Karen Randall grew up with aquariums as a child. While experienced in many facets of the aquarium hobby, as an adult her focus turned to a concentration in planted display aquariums and the study and propagation of aquatic plants. Her articles and photography have been published in six languages in 9 countries. For many years she authored the monthly column, “Sunken Gardens” in Aquarium Fish Magazine. She is an international speaker on aquarium subjects.
Karen is past president of the Boston Aquarium Society, and serves on the board of the Aquatic Gardeners Association. She was editor of the AGA magazine, The Aquatic Gardener for 5 years and is now technical editor of the magazine. She has served as a judge for both the AGA Aquascaping Contest and the Aqua Design Amano International Aquatic Plants Layout Contest since their inception. In 2010 she had the pleasure to serve as a speaker and jury member for the prestigious live international contest, “The Art of the Planted Aquarium” held in Hannover, Germany. She has also served as a consultant on several major projects at public aquaria.
She has traveled extensively in South and Central America and South East Asia as well as the southern parts of the U.S. to study aquatic plants and biotopes in the wild. In Brazil she has assisted with Project Piaba, a conservation program in the Amazon centered on the aquarium fish trade. She regularly does programs on these topics as well as aquatic gardening for groups ranging from aquarium clubs, school children, garden clubs and church organizations.
Karen started a program a number of years ago to put aquariums in many classrooms in the local public elementary schools. Now, with her own children grown, this program is still going strong. In 2003 she was awarded the Northeast Council of Aquarium Society’s Betty Mueller Award; a life-time award for her outreach work and other contributions to the aquarium hobby.
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Karen Getting The Shot
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For our Thursday night meeting, April 17th Karen will give the talk titled: "Kerala, Exploring God's Own Country" which will be about her collecting adventures in India.
Her second talk, Friday night will be a talk called “Having Fun with Nano Tanks”. You don’t already have to be a “plant crazy” to be able to get something out of this talk. Sit back and enjoy the pictures and think about how you could do this in one of your aquariums!
This second meeting will also start at 7:30. This is your chance to spend more time with our speaker in a much smaller group setting. It will be at Jost Chemicals just off of St. Charles Rock Road and Hwy 170. To get to Jost Chemicals take Hwy 170 to St. Charles Rock Road. Head east but get in the left hand lane right away and make a left at the stoplight onto Lackland Road. It’s about ½ mile through an industrial complex just watch for the signs. The meeting will be in the VERY LAST building on the road, look for the cars. The address is: 8110 Lackland Road St. Louis, MO 63114.
Send a message, call or email Gary Lange if you are coming so that we have enough refreshments for this meeting. We also have dinner with our speaker at 6 pm on Thursday night, location to be determined. Please let Gary know if you plan to attend so that he can reserve seating.