For those of you looking for a bit of quality content to fill those iPods or give yourself a nice lengthy distraction while you sit at your desk at work, the MASNA Live podcast is a great place to start and the January 2012 episode just became available to download. Featuring some big names in the aquarium industry, this most recent discussion starts out with a brief chat about the infamous Dr. Gail Grabowsky video, but quickly moves on to a much broader view of the issues the aquarium industry is facing in Hawaii. Everything from fighting the moral arguments of anti-aquarium activists to imposing quotas on aquarium collection are discussed in detail, and it all makes for an interesting and educational talk that I highly suggest listening to. The back and forth chat isled by Kevin Erickson of MASNA, and features Tal Sweet, Richard Ross, Andrew Rhyne, Eric Cohen, Matt Pedersen and Jim Adelberg, who all chime in at one point or another. Despite being a widely varying group, this wily collection of aquarium enthusiasts spans virtually all aspects of the hobby and allows for a varying spectrum of opinions that all have the same underlying theme: sustainable aquarium collection. I was privileged enough to sit in on this conversation, and even though it was more of a “fly on the wall” role, I did offer up some opinions toward the end. In summary, my main points were in support of aquarium collection quotas and limiting the removal of certain species from the wild.

We love free stuff, so we like to promote aquarium contests any chance we can. The latest free gear comes in the form of not one, but three Digital Aquatics Reefkeeper Lite controllers from our friends at Reef2Reef. To enter the contest, all you have to do is write an article on their forum. The article will have to be completely original and completely new, meaning you can’t copy someone else’s work or republish old articles that you’ve written, and should be at least 500 words long. Proper spelling and punctuation will also help your chances, so be sure to weed out the typos. The contest will last until the end of November, but if a minimum of 30 articles isn’t received the contest will stay open until that number is reached. The articles will all be judged by R2R staff, with the three best receiving a Reefkeeper Lite.  And even if your article isn’t selected as a winner, you won’t be left empty handed. According to the contest rules, each “good” article will receive a R2R reef discount card.

Writing aquarium-related articles and talking to aquarium clubs is something I love to do, so I’m obviously excited to announce that I’ll be giving a short talk at the next club meeting for the Marine Aquarium and Reef Society of Houston, otherwise known as MARSHreef. The meeting will be hosted at Fish Gallery, a local store that I frequent as much as possible, this Saturday on the 5th. A couple of guys from the local public aquarium Moody Gardens will be talking about aquarium chemistry, and I’ll follow up their talk with short presentation on popular trends with the probiotic products, such as biopellet media. So, if you’re in the area, the meeting runs from noon to 2pm and there will be plenty of people to talk to and lots of livestock to gawk at.

Elite Reef, an aquarium store located in Colorado, has officially announced the date for their Elite Reef Fest event. The event will take place on July 23rd during normal store hours at the Elite Reef storefront (store address located on the company’s home page) and will feature a charity raffle to the benefit the Cameroon Development Fund. The raffle with feature items from several companies, including multiple LED-based lighting systems, and the Marine Aquarium Society of Colorado (MASC) will even be hosting one of their monthly meetings at the event. Additionally, Colorado’s Downtown Aquarium will also be joining the fun, bringing lots of their frags from their gorgeous reef aquariums to sell at the event.

Our very own Michael Rice will be at the Elite Reef Fest, and hopefully we’ll get plenty of live updates from the event as they take place.

The Marine Aquarium Societies of North America, aka MASNA, is asking for you to send in your nominations for the coveted Aquarist of the Year. All paid MASNA members can nominate up to three individuals who they think made a significant contribution to the hobby over the past two years. The nominations will be sorted by a panel of judges that is made up of past Aquarist of the Year winners. Nominations are being accepted through June 30th, so be sure to get yours in as soon as possible. The winner of the prestigious award will be announced at this year’s Marine Aquarium Conference of North America (MACNA 2011) that is to take place in Des Moines, Iowa.

To submit your nominations, please email: membership@masna.org

The fourth annual Bay Area Marine Aquarium Conference, otherwise known as BAYMAC, takes place this Saturday, May 14th at Chabot College in Hayward, California. The single day event, which is free to the public, opens its doors at 11am and will be full of great coral vendors, aquarium equipment wholesaler and manufacturers, a few guest speakers, and several California reef clubs. The guest speaker list includes Justin Credabel, Tony Vargas, and Simon Garratt, each of which has a one hour time slot to share their knowledge of the hobby with hundreds of listeners. Toward the end of the day, a giant raffle will take place, and we all know how those raffles get. Hundreds of people glaring at their raffle tickets and hoping to get that sweet piece of equipment they’ve been drooling over all day. I’m never lucky enough to wind anything in raffles, but each person has their own strategy.

There’s been a lot going on here in the reef keeping community in the sprawling city of Houston recently, so we figured we would touch on a few of them.

Relocating Fish Stores
Two fish stores are changing their addresses this month. The first, who actually just got done moving, is T&T Fish and Reptile. This store is one of my favorite in the city and they have the best display tank out of all the fish stores. Though their saltwater section was never huge, they really packed in the quality. T&T is known for their abundance of SPS corals and they always contributed to the Houston reef club by hosting numerous events and sales. T&T has been in their former location for over 20 years, but from what I understand, the reason they are leaving is due to the building owners deciding to get a little greedy on the rent. If this is true, it would be one of the dumbest things a landlord could do, as T&T has been a solid foot traffic source for the strip center. Hopefully the fish store will prosper in their new location even more than the previous one.

