Bio Michel Keijman

 

 

 

 

 

Michel Keijman was born in 1965 and,

after he had worked as a professional cook ,

he became  the owner of 2 tour-operators and

is still working in tourism.

 

He started with the aquarium hobby in the mid

80's, and one of his first cichlids het kept were

Hemichromis guttatus. After a while he focused

on the cichlids of Central America, in particular on the ones from Southern Mexico. He very early got in contact with

Hans van Heusden who happened to live in the same town as he. Together they specialized in keeping cichlids from southern Mexico.

 

Together with Hans he travelled many times to Mexico to collect their beloved cichlids. He furthermore visited other countries to search for cichlids, namely Costa Rica, Panama, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic.

 

Since 1999 he started traveling in West-African countries, searching for cichlids. He made 3 collecting trips to Ghana and 5 collecting trips to Cameroon. Michel Keijman keeps and photographs West-African cichlids for about 15 years now. He also writes articles in popular fish magazines about his beautiful and beloved cichlids. 

 

Michel is also the founder of the WAC-group on Facebook wich he started in 2012. He wanted to create a platform for devotees of West and Central African cichlids. At the moment the WAC-group has got more than 1000 members worldwide.