January 19th PSAS Meeting: Fish Food Making

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Awesome Meeting!!!

I want to say Thanks again to Jonathon for putting on a awesome Presentation on Foods and sharing his home with Us.

For those that were not there. Jonathon showed us the difference between pellet, flakes, and other prepared fish foods and whole foods.
Jonathon, Sherman, and Don all worked together and did testing, provided Print outs for people to learn the difference. If you did not go to meeting and have not had a heads up on Foods for Fish, I am betting you are polluting your tank now.

Jonathon filled tables with german chocolates, Fondue Fountain, select meats, Very good drinks!!! If you went away hungry it was your choice.

Jonathon had a microphone set up so he could go behind his tank and talk to you during his presentation. Jonathon was very well prepared. :)

Then the Chance to see a Awesome display tank of over 1200 gallons. A hand built Protien skimmer over 6 ft tall working like a champ. A custom Calcium reactor, Top off, a designed Bubble counter. You get a chance to see several home made tools. I caught my self saying that looked so simple to make. Why didn't I think of that? Jonathon gave extra Saltwater Aquarium equipment away. I am still thinking how to pick up something he offered me. Jonathon set up a tank for Raffle Items and Frags for sale. Thank you Shark Reef for donating Two colonies of SPS.
The Raffle was hosted by Trido (Duane). Duane had a little helper. I believe it was Chads Daughter. I think Chad did pretty good in Raffle.:D

Jonathon and Family and Friends thank you for bringing the Club meetings back into the home. You took the time to make it personable. That is the way it should be. If anyone else would like to do this please chime in.

You got a good topic. Print outs to prove results. You were able to seeing Testing as proof. You were also able to see how to prepare whole foods and preventing as little as possible contamination to your Reef Tank.

I hope to see more Club Meetings in home like this. I beleive Duane said there were 6 members that joined. I am pretty sure the raffle did pretty good also. There was a really cool Reef Picture raffled, corals raffled.
There was prepared Fish Food given away for all that attended.
Again, This was a Awesome Meeting!!!

PS. It was nice to see a few old members that I had not seen in a while. Lets do it again sometime soon!! One more thing. Chevelle, Joe it was nice to meet you guys. I hope you had as good of time as I did. There are some really cool people around ya learning with you!
 
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Glad to hear it went well. I wish I could have came up but I was stuck down at the shop until about 6 and then I had to go clean a few tanks and get to a previous engagement by 7 or so. I was kinda bummed that almost no one came out to see us and check out the new shop. Unless that happened after I left.

Anyway...How many people showed up? Did the person who won the picture actually like it? Hope that it doesn't just get taken out and replaced with another picture.


Eric, my girlfriend and I are newcomers and won the picture, (not to mention the beautiful acro and candy cane) no worries about it not being enjoyed. We came home and found a perfect spot on the wall right next to our slice of the reef for it.:D What can you tell me about the picture? Who took it, and where? Jayson
 
A few pictures from Rod to remind me and others of a good time!

I have more pictures on my new camera. I am still learing how to use. I am thankful Rod Harrington used my old camera. I am hoping this brings back the good time we had. Thanks again.:)
 
chiming in to add my thanks to Jonathan & co. for all the effort they put in to this meeting. Food was awesome and plentiful, plus very interesting presentation. I especially loved learning the "nap" trick for algae mgt (lights out for 1 hour in the middle of the lighting period). Oh..and coming home with excellent home made fish food. :D

Anyway, you did a great job and it was much appreciated.
 
Jonathon, thanks for the fantastic presentation. This was my first PSAS meeting I have attended and I was very impressed. I left the meeting knowing a lot more about our hobby then I knew before. Also the food was fantastic and the choices were outstanding, it was almost like having thanksgiving again!
 
Hi Jonathan and Andrea,

Just a personal thank you for the absolutely splendid presentation this afternoon and the fantastic buffet - chocolate and all.. I got a lot out of what you had to say, and frankly, this was perhaps the best PSAS meeting I have attended so far. Again thanks to both of you - ok and to Ari as well!

Tage


Thank you as well Tage. I was remiss in my duties at the meeting and should have thanked you for opening your home up as well. I have no idea how that went, butI know I really enjoy visiting with you and your lovely wife and talking reefs. You have some interesting aspects to your system and I hope those who did visit with you were able to come away with some good info.

