Fuller, Ian

Born in Birmingham in 1946, after leaving school at fifteen went through a six-year engineering apprenticeship at the end of which became a precision toolmaker. After a short three year period working in the tropical fish trade trade I am once again toolmaking and thoroughly enjoying it albeit on a part time basis. I started keeping tropical fish around 1970 after I was given a small unwanted eighteen ten by ten aquarium, starting with many of the standard species of the day, such as guppies, neon’s, platy’s and swordtails. However it was not very long before I graduated to a larger thirty-six inch tank, which was soon followed by a couple of four foot twin stands and tanks. I co-founded a tropical fish club in the small town of Rugeley, Staffordshire, England, where I then lived in 1973 and it was around this time when I first became hooked on Corys when I bought a small group of C. pygmaeus that I had to keep in small jars for several days because the tank I had earmarked for them had become polluted due to the demise of a couple of apple snails, which had gone unnoticed and needed to be completely cleaned out. The Corys were divided into three sweet jars while the tank was being readied and I am sure was the constant twice daily water changes in these jars that triggered the C. pygmaeus to spawn, that was it, I was hooked and have been ever since. I have to date successfully spawned over 140 species of Corydoradinae Catfish and hope to spawn many more. Some of the species I have bred were the first recorded and with many I am probably the only one to have bred them. During the 1970’s and 80’s I was very active in the showing and judging scene and in 1999 I was elected chairman of what is now the Catfish Study Group, a position I held for 12 years. Now as Convention manager a great deal of my spare time is taken up with organizing CSG activities. I have written four books on Corys, the first in 2000 was called “Breeding Corydoradinae Catfish” and included sixty-five species spawning accounts, this was superseded in 2012 with an updated second edition, which contains 153 spawning logs. Along with fellow Cory enthusiast Hans-Georg Evers we produced two books on “Identifying Corydoradinae Catfishes” the first in in 2005, and a 1st supplement in 2011. All my books are self-published. I also run a website dedicated to Corys called Corydorasworld.com The site originally started in 2002 under the name “Corycats.com”, In March 2006 the site was re-named and completely re-designed and Corydorasworld.com was born. Over the following eight years I have worked hard to keep information current and up to date, I find it very addictive and it would be very easy to loose myself completely in this work. Last year the site underwent another a major refit and as a result is even more user friendly and informative. My latest fishy venture started in 2015, when I along with good friend and fellow fish nut Michael Barber set up a fish collecting and eco tour business called Go Wild Peru in Puerto Maldonado, south eastern Peru. I am very thankful for the Internet and its ability to shrink the world down to the size of a computer screen; it is because of this technology that I have been invited to many aquarium societies throughout Europe, Canada and the USA, to talk about and spread the knowledge of my favorite fishes and having the opportunity to meet many wonderful fish people in the process.   Presentations: Identifying Corydoradinae Catfish Keeping and Breeding Corydoadinae Catfish