Our FantaSEA Aquariums team is filled with people passionate about the underwater world. Today, we’d like to introduce you to Marijke Puts, our website and blog manager. An informational content writer with a deep love for aquatic life and fishkeeping, Marijke’s here to teach you how to keep your fish, corals, and plants alive and thriving.
Marijke Puts
Blog Manager
Human information processing machine with a love for fishkeeping, SCUBA, and browsing scientific articles. Made being a nerd her job.
A Girl and Her Tanks
Marijke was raised to love nature by parents who taught respect for all living beings. The family got an aquarium when she was still small, so it’s not surprising she ended up setting up her own first tank at 14!
“Things got out of hand so fast”, she says. “I think my parents were mildly alarmed, but they always encouraged me.”
Her tendency to thoroughly research everything she does quickly led her to realize that the fancy goldfish she had acquired needed more than a 10-gallon tank to thrive. Before she knew it, there was the 20-gallon, and then the 50-gallon, plus various smaller set-ups with Betta fish, dwarf shrimp, and an array of other endlessly fascinating creatures.
When she went off to university to study Communication Science, some of the tanks came with her. She laughs: “It was in my little room in a shared student complex that I bred my first batch of dwarf crayfish!”
Her work for FantaSEA Aquariums eventually motivated Marijke to start dabbling in saltwater fishkeeping as well.
From Fishkeeper to Fish Writer
Marijke’s always loved learning. “I have an obsessive brain that gets a big dopamine kick from sorting through new information in search of interesting tidbits, and an even bigger kick from sorting them into an informative, easy-to-read format.”
When she was younger, she dreamed of writing novels. Once she started keeping fish, though, she quickly realized that sharing her knowledge on the aquarium hobby was fun and rewarding as well.
Her first informative website went up when Marijke was 15, and she never looked back; it kickstarted a lifelong career in pop-science writing.
Although she’s covered a range of topics, from houseplants to cocktail recipes to parrot keeping, the aquarium hobby is one field that always manages to suck her back in.
Marijke + FantaSEA = 🐟❤️
Through her first aquarium-centered website, Marijke came into contact with many fellow hobbyists and aquarium professionals.
“Folks would reach out to chat fish, or I’d contact other websites to offer guest articles”, she explains. “One day I got an email from Dalton, FantaSEA’s founder and owner, who was interested in seeing if I could provide content to bring more people to his company’s website.”
“I was still really young back then, probably not even 20. He wasn’t much older, so we got to connect over being two young entrepreneurs doing something pretty unusual.”
Marijke has been a fixture in the FantaSEA team ever since, despite being located on the other side of the world—first in her home country of The Netherlands, and now on the Spanish Costa Blanca.
At the time of writing, Marijke has published almost 150 care guides on different fish, invertebrates, plants, corals, and more on the FantaSEA Aquariums blog!
Helping People With Their Hobbies
Marijke explains that although she loves diving deep into scientific literature on obscure aquatic creatures, her favorite part about running the FantaSEA blog is knowing that it helps people with something they love.
“I know I’m not changing the world here”, she says, “but it’s still very satisfying to receive comments from readers saying I helped them. They love their tanks and their fish, and playing a small part in making sure everything goes smoothly for them with my guides is pretty nice.”
“I always try to teach them more than they came for, like by describing all the funky facts about the creature they’re reading about. Even a tiny shrimp is a whole world of its own!”
Her personal favorite aquarium inhabitants are freshwater pufferfish. “They’re challenging to keep, but they’re startlingly intelligent. When they look at you with those big googly eyes, it does feel like they know it’s you. They’re playful.”
Beyond the Tanks
Even when she’s not working on fishkeeping guides, oceans and rivers are rarely far from Marijke’s mind.
Living on the Spanish Mediterranean coast allows her access to the sea whenever she wants, and she makes good use of this with frequent SCUBA and snorkel outings. Aside from the Med, she’s dived in the Caribbean, Thailand, Macaronesia, and the Red Sea, always with her trusty Olympus TG-6 underwater camera.
If you do manage to fish Marijke out of the sea, you’ll usually find her cooking, hanging out with her cockatiel Alfonso, and tending to her alarmingly large collection of houseplants.
The FantaSEA Experience
At FantaSEA Aquariums, we pride ourselves on having a team that always strives to keep improving itself in order to be able to give you the best possible service.
With Marijke around, learning and teaching new things about fishkeeping is easy. In fact, it’s hard to get her to shut up about fish and aquariums, and she’s delighted to share that enthusiasm with you.
