Professional Aquarists

Awesome Nate! I am excited for you.

Hello once again,
Sorry to revive an old thread, but I felt it appropriate to update this. Since posting about this, I have been in contact with other professional aquarists, insurance representatives, scuba diving instructors, and the representatives at Live Exhibits (the ones who contract out the work for Bass Pro). Great news has arrived. I start training tomorrow. They have accepted my proposal of $28 an hour. I won't be as poor of an undergrad as I thought I was going to be. I'm really excited and I wanted to say thanks for all the advice offered here. I even received a contact from Drewish that really shifted the momentum of this in my direction. Thanks again. If anyone is in the area, I'm sure I can give them a behind the scenes look at what goes on with these exhibits. I'm sure I'll be getting all kinds of pictures of the fish that I'll be using in the exhibit while I have them in quarantine and whatnot. This will be a great learning experience and I might even consider making a career out of it, who knows!

-Nate

that sounds like great news, ill have to remember where your at if im up in that area

are you in the toledo area or something?

matthew

Congratulations! I'll be sure to check out the exhibit when Bass Pro opens.

Glad to see he was able to help you out and happy that you got the job.

Did you notice the entire NANFA membership suddenly turn green with envy? Well, we just did. Don't believe me? See my avatar.
Congrats, Nate!

That avatar made me smile. I hope it's as fun as I think it'll be.

Congrats also.
I wouldn't mind getting a gig like this to get me through school

Hopefully I'll be able to save up enough to put myself through my last year of school without needing any more school loans.

Awesome Nate! I am excited for you.

Thanks, Matt!

that sounds like great news, ill have to remember where your at if im up in that area

are you in the toledo area or something?

matthew

Oh yeah, just a little south of Toledo. In Rossford, OH. Right off of I-75, you can't miss it.

Congratulations! I'll be sure to check out the exhibit when Bass Pro opens.

Yeah, hopefully I'll have some say in how things look and what fish go into the tank. But, I'm fully prepared to be told they're looking for a 100% gamefish tank.

Glad to see he was able to help you out and happy that you got the job.

Eric was very helpful and gave me plenty of insight about where I needed to place my bid and what to expect. His advice was probably the most useful out of anyone I spoke to.

I wouldn't mind getting a gig like this to get me through school

Yeah. I worked for the math department - $2.65/hour I think it was.

That's very interesting, and good news for Nate. At my previous engineering employer, I've had small surveyor outfits refuse subcontract work, saying that they can't afford the insurance that my employer and/or clients demanded that they carry. It was on the order of what Nate is being asked to carry. I was under the impression that it was much more expensive. Maybe that's so for surveyors, but not aquarists? I hope so for Nate's sake.

Liability for surveyors is expensive, due to the ramifications of a mistake. Big legal battles can brew up if a surveyor is just a little off. If you've ever read old deeds, the boundaries of older farms can be specified in some pretty strange ways, with landmarks that may no longer exist, or bordering creeks that have shifted position over the years.

For what it's worth I've heard through the grapevine that they pay their aquarist contractors around 1500-2000 per month on average depending on the area, not sure how reliable that info is though.

I made 7.50 an hour in 1999 or 2000 when I took a summer job there while I was in college, but that was as a lowly fishing dept night shift stock boy, I'm sure they've increased it since then. I also wasn't too impressed with the management, pretty disorganized and unprofessional, though that was just at one store and it was a long time ago...

Also it is worth mentioning that if you are possibly looking for a career in the public aquarium industry the great catch-22 is that you can't get hired without experience, and you can't experience until someone hires you to keep fish. If you want to keep fish professionally this would be a great opportunity to get your foot in the door.

Hope you get the gig, working as an aquarist in college was a great experience for me, it really enhances your education if you are pursuing a related course of study.

Edited by BLChristie, 04 April 2008 - 08:38 PM.

Hope you get the gig, working as an aquarist in college was a great experience for me, it really enhances your education if you are pursuing a related course of study.

Thanks for the words of wisdom. I did get the gig. I'll keep everyone posted on how it goes, hopefully with some pictures of my set-up as well.