Greater Pittsburgh Aquarium Society, Inc.

September 2017 GPASI Regular Meeting
Friday September 29th, 2017

ANDREAS TANKE

"New" L-Number Plecos

Andreas Tanke was born in 1971 in Langenhagen near Hanover, Germany. As a child, he came into contact with the aquarium hobby through his parents and at about 10 years of age, he got his first aquarium and began to gather experience with this interesting hobby. In the 1990s, his studies of Mathematics/Informatics and the founding of his own IT company required focus on other non-aquatic things. He did, however, re-enter the aquarium hobby in 2002 and the typical tank replication virus did not pass him unharmed. Thus, a single tank in the living room soon turned into a whole fish room. In 2013, it resulted in Andreas buying a house and building a real fish room with an automatic water change system. His interests are clearly focused on the underwater fauna of the South American continent, especially the dwarf cichlids of the genus Apistogramma as well as loricariid catfishes. He has kept more than 30 different species of Apistogramma and has been successful in breeding a lot of them. His main focus however, is on plecos, more precisely those of the genus Panaqolus. He currently keeps more than 15 species of them, and has succeeded in breeding several of them. In 2008, he had the first opportunity to observe his favorite tankmates as they live in Nature, and went on a trip to Suriname and the Brazilian state of Roraima together with some friends. In the following years, he was also on expeditions to Venezuela and Peru, and several times to Brazil. In 2009 Andreas, together with his friend Ingo Seidel, started to organize the International L-Number-Days. In 2017, this biannual convention in Germany will take place for the 5th time with participants from more than 15 countries. Encouraged by the positive impressions of these conventions he also became interested in other international meetings of aquarium hobbyists, such as for example the CSG Convention in UK or the all catfish convention in the US. He reports in aquarium magazines, talks and of course his websites about his trips and experiences.