GAAS Fall Auction—Sunday, November 2, 2025
The Greater Akron Aquarium Society Fall Auction will be held on Sunday, November 2, 2025 at the Tallmadge Community Center. Doors open at 10 am for registration, and 11 am is the start of the auction. The event is free admission for the public. There is no cost to register or to enter auction items into the auction. The auction is a 70/30 split for the seller. Note that Sunday, November 2, is also the end of daylight saving time, and clocks are set back 1 hour that morning at 2:00 am. Volunteers who wish to help with setup, please arrive at 8 am. Click here for more details about the fall auction.
Click on the flier image below to view and download the Fall Auction pdf with rules and details.
Regional Events in October
See links to Fall Auctions and Swap Meets here.
Next Meeting Will Be Friday, November 14
Please join us at the November Meeting, on Friday, November 14, at 8:00 pm at the Ritchie Memorial Shelter House. We will have BAP and HAP with mini-auction, the product raffle, and refreshments. The November Bowl Show classes will be: All Other Livebearers; All Other Egglayers; All Other Catfish. Additionally, we will be voting on Board Officers for 2026 (ie, President, Vice-President, Recording Secretary, Membership Secretary, and Treasurer).
The November program, “Keeping the Hingeback Tortoises of West Africa and How They Led Me to Fish,” will be presented by GAAS Member, Tom Arbour.
Program Description: The Hingeback tortoises are a fascinating group of Chelonian species that live only in Africa. They’re unique in the world of turtles and tortoises because the hinge of their shell is integrated into the carapace, or top shell, rather than the plastron, the bottom shell. Hingebacks were widely imported to the U.S. for decades, a practice which has reduced their numbers in West Africa. I’ve been keeping hingebacks continuously since 1998 and began successfully breeding these amazing creatures in 2020. I will focus on three species, the Home’s Hingeback, Eroded Hingeback, and Western Hingeback. These tortoises frequent the same habitats that many of the stunning cichlids, killifish, and tetras available in the aquarium hobby also depend upon. Please join me as we learn more about the only group of tortoises that are widely carnivorous and aren’t afraid to go swimming with the fish in the waters of West Africa. Understanding their habitats in the wild has been key to my success keeping a notoriously difficult group, having hatched more than 75 animals since 2020.
October’s Program Provided Insights on Project Piaba
Our October program was a fantastic Zoom presentation by Jackie Anderson, Director of Outreach, for Project Piaba, a non-profit corporation dedicated to fostering wild-caught and sustainable aquarium-fish fisheries. In her talk, Project Piaba: How Home Aquariums Can Drive Conservation, Jackie showed how the home aquarium fish industry can drive environmental conservation in environmentally sensitive areas within in the Rio Negro. She also showed pictures of species that are new to the hobby. We are grateful for Jackie’s experience in the Rio Negro region and for providing insights into the import of fishes from Brazil.
The September Meeting Featured Bowling Green Professor
The September meeting featured Professor Kevin Neves from Bowling Green State University, who delivered a comprehensive message on water quality and its application to such measurements as nitrogen and pH that influences enzyme activity, which affects the appearance and size of fish and their behavior under stress.
