on my pages on facebook!
Regards, Willy Bijker(Zooman).
My name is Willy Bijker, also known as Zooman from Facebook in several groups, under which my own group "The International Dwarfcichlid Forum", and the Dutch "Aqualovers".
I am in this hobby since i was about 14 years young, so that is about 38 years now.
Even since that time, i started to write articles from aquarium-magazines, later on internatioanl also.
I write for the Dutch Aquarium and Terrarium Association(NBAT), for the Belgium Aquarium and Terrarium Association(BBAT), the Dutch Cichlid Association (NVC, Cichlidae), the English Cichlid Association(Cichlidae),
Cichlid News USA, and in Germany for "Aquarium Live!".
When i have the time and energy, i do give lectures in the Netherlands also.
Next to that i do sell ornamental tropical fish from home for several reasons.
It started of a long time ago with the sale of my own offspring of my own fish.
Of course you come in contact with a lot of other aquarists of course, and then you start to hear the strangest things sadly enough.
This is mainly because a lot of pet-shops do not provide in the proper information to especially the new aquarists, and they do sell lots of fish which shouldn't be in our tanks in the first place because they grow far to big.
Secondly they don't ask enough which tank somebody has, and what kind of fish this person has already, so this person can make a proper combination in his tank, good for fish and owner!
And then they sell lots of stuff which is not neccesary at all, or just in a minor way, and only in some cases.
So my mate and me decided to start our "home-business" up to another level, to fill up this gap of information, and try to keep this people into our beautifull hobby, because when people are having lots of dis-appointments in the first months, they are mostly lost forever in this hobby.
The fact that i write articles, have my own pages and giving lectures is aslo to bring and spread the information to the people!
Next to that, we have very friendly prices, because we think, even when you have a regular shop, the prizes don't need to be that high as they are.
So we are still private-sellers, and we try to get our own costs from the sales, nothing commercial.
We have about 56 tanks running at the moment, and around 170 species at home, besides the species we keep for ourself of course, which are mostly not the species we have for sale.
My own livingroom-tank is 200x70x60 cm, with biofilter a little over 1000 liters.
This was a West-Africa tank first, then i kept big Central-American cichlids, the angelfish with company of several little species, then big South-American cichlids, like oscars(Astronotus occelatus) en Cichla occelaris, and i am renovating this tank now to go back to West-Africa again, and make it i jungle-creek stream habitat and biotope with mainly dwarfcichlids from there.
So i only have pics from my tank as it was before last year with those big South-American cichlids.
My mate has a marine-tank.
Why i am here on the Apistogramma-forum?
Because dwarfcichlids are truly my biggest love, specially the Apistogramma-genus and the West-African Pelvicachromis genus.
Hope to see you here and on my pages on facebook!
Regards, Willy Bijker(Zooman).
