Randy Carey

Randy Carey keeps an aquaria room of about seventy tanks — most dedicated to the display or breeding of tetras, barbs, and their relatives. As an active member of the Minnesota Aquarium Society, he wrote numerous articles, has bred roughly 200 species, and was honored with a lifetime membership.

Having established a web presence in the late '90's, Randy was offered a column in Tropical Fish Hobbyist. Since then, he has written several feature articles and supplied the cover photo of the Celestial Pearl Danio. He has spoken on topics spanning tetras, breeding scatterers, and community tank theory to aquarium societies all across America and Canada. (Note: Randy's first talk outside of his home club was delivered to the Potomac Valley Aquarium Society in 1999 at the invitation of Julio Melgar.) Even civic organizations seek him to deliver nontechnical talks that tie into his experiences as an aquarist and author.

Randy's new book, Tetras and Barbs, will be released fall of 2009 and distributed by TFH throughout aquarium stores and retail chains. His goal was to deliver new information with a fresh perspective that differs from the previous and sparse works on these fish groups. As a result, the book merges recent and hard-to-find information with a pragmatic approach for today's aquarist: care and breeding as well as aquascaping and species selection for the display aquarium. Randy maintains the book's web site at TetrasAndBarbs.com.

Talk Summary: Making Sense of the Barbs, Danios, and Rasbora

These commonly kept fish groups have received only shallow attention in aquarium literature. This comprehensive overview summarizes bio-geography, the roles of microhabitats and seasonal changes, and the saga of the leading and latest research. Attendees will leave with a fuller understanding that go deeper than the simple labels "barbs," "danios," and "rasboras."

This current and hard-to-find information spilled out from Randy's research as he wrote his new book, Tetras and Barbs. (Go to TetrasAndBarbs.com for background information on this 2009 book.)