Aquascaping...it's my thing ;)

     So, I'm engaged now! I've also recently lost about ninety pounds (remember those Atkins bars and shakes?) so, I'm feeling pretty damned good too. Life is good! Now, it's time to put on another demonstration!

     I hate getting these things ready and feeling as though I'm going to bore the audience. As I'm putting together the powerpoint, which only needed tweeked from my last one, I kept running over certain areas trying to make them more interesting...nope! Sometimes it's just boring shit. I guess it's all in the demonstration which everyone always raves about afterwards however, putting these things together makes me want to drink Maalox for a week.

     Emarco Rocks apparently heard about our presentation and decided to donate rock if we named him as the sponsor of the meeting. I had told Rich I was up in the air about this as we were teaching people how to use a more economical approach with the emaco concrete (which is the same thing...you should know this if you've read my other posts) but, if he wanted to accept the donations, it was his club, his choice. He did.

     I tweeked the presentation a little more to not so much deter people away from our meeting sponsor but, it still gave money comparisons at the end for the two concretes.

     Day of....Rich introduced us to the small crowd of people that gathered in the Providence area they have selected to have their monthly meetings. Despite all the advertising, there was only one or two newcomers to this presentation. OSRAS is having a hard time getting people to come aboard...

     Then I start the presentation (I look suuuuper smart here right?)

     While Chris builds small structures to raffle off at the end of the presentation. 

     Rich shows off his piece to the crowd in order to not only show off my masterpiece and what he will be putting in his tank at home but, to show everyone how well the concrete holds once cured.

     Chris also shows everyone one of his favorite tricks. Placing epoxy into the tank to put in a large colony and then propping it up with sticks (we use skewers) overnight while it cures. We wanted to show this to people at the CTARS presentation as well but, Ego never gave us the chance. 

This Photo Courtesy of Rich Hogan

     A look at the structures after they were built...and yet another clueless look on my face. Can't anyone snap a photo of my looking intellectual? 

This Photo Courtesy of Rich Hogan

     I always ask people to send me photo's of their structures later on down the road so I can see how they are doing and possibly use them in later demo's. I can't remember who won these structures so, I can't ask or look for their tank photo's anywhere. However, on a search I did happen to find Rich's. He built the rest of his in his tank with the remaining concrete and the one we made for him is over on the right hand side. Rich has never been able to keep a tank very well. Chris was helping him for a while (more on that later) and with these photo's it goes to show that he still needs some major areas of improvement on his tank knowledge and care. 

Photo found on OSRAS.com

Photo found on OSRAS.com

     Someone even posted a message that he had some corals ready for fragging. Huh?!!

     *Sigh* Anyway, until next time, smart reefing & happy aquascaping!! 





Like this Blog? Become a follower!! Don't forget to post your comments below too :)

Just Call Me the Aquascaper!

     It's February now and I'm losing my mind with Rich and Brenda's phone calls and messages. However, I keep my cool (most of the time) and press on. The screaming and swearing usually happens before or after the phone calls with Rich. The calls/emails usually went a little like this...

Day ten of question one: "Seriously man, how many times do I have to explain to you that I'm not going to post about the conference every day? Why? Because it will piss off the few people that we do have that have liked the page! Please trust me okay? Okay." 

Day fifteen of question 1,568,034: "Whhhhyyyy did you post an invitation  to the conference on your Facebook when there is already one on the OSRAS Facebook page? This is going to confuse people. Please take it down.

Day sixteen: "Please?" 

Day seventeen: "Please?" 

Day eighteen: "Please!" 

Day twenty: "PLEASE!" 

Day thirty-nine: "Oh my god! Fucking take it down!"

Day forty-one: "What do you mean you don't know how?!" 

Day forty-four: "No, I never had access to your Richard Facebook page! What are you talking about?!"

Day forty-five: "This is the info on how to add the 'like Facebook' to the OSRAS page you requested" (insert html and website info here)

Day forty-six: (this is me ignoring Rich's message about not understanding how to add the 'like Facebook' to the OSRAS website)

     Anyway, I'm sure you catch my drift here. I have learned to have patience over the years, far more than I did when I was younger but, its still far thinner than most peoples. Especially when people are just plain untrainable or think that they are right when they are just plain dumb. I have a life outside of OSRAS and that means I do not have time to argue over petty shit. Please try to remember, I'm doing you a favor here buddy...this is not my job. 

     Part of my not-job was to prepare for yet another presentation for the club. This one wasn't too big of a deal though because we already had most of the presentation done because we had done it for CTARS already; our aquascaping presentation. 

Flyer for the Presentation

     Rich and Brenda gave us the money to get the concrete while holding yet another BoD meeting at our home and at the January meeting gave us some rock to build them a structure for their tank to show the meeting. Wait, what?! Hold on one second! They wanted us to build them a structure for their tank with the concrete bought with OSRAS money? What the fuck! I thought this shady shit was the entire reasoning they started their club. Whatever. Then they asked me to make kits with the concrete to raffle out at the meeting too. Okay. No problem! 

     So, one fine sunny day Chris and I started the project....

I start by making the structure I want first...

     My dog Sparky decided he wanted to help too. His idea of helping is just dancing around like a little ballerina I think because he's half chihuahua and that's all I usually see these dogs doing...that or talking about taco's. 

Told you I was losing my mind! 

     Then came the process of actually putting the scape together.

     Chris also worked on large and small disks to raffle off at the meeting.

