Like many fish clubs our history begins with a couple fish keepers talking in a local pet store. The two fish keepers decided to see if there were other people in the area that shared their passion. They started a Facebook group to see who was out there. The Facebook group attracted a number of people around Kentucky. In 2018 the people on the Facebook group began discussing starting a club to get these like minded people together. Gauging the people active in the group and where they lived the first meeting of what would become the Bluegrass Fish Keepers Association was announced and held at the Madison County Public Library in Berea, Kentucky in January 2019.
2019: Through the rest of 2019 the group met at the library in Berea. In this year we introduced programs such as the grow out competition and the aquatic species surrender program. We continued to become more organized and develop how we would do things.
2020: In 2020 we moved the meetings to Lexington and by doing so we were able to become more conveniently located to attract more people… just in time for COVID-19 to shut down any in person meetings. Throughout the rest of 2020 we looked to online meetings and chats to keep our group connected and hosted our 1st swap meet in October 2020. The swap meet was a major success attracting vendors and buyers from 6 states.
2021: We started 2021 still in the pandemic and no in person meetings but we launched our breeders award program virtually before we were able to bring it to full fruition when we were able to begin meeting again in March.
2022: This year brought our 1st elected officers and paid memberships. We also introduced the bowl show competition. In 2022 the club also showed good representation at 2 aquarium events in the region, Aquaticon in Knoxville TN and Aquatic Triple Crown in Louisville, KY.
2023: In 2023 we formalized our non-profit status officially becoming Bluegrass Fish Keepers Association Inc. We continued to grow memberships, hold monthly meetings, native collecting trips, and swap meets. Members of BFKA attended the AKA/ALA convention in Kalamazoo, Michigan; ACA convention in Madison, Wisconsin; and OCA Extravaganza in Strongsville, OH.
