On Monday, February 9, 1976, our greatest aquarist, Colonel J. J. Scheel, turns 60 and has resigned from the Army.
When the Danish aquarium hobby has reached the high stage it has today, the main reason is Jørgen Scheel's thorough and extensive information activities.
Countless are his captivating lectures in Danish aquarium associations on all the many topics within the aquarium hobby.
Jørgen Scheel is also the writer who in the last human age has provided the largest and most informative production in Danish and foreign aquarium magazines.
In his young years, Jørgen Scheel became interested in house culture, and as is natural for him, he immediately became a breeder of difficult house birds, just as his cultivation of house plants succeeded better than in most.
When he started as an aquarist, the period of keeping aquarium fish in company aquarium did not last long, and with his usual thoroughness and great energy, he began to analyze all aspects of the hobby.
At that time it was common for all "scams" to be kept secret, but this was not the case with the chemist and mathematician Jørgen Scheel. The results of his thorough analytical work were immediately announced by lectures and in articles.
From here can be mentioned the many articles under the brand JJS on freshwater chemistry, ion exchange, carbon dioxide aeration, fish diseases, lighting conditions, aquatic plant cultivation, propagation - including the then new method of using osmosis in hatching fish eggs - Guppy's heredity and not least biotope descriptions from all areas , where the aquarium fish live.
Jørgen Scheel's great interest, however, was the laying tooth carp, the Cyprino donuts, or as they are called in international circles, "Killiefish".
As you know, some of these Killie fish, the so-called seasonal fish, play down in the bottom layer, and Jørgen Scheel was the one who informed about this and made it common to use peat litter as the natural bottom layer in the aquarium.
It did not take long before Jørgen Scheel shipped and exchanged fish eggs with aquarists and scientists all over the world. His correspondence soon became so large that it had to be organized as duplicate letters to all. These letters - Killieletters - were in great demand and provided every conceivable and for the most part unimaginable information about Killiefisk.
As a result of Jørgen Scheel's thorough scientific work, the beautiful sheep-toothed carp soon became so popular that Killie Associations were established in many countries. Scheel naturally immediately became an honorary member of most Killie Associations.
Jørgen Scheel continued to work energetically in a purely scientific way with the tooth carp, and it did not take long before the chromosomes were examined for all species.
In 1968, Jørgen Scheel published all of Killiefan's Bible, namely "Rivulins of the Old World". The book, which is in English, is published by Tropical Fish Hobbyist Publications in the United States.
In addition to scientific descriptions and information about all the Old World Killies, "Rivuling of the Old World" contains approx. 500 densely printed pages, drawings, geographies, both black and white and color, which show that Jørgen Scheel not only has artistic abilities, but also that he is one of the world's best aquarium photographers. His photos of fish and microscopic specimens are simply unique.
From the Carlsberg Foundation, Jørgen Scheel has received scholarships for his scientific work. Several expeditions to Africa resulted in the discovery of many new fish species, which were scientifically described immediately after their return.
Jørgen Scheel's scientific work, especially within the fish chromosomes, has also meant that for many of the species, the scientific name has had to be revised.
All in all, no fish genus has been studied and described as thoroughly as the laying carp, and Jørgen Scheel can today not be characterized as an aquarist, but as a world-class zoologist.
Not only have aquarium associations in Denmark and abroad honored Jørgen Scheel by appointing him an honorary member, but in 1973 he was also honored by science, becoming an honorary doctor at the University of Giessen. He really deserved this proclamation.
For health reasons, Jørgen Scheel and his wife are now leaving Denmark and traveling to warmer skies in southern Europe.
On behalf of all Danish aquarists, I wish you the best of luck on your birthday, just as we wish you a long and happy retirement abroad. We also express the hope that you will continue to have the health and time to continue working on your life's work, namely the scientific work with the laying carp and the chromosome examinations.