  

     Now, imagine that this next photo is me saying something along the lines like "this is one kick ass scape." I'm really in all reality saying something like, "we need to move this really soon so that we can get the pot roast on the table for dinner tonight." I prefer the first version better, it's just more fitting with the hand gesture I'm making. 

     When we were all done I went out to Walmart and bought these cool containers that I'm sure some of you will actually recognize, bread bags and used some old water bottles for the Acryl 60 mix and made five and ten pound kits for the meeting. I was extremely happy with the results of these. When I sent the picture to Rich he called me up and asked if there would be enough concrete and mix left for him after the presentation to finish his aquascaping in his tank? Seriously? Okay, I get it. And yeah, there will be plenty.  

    I didn't let Rich see his structure until the day of the meeting and I'm happy to report that he was extremely pleased with the finished product. Those pictures will follow later.  

     This aquascaping thing is actually one of my favorite aspects of the hobby. Give me some live rock and leave me alone with a tank and I'll be happy. Give me some live rock and this concrete and I'm even happier! 

     Until the next blog....happy reefing!

Presentation for CTARS (with a brief tank update)

     Life does nothing but seem to get in my way. Four kids, three dogs, boyfriend with an incredibly large tank...need I say more? Chris has been asking me to update my blog pretty much since the day after my last entry and I feel terrible that I haven't however, we have been relentlessly busy not to mention I had surgery that kept me miserable for quite some time. More than usual some would say...

     Despite my excuses, here I am, trying desperately to make up for my lack of enthusiasm with my blog and I'm posting something! Aren't you excited? I can't possibly post anything about how the tank is doing NOW though...I have to try to think back a bit and catch everyone up, right? 

     After our disaster you have to expect that we lost our fair share of corals and fish as I stated but, we immediately began to rebuild. First thing we did is go out and buy a new Elvis for the kids and a school of Chromis. We named our new Elvis Priscilla, there was no replacing our old Elvis and it was the same size as the chromis and swam in the school with them for quite some time. We called it a Homie Chromie for a while too...you could barely notice the difference! It was too cute. There was one birdsnest that went completely white but kept it's zooxanthellae so we just sat and waited to see if it would come back. Because of all the rushing to get the tank built we found little leaks for a while but, for the most part the crisis was over and we were enjoying it again in a matter of no time. It just seemed really empty. 

     So, on April 2nd Chris and I went to our youngest daughter's class and did a presentation on corals. It was another nice break away from the tank at the moment and we couldn't have had more fun! I really wish I had brought my camera and asked the teacher to take pictures that day. We were worried that the kids would be bored with our short PowerPoint so we gathered up all the coral we had that now resides in our bathroom as decor and brought that out first for all the kids to pass around. Immediately these little fifth graders came out with questions that Chris and I don't even hear adults ask at our CTARS meetings! They were amazed by everything and soooo well behaved! They all held the coral like it was fine china and listened to the PowerPoint until it was done and then asked a ton more questions. Chris and I thought we would be there for thirty minutes...we were pushing our way out two hours later! 

     The presentation at the school would prove to be a better experience than dealing with a grown adult and we would soon find this out. The President of CTARS (a man I have grown to call Ego) called Chris and asked him for suggestions for club meetings and if we could at all do any presentations for him as well. Chris told him of a few that we could do and he picked Aquascaping for us to present at the May 20th meeting because Chris told him about this cement and rock-work we had just done in our tank. Not a problem! We went to Kyle's house one night to see his tank and talk about ours and he willingly gave some of his live rock to us to use in the presentation and we had the cement, all I had to do was put together a PowerPoint. 

     Over the weeks Chris had trouble getting in touch with Ego and we began to get worried that he wasn't going to have the projector at the meeting because during one brief conversation with Chris, Ego had mumbled something about it possibly being broken. I was spending a long time on this PowerPoint (does anyone know how much those things really suck to put together) and if we didn't have a way to show it, we didn't have a presentation. There was only one thing to do...substitute it ourselves! 

     We showed up to the Lutz Children's Museum early (as all good speakers should do) with our donated live rock, EMaco concrete and epoxy, containers for mixing, rubber gloves, blocks of wood, our laptop, the PowerPoint on a disk and....our 48 inch flat screen television from our bedroom. Yup! That's right...we did that! Good thing too because the damned President not only showed up near the END of our presentation but, he had the audacity to interrupt the presentation, dropped a few pieces of live rock on the table and then announced that ALL the live rock was donated by some woman! WHAT?! Who?! What the hell is going on here? And before we were ever even finished, he interrupted again to start selling raffle tickets and that was pretty much the end of our presentation. To top it all off, the asshole made some sort of sexist comment to me about wives and tanks and, I don't know...had he bothered to actually show up on time for the meeting, he would have heard me explain that I was the one that wanted our tank to begin with....sheesh! 

     The turnout for this presentation was huge however and I'm glad that it was. I hope to this day that everyone enjoyed it. To anyone reading this as it was posted, Chris and I are presenting our Aquascaping demo for the Ocean State Reef Aquarium Society this coming February 2013 if your interested in checking it out! Keep yourself posted by checking www.osras.com or by liking them on Facebook! 

Answering Questions

Creations Made During Presentation, Then Raffled

One of the Raffled Rock Creations (Members Only)

The Tank in May 2012

     (On a side note - and I MUST make this note - CTARS is a wonderful club to be a part of. It is now under a new Board of Directors and I feel it will make great strides into becoming what it once was with these new people. However, this is MY blog and 2012 was a rough year...be prepared to read what I have to say.)