David is originally from Colombia, his start with fish is a familiar story. As kids they would catch guppies in the creeks and streams. There was one kid in town who had a 10-gallon tank “The water was so green it looked like paint and you could see little red fish swimming up to the glass”. David came to the U.S in 1987 and in 1992 was working as a delivery driver in Manhattan. He had not been keeping fish at the time but one day one of his coworkers came in to work a broken 10-gallon aquarium. They took the thank to a glass shop and managed to get it repaired. They started making trips to pet shops on their routes around the city. On one of their trips David noticed a beautiful image on a bag of Hikari fish food, he did not know it was fish food. At first glance he thought it was a flower and maybe the pellets inside were seeds. After studying the image for a little while he realized it was a fish. David started collecting goldfish books and it was in Matsui’s Goldfish Guide that he learned the variety of fish was a Tosakin. He had to have this fish. It had begun; two months later he had a 30-gallon tank full of goldfish, a few years later, a dining room full of fish tanks.