Saltwater Dreams: Presentation for OSRAS

We weren't the only people frustrated with CTARS and the current board of directors. A man named Rich and his wife, Brenda decided they were going to go off on their own in their own state and start their own club. They named it Ocean State Reef Aquarium Society.

The intentions started out fabulous. They felt that the bod of CTARS was hiding funds and being shady and that the meetings were not teaching anyone anything. At the time, CTARS had had two or three meetings in a row on how to make fish food. People were getting antsy. We were stoked that someone had taken the reins and decided to do this. Also, Charleen, the current secretary from CTARS was acting treasurer and secretary for OSRAS until further notice.

It wasn't long and Rich called us up and asked if we could do a fragging presentation for their club. We gladly accepted the idea of this and began working with Rich on how he wanted everything to work.

Flyer that was posted online, at libraries and stores and given to us as a present

It was going to be a simple 'Fragging 101' workshop and Rich wanted Chris and his father to also bring in corals of their own to sell somewhere in room. Simple enough. Even better was the fact that Rhode Island is really only a hop, skip and a jump from where we live so, joining this club as well was really a plus for us. More info about the reef-keeping hobby the better!

Chris and I starting our presentation

Chris and I put together a few video's this time to aid in our presentation. We actually had our oldest daughter help so that I didn't have to figure out yet another thing on my computer. It made things a little easier this time with the presentation. Rather than trying to put up little plugs and pieces of epoxy and trying to explain "okay everyone, your now going to glue this tiny piece of white stuff to this blah, blah...", there was a video to accompany a variety of simple fragging processes up on the projector. We did one for soft leathers, sps, lps (we used our wall hammer) and zoanthids.

Our video on fragging a soft leather coral

(don't mind the sound on these...we had the computer muted during the presentation)

Another video but, this time fragging a SPS coral

Rich brought some corals from a LFS (local fish store) of his choice and just as the fragging demo we had done at Charlene's, there was a twenty-five dollar buy-in to acquire one of these pieces before leaving. People were also allowed to bring corals of their own that they wanted to learn how to frag.

At the end of the meeting, Rich and Brenda had all kinds of idea's for the club and asked to have Chris and I on the Board of Directors as well. We declined their invitation however, agreed to help out with the club as much as possible. Rich seemed to have some wonderful idea's and we looked forward to seeing something new in the reefing hobby as it had been such a while with CTARS.

Chris and I left happy with our demonstration and up in the air with Rich and Brenda. Their agenda for the club seemed wonderful but they themselves were, I don't really know how to explain it...off I guess. We decided to go with the flow, what would it hurt right?