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Patrick Tawil, 2004
Cichlid Room Companion
Authors

Patrick Tawil

France
last updated on 02-Jan-2023

Since the age of ten, Patrick Tawil has been fond of zoology, notably animal evolution and classification, and especially vertebrates. When he became 13, Patrick turned an empty apartment of his home building into a kind of Noah’s arch, with many types of birds and rodents, without the neighbor’s knowledge. When his clandestine activities were discovered nine months later, he had to restrict himself to aquarium fishes. Patrick's first tank was a kind of big plastic bubble a few dozen liters in volume, initially intended for effervescent tablet advertising. The main host of this "aqua bubble" was a Thorichthys meeki, whose refuge was a big triton (Charonia) shell.

Once in France, his interest early focussed on cichlids, because of their easy care, but overall because of their ecological adaptations and their astonishing evolutive convergences. Lake Tanganyika cichlids, with their many lineages, became his favorites, immediately followed by those from Lake Malawi. Patrick acquired practical experience about successfully keeping them and the behavior of most of the cichlid genera from these two lakes, as well as some of the other African genera. Later, he translated many aquarist books for Tetra editions and contributed to french aquarist publications. A member of the AFC (the french cichlid association) since its foundation, he has contributed on a regular basis to its monthly bulletin, of which he was the editor for several years. Patrick currently collaborates with the yearbook of the association, "L’An Cichlidé".

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