Eric Thomas started keeping fish around 1970, at about 8 years old with his older brother Bill. From 1970-1978, they kept and bred mouth-brooding cichlids (Geophagus and several Lake Malawi mbuna including Labeotropheus trewavasae, Maylandia zebra and Melanochromis auratus), along with Steatocraneus casuarius… and convict cichlids (who doesn’t start with convicts?). Eric and Bill were members of the now-defunct Tri-City Aquarium Society of Southern California. In college, Eric studied captive husbandry of vertebrates; with his mentor Professor Rudolfo Ruibal at UC Riverside, in 1978 Eric was the first person to breed the Budgett’s frog Lepidobatrachus laevis in captivity. In Dr. Ruibal’s lab, Eric learned about and began studying skin glands and their function. Eric went on to earn a Ph.D. under Dr. Paul Licht at UC Berkeley, studying reproductive endocrinology and the influence of sex hormones on frog skin glands. Eric is an Associate Professor of Biology (and former Co-Chair and Director of Graduate Studies) for the Biological Sciences Department at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Eric’s research is split between reproductive pheromone production Hymenochirus frogs, self-poisoning in cory catfishes, and recently he’s started studying Microglanis bumblebee catfishes in Peru.
At home, Eric’s interests are keeping and breeding catfish, including Corydoradine, Loricariidae, Auchenipteridae, and Pseudopimelodidae (mostly Microglanis); Eric is perhaps best known for having bred some oddball catfish, including the South American banjo catfish Bunocephalus coracoideus, the African bumblebee catfish, Microsynodontis sp. `Nigeria` and the marbled talking catfish, Amblydoras nauticus. Between home and work, Eric runs up to 35 aquaria and currently has over 40 species of catfish. Eric operates a YouTube Channel (Bekateen) and FaceBook page (Bekateen’s FishRoom) for sharing his knowledge and experiences with fellow fish keepers; he is also a moderator on PlanetCatfish.com, and he served seven years as the program coordinator for the Sacramento Aquarium Society.
More information is coming…