Cameron Laufman has known from a young age that tropical fish keeping was the hobby for him. Starting at age 8 with a 75-gallon aquarium housing Piranha, Cameron quickly learned the joys (and pains) of the aquarium hobby. A native Midwesterner, Cameron was born and raised in West Lafayette, Indiana where he attended Purdue University, earning a degree in Fisheries and Aquatic Science. After several years of aquarium store retail, Cameron packed up and moved to the West Coast, where he resides today with his wife and their son, to manage The Wet Spot Tropical Fish, where he continues in an executive role. While Cameron’s passion is catfish, he ardently keeps fish of all varieties and is partial to any benthic species and their care, in addition to conservation.

Catfish expert and naturalist Shane Linder is the “Shane” behind Planetcatfish.com‘s Shane World. Shane’s World houses well over 150 articles by various catfish experts making it the largest such resource known to exist. Shane is also a frequent contributor to several US and international aquarium periodicals and has been a guest speaker at numerous fish conventions in the US and Europe. From 2000-2020 Shane lived and collected fishes extensively in Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, South Africa, Uganda, and Nigeria. He has made additional collecting expeditions into Ecuador, Peru and Brazil.