Hi all. I have lurked on the NANFA forum for a couple of years, but only formally joined this last month.

I'm originally from Emporia, KS; home of NASCAR star Clint Bowyer and the Neosho Madtom. My wife and I moved because of job opportunities from Emporia and bought a house in Shawnee, KS last year. I am currently the Secretary of the Heart of America Aquarium Society of Kansas City (www.kcfishclub.org). We have several native enthusiasts, and hope we can become a part of your organization and forum.

I'm really excited about joining NANFA. My parents own several large tracts of land on the Neosho River basin. There are two very nice creeks that I have collected at in the past. I've collected many shiners, minnows, and sunfish. I'm looking forward to the spring, as my enthusiasm for natives has never been higher. For the first time in my life, I have a small fishroom, consisting of 30 tanks totally 600 gallons. I also am working on an expanded fishroom that will consist of 48 tanks for a total of 1,700 gallons, primarily consisting of 75 gallon tanks, most devoted to native species.

Currently, I am breeding and keeping several rare apistogrammas from South America. I look forward to reading more on this forum, and learning from all of you. In the long run, it's my intention to keep the apistos on one side of the fishroom, and native species on the other. As spring approaches, my collecting bug is bigger than ever.

Thanks.
Brian

Welcome to the Forum, Brian. We're glad that you decided to become more obvious (I think that's a good way to describe it?).

Glad to hear you joined ;I lurked for about a year myself, and Im really happy that I did finally join (I finally got to post and get replies...and one of the best things is the quarterly copies of the American Currents magazine). Would love to hear more about what you find in those creeks down home (I believe you also have an endangered darter down in that area).