Bernd Bussler passed away                     

By Peter Finke

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The sudden death of Bernd Bussler is horrible news. Only 60 years of age, the cook by profession and passionate aquarist, died in a heart attack. This is sad news for his relatives and friends, above all his mother still living

But it is sad news for all friends of labyrinths too, above all the friends of the licorice gouramies. For decades, Bernd was a successful and devoted breeder of nearly all species and variants we know. He specialized early, did not compromise and was stubborn and determined. Leaving Allan Brown out, who decided years ago to end his very productive career as explorer and breeder, I knew nobody who cared for so many forms of licorice gouramies at the same time on a specialized rack. And he bred them in unusual quantities and distributed them in an altruistic manner to many friends and countries. There were some other people having, say, ten species; some being successful as breeders, too. But there was no one beside Bernd Bussler for such a long period, in such a specilialized way tirelessly changing water, breeding live food, cleaning tanks and filters, constantly producing offspring and keeping the species for us alive. An end was not in sight; he never spoke about that.

Myself, I am grateful to him for some of the happiest experiences as a friend of these fishes; I tell one story only. There was a longer timeout for me from aquaristics in the nineties for university reasons. When I came back and longed for some licorice again I wrote in a german newsgroup that it was my wish to have Parosphromenus paludicola knowing that these fish  were seen by a very few people so far live. Then a person whom I did not know at that time wrote to me that he liked to send me these fish: Bernd Bussler.  I was thunderstruck. There was a German aquarist in Hamburg not only having this species swimming in his aquarium, but he bred it and offered it to me whom he did not know by person.  Happily I replied and asked for one male and two females which arrived only a few days later. Within two weeks time offspring was swimming in my tank and I visited Bernd Bussler at home in Hamburg.

I came to know a warm-hearted and robust man, married at that time, and his extensive self-made breeding station for licorice gouramies only, situated in a separate room of the remote living house of his mother and including all the additional facilities necessary for that purpose.  It felt as heaven for a Paros-friend. He did not live there himself, but came across every second day. When I received new species or forms by Allan Brown, Martin Hallmann or Horst Linke, Bernd Bussler became the first addressee of my offspring. The fish were safe here because he securely propagated them. When we had the Parosphromenus Project from 2010 on, his breeding room soon became a sort of Mekka for many devoted people from Britain, Poland or even the United States. There was no place on earth including Asia where you could see or even to buy so many different licorice gouramies  within one room as this station of Bernd Bussler’s.  And therefore it was inevitably that in 2017 he was unanimously decided to be the third person to receive our Parosphromenus Award for outstanding accomplishments.

He was no man for desk work. These fishes came first, humans later. When the ponds for catching his favourite Cyclops were frozen, he went outside with an axe. He always preferred outdoor caught food for his fish. The smallest fry was fed with African Paramecia and specially tiny Micro and vinegar eels. If some species was missing somewhere, one was likely to find it surviving in Hamburg at Bernd’s breeding station. For Germany and Europe he was the central source for many years, up to now, safer than anybody in Asia, a breeder with intuition, endurance and a friendly spirit.

His death is incomprehensible und leaves a very big gap hardly to be filled in some time to come. When Allan Brown suddenly ended his work as a breeder, Bernd and I did not understand it. When I did the same, he did not understand it. Now, him being dead, I do not understand it.

Peter Finke, Bielefeldt, Deutschland

26 august 2020