Who remembers the Fall Workshop and Saturday night rare fish auctions the Milwaukee Aquarium Society used to host? If you can remember that far back, can you remember Rusty Wessel’s appearance as a presenter and a contributor of fish to the year’s rare fish auction? If you can remember that, than you might remember that’s when I bought the Santa Rem – quite a while back – its been a long trip from then to now – an odyssey. But don’t worry, this article won’t be that long!

I bought the Santa Rem as about 1 ½ inch fish because I like South American fish – large ones – and nobody had done anything with them in this area (well maybe Tom Wojtech had or at least he thought he might have). Big South Americans are a sight to behold - beautiful colors, long trailers, strong movement through the water.

I waited several years for these fish to grow up. I moved them from a ten gallon tank all the way up to a "125." Seven fish were too many for one six-foot tank. Then over time, two fish died and I sold a pair – keeping only a trio for myself. Actually, I kept a pair and a possible second female. I noticed pre-spawning activity, but nothing more.

Then the second female got into it with the main female. No more main female! Seems like female number two knew what she wanted.

Never did see anything other than pre-spawning activity and plenty of gravel-moving. Hard to tell when these partial mouth brooders are holding – they take turns. Generally, they don’t eat when they’re holding.

Well, I wouldn’t be writing this article if we hadn’t caught them with a full mouth. I’m not sure if we got all of the fry. We got more than enough to qualify.

I wonder how many times they spawned and ate but we didn’t catch them. If we had, the Odyssey would have been shorter. It’s been fun getting to know these fish.

By the way, Rusty Wessel was here in 1998. That was 5 years ago!