Dear L-Numbers Friends, the first International L-Numbers Days in Hanover, November, 2009 by far exceeded our expectations and received outstanding resonance. Reassured by this, we now would like to invite you to the 2nd International L-Numbers Days, which will take place from 4.-6. of November, 2011, in Hanover.

This question is not too farfetched, since we have to admit that the interest in this group of fishes has declined considerably in recent years. This should, however, be a consequence of the declining supply of interesting species in the pet trade. Due to restrictions that were implemented for the trade with plecos in recent months, the Workgroup L-Numbers (AG L-Welse) was founded within the International Society for Barbs, Tetras, Loaches and Catfishes (IG BSSW). This workgroup is dedicated to preserve those species through breeding which are not available through imports any more. We thought it would be a good idea to support the work of this group through an event like the L-Numbers Days.

We were pleased to find our hopes of attracting L-Numbers friends from different countries fulfilled. Among the almost 150 participants who attended the last event, we had participants from 16 countries. Even an incredibly long journey could not stop some fanatics and thus, we even had participants from Singapore and the USA for the first International L-Numbers Days. Besides that, there was of course a number of people from European neighbor countries. This demonstrates that the aquarium hobby can connect the people. Since most of these participants already announced their attendance for the next L-Numbers Days, we are sure that the next event will be just as international. We will again translate all German talks into English simultaneously and the English ones into German, such that all participants can follow all talks.

For the next event we again intend to organize a diverse and entertaining program with renown speakers from different countries. A special focus will, because of the threat of their disappearance from the hobby due mainly to the stronger export limitations in Brazil, lie on the topic of conservation breeding. As you might expect, such a program will hardly be financeable by the contributions of the participants. To keep the participation fee as low as possible despite the considerable expenses, we again tried hard to attain support from sponsors. As main sponsor we could, besides our main sponsor from the last event, the Panta Rhei GmbH, win the company JBL. Additionally, the “Zentralverband Zoologischer Fachbetriebe (ZZF)”, an organization of the pet trade, and the Ornamental Fish International (OFI) already agreed to support us. We are, however, still looking for some additional sponsors to finance this event.

Since not everything went as planned during the last event and we received some helpful suggestions, we intend to change some things this time. Now, the accommodation will also be the meeting place, and with the Ramada Hotel Europa, having the infrastructure for events for 30-500 participants, we found a sufficiently large place in the south of Hanover. It is close to the grounds of the EXPO 2000 fair, and well connected accordingly. Since we do intend to address participants from all over the world, we also tried to make sure that the L-Numbers Days 2011 don´t collide with some national holidays (such as Thanksgiving). And additionally, the participants will have considerably more options with the choice of their conference packages, including, if required, pure participation packages without Catering. We wish that the next L-Numbers Days will be as interesting and successful and hope to meet you there.