Gary Lange has been one of ANGFA's most consistent overseas connections for over two decades — a Missouri-based rainbowfish specialist, founder of the Rainbowfish Study Group of North America in 1987, and, since 2005, a member of the small expedition team that has made at least seven collecting trips into West Papua, bringing back more than 15 undescribed rainbowfish species. One of them, the Golden Rainbowfish of Dekai, was named Melanotaenia garylangei in his honour in 2015. He is also a founding office-holder of ANGFA North America, serving as its Vice President from at least 2018.

Gary started keeping fish at age 10, and has been "associated with the organized hobby" for well over 35 years, as a member of the Missouri Aquarium Society Inc. (MASI), where he is a Grand Master Breeder and has won "Best Fish In Show" four times, twice with rainbowfish — he also served as MASI Vice President from 2003 to 2004, a genuine club office rather than the vaguer "held various positions" his convention biographies describe. His own account of discovering rainbowfish, written for Fishes of Sahul, traces it to early 1983: working through MASI's Breeders Award Program, his BAP chair showed him the Allen & Cross book Rainbowfishes of Australia and Papua New Guinea — "I opened up the book and there on the inside cover, two glorious pages worth, was my new obsession. It was love at first sight seeing that wonderful yellow, Melanotaenia herbertaxelrodi. I had to have that rainbowfish!" He joined the American Rainbowfish Association the same year, and self-describes as a "Bowhead" — the rainbowfish-hobbyist community's own term for an obsessive. In fall 1987 he founded the Rainbowfish Study Group of North America to help popularise the group within the US hobby, and became a dedicated fish photographer early on "because there weren't many quality pictures of rainbowfish," publishing in FAMA, TFH, AFM and Amazonas. In 2002 he was the first to import 8 new rainbowfish species into North America, sourced from Heiko Bleher, including the Millennium Rainbow and the Zigzag Rainbowfish. He currently runs 85 to 90 aquariums — around 9,500 litres in total — keeping over 65 species and locality forms of rainbowfish and blue-eyes, from his home in Florissant, Missouri, where by day he worked as a research biochemist for Pfizer.

Beyond ANGFA and MASI, Gary is a genuinely well-known figure across the wider US and international aquarium hobby. He maintains an active speaking circuit independent of ANGFA conventions — confirmed talks at the Greater Seattle Aquarium Society (as recently as September 2025), the Raleigh Aquarium Society, and the Calgary Aquarium Society in Canada — and has toured Australian clubs directly too, speaking at the Gold Coast Aquarium Society in January 2020. He's also a member of the CARES Priority Species program, which supports hobbyist captive-breeding of endangered fish. When Amazonas magazine reported the naming of Melanotaenia garylangei in 2015, it described him as "one of the most influential contemporary American aquarists" — a notable independent endorsement from a publication with no reason to inflate his standing. Multiple aquarium-club and retailer sites repeat much the same core biography as ANGFA's own convention programs, a useful cross-check that those programs have their facts right rather than simply repeating self-reported claims.

Catching up with Karl Moy at an ANGFA convention — ANGFA News 57, Jan 2018, p.33 (photo: David Roberts)

Since 2005, Gary has been part of a small, evolving international expedition team — principally with Johannes Graf of Germany, and at various points Dan Dority, Wim Heemskerk, Christophe Mailliet, Henni Ohee and, from 2017, Marten Luter Salossa — making repeated collecting trips into West Papua, formerly Irian Jaya. Confirmed trips run 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2017 and 2019, with a "7th trip" reported by 2022 and continuing at least into 2023. Between them the team has collected and brought back at least 15 to 17 undescribed rainbowfish species, and reintroduced species never before seen in the aquarium hobby, including Chilatherina alleni and Melanotaenia vanheurni. The Golden Rainbowfish, Melanotaenia garylangei (Graf, Herder & Hadiaty, 2015), from the Dekai area of West Papua, was named directly for him — its formal etymology reads: "The new species is named in honour of Gary William Lange, a well-known rainbowfish enthusiast who first discovered this species." Gary co-wrote both the discovery narrative and the aquarium-keeping notes for the species himself two years later.

On the North American side of the organisation, Gary is a founding office-holder: he was confirmed as ANGFA North America Vice President in 2018, co-signing the chapter's first-ever "ANGFA North America Report" alongside President Ken Boorman and Derek Tuskin, describing ANGFA NA as "the newest addition to the ANGFA family," formed to formalise a long-standing informal network of North American members. That year he gave presentations in Ontario, on the US west coast, and on a popular aquarium webcast. No Australian state or national committee role was found for him — his contribution runs entirely through the North American side of the organisation and his international expedition and convention work.

Gary has been an international guest speaker or expedition subject at national conventions spanning at least 2003 to 2024. In 2003 Bruce Hansen introduced him as "Gary Lange (Mister Rainbowfish in the USA)," noting his founding of the Rainbowfish Study Group and his fish photography. In 2011 he gave a photographic review segment, "Gary Lange – A Fireside Chat & Western New Guinea Revisited." In 2017 (Currumbin) he was the convention's international guest speaker, giving both a day talk, "Find it, describe it, then watch it go extinct – exploring and finding Rainbowfish in Papua before it's too late," and the Convention Dinner presentation, "Just one darn lucky Bowhead! Or how serendipity helped in the discovery of more than 15 new rainbowfish." In 2022 (Brisbane) his Convention Dinner presentation, "The Blood Sweat and Cheers of 105 Days of Chasing Rainbowfish in New Guinea," described a seventh trip to West Papua with four new species likely headed for commercial aquarium production. In other years — 2015 and 2019 — he appears as the subject of teammates' own convention talks rather than as the speaker himself, and in 2024 (Cairns) he's named as a continuing member of the expedition team in Johannes Graf and Marten Luter Salossa's convention biographies, though not himself a speaker that year.

Gary's writing includes a genuinely moving personal tribute on the death of fellow ANGFA figure Ron Bowman: "Ron was THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON in ANGFA for me and several other Yanks. You see he would send eggs to the late Delores Schehr, myself and other Americans... The first Melanotaenia lacustris to make it to the US came courtesy of Ron." He goes on to describe personally lobbying ichthyologist Gerald Allen to name a newly discovered rainbowfish after Bowman: "When we finally had two new Rainbowfish to be officially recognized we convinced Dr. Allen to name one of them for Ron." That species, Melanotaenia bowmani, is one Gary himself helped discover and bring back from West Papua.