The experience of ordering fish on my computer and then shipping them through the United States Postal Service (or any other service) still makes me grin. The other, somewhat more practical reason was the local fish store prices on wild caught Hypancistrus zebras started at $45.00 each. It seems natural then that when I was ready to buy my dream fish, I would shop in cyberspace. To be a fish hobbyist is to be an Internet explorer and vice-versa. These two new worlds were explored simultaneously. Some people have it…īy the spring of 1999 I had developed into both a novice fish keeper and an Internet junkie. He can come to my house today and accurately do the same thing with my fish. We discussed all the care and feeding issues, but always returned to the basic and first questions: “Is there a pair?” and “How do we get them to spawn?” As to the former, Jeff could quickly spot the male and declare which of his 2 females was gravid. There was little information available so what he had we revered as TRUTH. Jeff had collected what few articles he’d run across in the three years he’d kept his trio of Hypancistrus zebra. I bought the goldfish, but imagined them with black and white stripes. A few days later, after a trip to Jeff’s basement where he kept his collection of once-used equipment, I had everything I needed.

During one of these visits, I ventured to mention an old dream of keeping a few goldfish in a 20 gallon long.

I became so enamoured with the fish that I made up reasons to visit him. They were hanging out among the small, perfectly stacked pieces of slate on the bottom of a 75-gallon tank in the apartment of my neighbor, Jeff. I was not a fish keeper in 1997 when I saw my first “Zebra Pleco”. Written by Kevin Korotev for the SPLASH, the official publication of the Milwaukee Aquarium Society, from Carol Ann Nellen, South San Francisco, California Photo from “An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aquarium Fish” Care, upkeep and maintenance of Hypancistrus Zebra

Zebra 2 tropical house