November 2025 Speaker
Diana Walstad will speak about "Plants for Water Quality; Genetics for Fish Quality".
Date: November 6th, 2025
Synopsis: My talk will describe my experiences over the years with various planted tank setups:
(1) simple 1-gal bowls;
(2) large planted tanks with soil substrates and filters; and
(3) fish breeding tanks.
The fish breeding tanks depend solely on plants to purify the water as they have no filters or aerators.
Finally, the last part of my talk will describe my struggle in breeding fancy guppies with greater longevity.
In my opinion, the aquarium hobby provides us with mountains of advice on maintaining water quality, but virtually
nothing on breeding fish that are genetically robust.
Speaker Biography: Diana Walstad, a long-time aquarist, trained as a microbiologist. She did medical and
biological research at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and the National Institute of Environmental
Health Science. Her books Ecology of the Planted Aquarium and Aquarium Fish Reproduction bring useful and novel
scientific information into the aquarium hobby. She currently keeps nine 10-gal and 20-gal planted tanks devoted
to breeding fancy guppies.
(From Diana): I'll bring some pairs of young guppies, all bagged up and ready for auction donation.
I'll also bring books (20 copies of 'Ecology of the Planted Aquarium' and 20 copies of Aquarium Fish ReproductIon
to sell for $25 each--cash or PayPal.
Photos below by Chris Welch
