SANJAY JOSHI

Sanjay Joshi in real life is a Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Penn State University. He has been a reef addict since 1992, and currently keeps several reefs aquariums at home including a 500G SPS dominated reef. He also co-manages the 500G aquarium at Penn State. Dr. Joshi is actively involved in educating the hobby on various topics through his publications in reef magazines and lectures. He has published articles in magazines such as Advanced Aquarist, Reefs Magazine, Coral, Marine Fish and Reef Annual, Aquarium Frontiers, and Aquarium Fish. 

JOHN HUDSON

John has been keeping aquariums since 1993 at the age of 19. In 2011 he and his wife Lisa started the KGTropicals YouTube channel to educate new fish keepers and get them through the pitfalls of a new aquarium.

CORY MCELROY

Cory McElroy is a hobbyist turned fish store owner of Aquarium Co-Op in Edmonds, Washington. His business has expanded to online sales of aquarium plants, dry goods, and innovative products to help make fishkeepers’ lives easier. Cory’s passion for growing and improving the freshwater aquarium hobby has driven him to create an educational YouTube channel, weekly blog, the CARE forum, and an online fish club. In the future, he hopes to travel more to learn how people catch, keep, and breed aquarium fish all around the world.

MARC LEVENSON

Marc “melev” Levenson has been in the hobby since 1998, blogging his experiences about his own reef on melevsreef.com to help others learn husbandry skills. Most recently he’s become an online personality with tens of thousands of followers on his YouTube channel (melevsreef) also geared at helping other reefers through his personal experiences. His website’s articles, blogs, and Critter ID cover topics like pest control, feeding techniques, working with acrylics, reef photography and water chemistry to name a few.

ROBERT LUPTON

In 2010, Robert started his journey into the shrimp hobby. Over the course of the next couple years, his passion grew. Robert grew his hobby from ten aquariums in his house to co founding one of the largest shrimp related businesses in the country. Rob’s knowledge and passion have mad him a leading figure in the ornamental shrimp hobby.

IRENE BEARLY

Irene is the Content Strategist for Aquarium Co-Op, where she creates educational blog posts and videos about the freshwater aquarium hobby. She also runs her own YouTube channel, Girl Talks Fish, to share beginner-friendly tutorials about nano fish and planted tanks.

DEAN TWEEDDALE

Dean Tweeddale is a master breeder who started keeping fish over 55 years ago. He started with guppies, moved on to discus, and has since bred countless species of freshwater fish. Always an innovator, Dean has throughout his fishkeeping career built three in-house fish rooms and developed an incredible system for raising fry. Some of his proudest moments in the hobby have been developing a system to raise discus artificially, breeding many rare dwarf cichlids, spawning German blue rams continuously, and spawning several L-number plecos. Dean has been a featured speaker at many clubs around the country. He has collected and bred wild fish from Peru and has appeared on Aquarium Co-Op’s YouTube channel and various others.FACE

BEN JOHNSON

Ben Johnson has been professionally employed in the aquarium industry since 1991. Working at many different retail and maintenance companies from Dallas to Houston until he became a zookeeper at the Houston zoo Kipp aquarium where he was in charge of the 4000 gallon reef zones exhibit as well as others. While working at the zoo, he created Captive Aquatic Ecosystems to maintain aquariums as a side job. In 2004, Mr. Johnson quit the zoo because his maintenance company had taken off and was paying him more than what the zoo was. Through many ups and downs over the years, Ben has run his maintenance company as his sole job ever since. He has written many articles in trade magazines as well as online, spoken at MACNA Las Vegas and two Aquashellas. At 47 years old, Ben has been professionally employed in the aquarium industry since he was 16.

MIKE TUCCINARDI

Mike is an independent consultant in the aquatics industry specializing in fish health management and export/import logistics. He has spent the last 16 years working with fish and invertebrates at every level from retail, wholesale, aquaculture, export, and wild collection settings. During this time he has traveled to a dozen countries involved in the global industry with a focus on practical problem solving and improving fish health and handling at every link in the supply chain. Mike has also written extensively for publications such as Coral, Tropical Fish Hobbyist, Amazonas and others.

MIKE SENSKE

BAHAMA LLAMA

GEORGE FARMER

“George is an internationally renowned aquascaper and author from the UK. He is passionate about promoting wellness through aquascaping. From roadside bombs in Afghanistan to Amano’s 40,000 gallon aquarium – there’s something in this exclusive and candid talk for everyone!”