Thanks again for your help Tage!! :)
 
Thank you all for the kind comments. I was up half the night thinking about all the things I forgot to say, but the feedback I have gotten is good. It will take my brain a day or two to recover as that was very taxing for me, but once I get my head together, I will post a synopsis of our discussion, the so-called "recipe". and a little info. about the testing and common foods.

As I said at the start of the meeting, I am not a scientist, so what we discussed was primarily my observations, but my key point is to encourage others to really understand what you are putting in your tank. I do have the support of people who are scientists though! :) I think the rinse bucket said it all. Sherman's PO4 test was startling to say the least, and keep in mind, we were only testing for one thing. In fact, at the hobbist level, we really don't have the ability to test for most "pollutants".

Things I forgot to say:

1. Thanks to Tage for his participation.
2. Thanks to Sherman for his tremendous support and help designing the event.
3. Thanks several times to Andrea for staying home and taking care of the food. :)
4. Thanks to so many who traveled so far to participate. That's a huge drive and I tried to give as much value as I mentally could.
5. The toilet downstairs is on the fritz, no #2. :rolleyes:
6. Appologize if I offended anyone. Because of my brain injury, I don't assess social situations very well and typically offend at least one person in any group setting.

I'll think of more I am sure.

Eric, don't sweat it. There were photos taken of the picture winners so I am sure they will get posted very soon. Eric took that photo himself. Very cool.
 
Thanks so much for the awsome meeting everyone-What an event Johnathan and Andrea- you really know how to put on a party. Great presentation Johnathan- you really can appeal to your audience and pack in the info! And I love talking with people who have really gotten into every aspect of there hobbies, know there stuff, and are so excited to share the info!!! I love meetings at peoples houses too so you can check out everyones setups and learn-Thanks!

Sorry I didnt get over to see the new shop Eric:(, I like to stop everytime I get out that way but it just didnt work out this time. I actually did not make it to a single LFS this trip -even though I intended to-since I did the whole trip in a single day-so I hope you dont feel neglected;). Your donations are very much appreciatted.

Mitch Carl next meeting! I dont care how nasty the drive home was-I am doing it again next month! I got to meet him at the Omaha Zoo a couple of years ago when I was there for work- great guy- look forward to visiting again.

PSAS rocks!
 
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Great Tracy!! Did you all hear that? All you new (and of course old) card holders, sounds like the Mitch meeting will be a great one!

Tracy did you score a replacement card? If not we can get you one.

COlleen
 
I especially loved learning the "nap" trick for algae mgt (lights out for 1 hour in the middle of the lighting period).

Thanks for the kind comments Jan and I want to address this topic a bit since this was a pre-meeting discussion that most members did not get to particpate in.

It is fairly common knowledge within the FW Planted community that a "nap" will keep nuisance micro-algae from getting a foothold in an aquarium, but this hasn't translated over to SW aquariums from what I can tell. I have had a one hour nap on my FW Planted tank upstairs for years, and rarely have to clean the glass.

We had been discussing the near tank crash that my reef had because of dinos and I mentioned this as one of my methods for getting it under control. Although I manually over-rided the tank controller for the meeting, I do have a one hour lights out in the middle of of my reef "daytime" light cycle. This goes a long way to keeping micro-algae from developing.

The reason is that the lower photosynthetic life forms like micro algae take much longer to ramp up photosynthesis than plants, corals, clams, anemones, etc. By interupting the light cycle, you interupt the photosynthetic period and this puts the nuisance algae at a disadvantage.

I don't have a completely scientific understanding of this process, but this is what I have gleaned from extensive research into keeping planted tanks. Anyone who did see the planted tank in our dining room is well aware that I don't have a problem keeping plants alive. My biggest problem is keeping them under control, and close observation would have revealed that I actually have flowers growing in my planted tank. But that is for another forum though! :)

I hope this helps on this issue, and when I coach SW enthusiasts about nuisance algae, I always recommend a nap to give the aquarium keeper an upper hand in the battle as part of a multi-pronged approach to solving their algal issue.
 
Some system pics for those that couldn't make it...

FTS:

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This grew from the frag I got from Colleen during the Summer frag swap, and I have given or sold several pieces:
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