I have spent my lifetime working in the (pet) industry that I love, and I am currently working on my second lifetime of work. (MOAPH museum project).
I started working in pet shops at 11 years old (Russo’s Wonderfull World of Pets) and at age 13 co-founded the Newport Fashion Island Aquarium Society, which would later change its name to the Orange County Aquarium Society. (now the COAST tropical fish club) I was the Junior representative for the Orange County club and printed their club newsletter in my high school graphic arts class, which had 2 offset printing machines.
At 18, I worked for a tropical fish wholesaler in Los Angeles (Underwater World), with my territory being Orange and San Diego counties. During my time selling tropical fish, many of my shops asked me “if I could get reptiles for them”. So, I quit my fish job at 19 and started a live reptile import/export company that would eventually be named California Zoological Supply. I traveled to Suriname, Honduras, Mexico, Egypt, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Western Samoa, and Europe, collecting and setting up contacts to import live reptiles. During my time with Cal Zoo, we had the opportunity to procure a reptile vitamin product (Reptivite), which would be the start of Zoo Med Laboratories.
Zoo Med currently has over 1500 products for reptiles, aquarium fish, insects, birds, and amphibians. Our proudest accomplishment was the invention of the first UVB light to combat metabolic bone disease in reptiles, now used by zoos and public aquariums worldwide.
In 2021 the WPA (World Pet Association) gave me a Lifetime Achievement Award for the groundbreaking work Zoo Med has done for reptile husbandry. At heart, I am a fish hobbyist first and a turtle hobbyist second. We have a small zoo at Zoo Med where we currently breed over 50 species of turtles and hatch out over 200+ turtle eggs per year.
This past year, we finally bred Panda Uarus, which was one of the most difficult fish we have ever bred!
Currently, I am spending the majority of my time on my new project: the Museum of Aquarium & Pet History (morph.org)
We have been online for 4 years and hope to open our physical museum by the end of 2027, coinciding with Zoo Med’s 50th anniversary.
