OFI Award 2009

OFI HONOURS ULRICH GLASER SR. WITH OFI AWARD 2009

On 28 May 2009, during the opening ceremony of Aquarama 2009, OFI honored Ulrich Glaser sr. with the OFI Award 2009.

The OFI award was launched in 2005 in Singapore to honor individuals, companies and organizations who have made significant contributions to our industry over the last several years.

Mr. Glaser has been active in the aquarium industry since the early 1970's when he started an aquarium shop. In 1973 he entered the wholesale trade in Tropicarium Buchstag, but most people in the aquarium industry know him from Aquarium Glaser, founded in 1984. Mr. Glaser built up one of the largest ornamental fish importing companies in the world.

After his retirement from Aquarium Glaser, Mr. Glaser started the publishing house Aqualog Verlag GmbH. The reason for doing this was his awareness, built up during his years as a retailer and as an importer, that of many species imported there was hardly any information available or only scattered in numerous publications in aquarium magazines and scientific literature. Often even a scientific name was not known while pictures for proper identification were not available. Even if both were available, very often the information on how to keep these fish and shrimps was lacking or needed a in depth literature study to trace it. Most of the operators don't have the time for that, nor do they have access to all literature.

The first book of our laureate, All L-numbers, filled a great gap in knowledge of a very popular fish group. For the first time the numerous loricariid catfish were catalogued and pictured, many of which un-described at that time, leading to a boost in the trade in these fish. It resulted in a boost in the industry in South America, but also in much more knowledge on how to keep these fish. In this way Mr.Glaser greatly contributed to the proper husbandry of not only the L number catfish, but later also to many other common and rare fish in our industry. His database with information on how water quality criteria, food, tank size, behavior and much more, counts many thousands of fish species, fish varieties, plant species and other aquatic animals, carefully maintained over the years by Mr. Glaser himself

Several months ago Mr. Glaser suffered health problems and was forced to withdraw from Aqualog Verlag. In our view this is the time to say thank you to him and honor our former colleague with the OFI Award 2009.

Unfortunately Mr. Glaser was not able to come to Singapore to receive the OFI Award. This is why we will present him the OFI Award 2009 in person at Interzoo 2010.

Some photo's of Mr. Glaser at 300 dpi: photo 1, photo 2, photo 3.