The second store to be moving is Fish Gallery, who I actually purchased my new AGE rimless aquarium from. Fish Gallery has always had a very nice upscale facility, but like the situation with T&T, the landlord wanted an upscale payment for the rent. As the rent climbed, the pressure became too much and they decided to find a more affordable facility. Their move has been going on for several months and isn’t quite complete. This is mostly due to the fact that Fish Gallery housed a ton of tanks, mostly freshwater though. The facility was very nice, but the store did rake you over the coals on most of their prices. I guess this was to help cover the higher overhead, though I doubt the new and lower overhead Fish Gallery will be any different.

Aquarium Related Events
As far as local events go, there are a couple small events to mention. On May 14th, the Marine Aquarium and Reef Society of Houston (MARSHreef) is hosting a tank tour for the northwest Houston area. The tour will consist of aquariums from six different hobbyists, and is a great way to show off your prized possession, err money pit to all of your reefkeeping buddies. From an attendees point of view, tank tours are great ways to see how other hobbyists are being successful. I know I’ve got plenty of ideas from tank tours, as well as tons of great pictures. These tours can be quite tiring though, so be sure to rest up prior to the tank hopping.

Rounding out the events for May, MARSH is hosting a crawfish boil coupled to a Galveston Island collection trip. As many of you southerners know, crawfish boils are excuse enough to get together. Toss in the possibility of getting some free peppermint shrimp, sargassum anglers, pipefish and seahorses, and you’ve got yourself a fun event. The collection trips are also a great way to get the kids involved, assuming you have children of course.

That’s pretty much it for local news. I’m glad to see the local reef club hosting events and getting involved in the community. I’m not sure if I can attend the tank tour, as I think I have some out of town work obligations, but I will try to attend if possible. After all, it’s always fun catching up with reef keeping buddies.

I’m very happy to announce a new sponsor on the AquaNerd Blog. Reef Junkies is a fairly new aquarium community that doesn’t only consist of an online forum like most typical aquarium sites. It also features a very cool fish compatibility tool, an online aquarium journal, multiple aquarium related calculators, a saltwater glossary, a suggested water parameter chart, and so much more. Reef Junkies is basically a one-stop information stop for new aquarium hobbyists. For the more seasoned hobbyist, Reef Junkies offers a nice Coral Growers section which is dedicated to showcasing corals that members have to sell. The site also offers a plethora of photo galleries, a digital library, an online chat room, and finally a Q&A page. There are just a ton of features on Reef Junkies and we’ll be spending the next several days really exploring them.

This past weekend, the Marine Aquarium and Reef Society of Houston held their first frag swap of 2011. Hot on the heels of NextWave, the MARHSreef swap was obviously not as big as an event, but it provided another outlet for aquarium hobbyists to toss more money at their hobby. The AquaNerd crew was in attendance, as this is our local club after all, and the event left us pondering a few things…mainly about frags of course. The event was held in a restaurant, which isn’t the place you’d expect to see a frag swap. The food was good, but the space was cramped, so I have mixed emotions about the event in its entirety.

A few hobbyists and hobbyists turned businessman were in attendance selling frags, while far more impatiently waited their turn in line to pick up a coral or two (or several). One gentleman, a hobbyists who’s been at it for quite some time, showed up with monster frags. Really, these were mini colonies. Some of the corals he considered frags were over 6-7″ long. To make things better, he was selling them for very little. His approach was that of thinning out his overgrowing colonies and passing on the corals to the next hobbyist, not fragging his ultra-rare half inch limited edition piece to recoup what he spent on it. In addition to extremely low prices, this hobbyist was giving away quite a bit of stuff for free! He donated Chaetomorpha and several frags that others were selling for $20-40 per. Granted the freebie frags weren’t of the greatest condition, you can’t beat free right? After thinking about this approach the rest of the day and all day Sunday, I realized how much respect I have for this take on the hobby. It’s not a money game for the hobbyist described above, rather pure enjoyment. And I think this approach has been all but abandoned in the hobby as it is today. I realized many businesses have to make money, but as hobbyists should we really be charging the prices we do for the corals we have? Just a thought. I’ll quit blathering for now so you can see some pictures (see gallery below).

The NERAC conference presented by the Long Island Reef Association (LIRA) is a mere 15 days away. Scheduled for March 19, this is NERAC’s sixth year in operation, and much like other conferences, it will be full of speakers, vendors, and raffles. Unlike most single-day aquarium conferences however, this one will have cocktails! After the show, which runs from 8:30am – 6pm, the bar officially opens. Tickets will run $35, which gets you a free lunch, free entry into the aquarium, and access to speakers and vendors. All activities taking place after 6pm will require an additional registration free. After all, alcohol ain’t cheap.

NERAC will be held at Atlantis Marine World, a famous exhibit that is home to a 20,000 gallon reef aquarium. The speaker lineup includes Simon Garratt, Ken Nedimyer, Richard Ross, and Paul Whitby. Several vendors are scheduled to attend, and these include Reef Koi, Cherry Corals, Reef Nutrition, Acan Lighting, and many more.  There is currently little information regarding the raffle, but I’m sure a list of prizes will be made available in the very near future.