FFM a.k.a. Christmas for Reefers

It's that time of year again, the E.O. Smith High School's annual Frag Farmer's Market. Oh, how everyone loves this event. Who can blame them? It's every reefkeeper's dream come true...room upon room of tanks filled with a smorgasbord of an unbelievable array of every kind of coral you can imagine. Vendors and hobbyist come from all over New England now to be a part of this event.

This year Fitch charged a whopping dollar to anyone who attended this event. Whew! For any reefkeeper, this is a 100% more than any other year but perhaps the cheapest event (and the fucking best) you will encounter in this hobby. Why the dollar this year? To track how many people attended. And how many people attended you ask? 820+ people gathered together to talk reef and buy coral and products at the E.O. Smith High School for one of the most awaited events on every reef keepers mind every year!

CTARS had their own tank this year and the members as well as a few stores donated all the coral and products sold for the day. CTARS pulled in a total of $1094 in sales, new/renewal memberships, pre-sale of CMAC tickets and March meeting pre-sales most of this being in coral sales! I manned this tank while Chris and Emily manned our tank for the day. Brian and Alana tagged along for the day as well. A few CTARS members came along to help for the day, one who helped me the entire day despite just coming off his shift from work and being dead tired.

Pictures speak a thousand words so, without further ado...

The E.O. Smith Coral Project Website for the 2014 FFM can be found HERE

Until next time, keep fragging :)

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All opinions in this blog are of a personal nature and are of a personal experience only. They are not the opinions of CTARS. 
Pictures taken by Brian Garceau

Acrylic and a Blowtorch

     After a long time of discussing a different location with another member, Chris and this gentleman finally worked out a date for CTARS to hold a meeting at the Wildwood Christian School in Norwich, Connecticut. This school actually houses it's own saltwater aquarium in the room we were in so, it gave everyone something to look at and discuss before and after the meeting too. 

     Meeting topic: Working with Acrylic. This time though, Chris' dad Emery would be doing the presentation.

     Emery had been making some tanks for himself and they came out great (did you see the tank from the FFM? One of his!). The club had originally planned for someone else to come out and do the presentation however, it fell through. Emery stepped up and offered to demonstrate how to build a small frag tank and then raffle it off at the end. Chris wanted the proceeds of the raffle were to go to the Lutz tank though and not the club this time. Done deal...

     The turnout was nice, the room was filled and there was standing room only shortly after the demonstration began. These photo's are actually later on in the meeting (during the raffle ticket sale) but, I figured they made the point either way.

     Emery had made all the cuts prior to the meeting and started first by explaining the costs of a sheet of acrylic, where to buy it in his area, and how to make the cuts. Then, fire....

 

     After that, he began the assembly with Chris' help and answered any questions people had.

     Then he started to seal/bond the acrylic together. 

     While chatting with the President, Kyle.

     In the meantime, raffle tickets were sold for both the tank and for all the other items brought to the meeting. Chris put together some great frag packs and brought a large sps colony and someone else also brought a large soft coral for the raffle. Kyle brought a bunch of frags from his tank too as well as a few others. The raffle table was awesome!! 

     Here's our VP & secretary trying to play name that coral...

     The raffle begins.

     And the happy winner of the tank is Country Bob!

     Successful meeting! Everyone was happy afterwards, even if they didn't win the tank, and the Lutz received a nice donation. 

Until next time, stay fraggin!

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Field Trip With Stingrays & Sharks

     I'm officially about seven/eight months away from being caught up with this blog. To those of you that keep coming up to me and telling me how much you enjoy reading what I write, thank you. To those of you who insisted that I continue to write....

     Seriously, I do enjoy every moment of our hobby (except for any part of it that involves more money) but, I really got myself into something with this blog. Trying to plan our wedding, work, take care of four kids, teach one to drive (around her work schedule), plus this...what the hell was I thinking? A reality show would have been easier...

     So, it's March now. The public relations officer of CTARS has booked this awesome trip with the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk for a behind the scenes tour of the facility. Yes, yes! We are definitely going to this!! If anyone has ever been to the Mystic Aquarium, it's a bit of a letdown when you are into reefkeeping and I brought Chris to the Boston Aquarium a few years ago because the first (and only) time I went to it I thought it was soooo cool. Walking up that round aquarium in the middle was like, WOW! However, once you become a reefkeeper, these places become more of a letdown and seem more like a morgue for the corals you care so much about. A behind the scenes tour of an aquarium we haven't been to sounded fantastic and it was nice to see the club doing something proactive again. 

     Pretty much the very first thing we were brought to were the touch tanks. These were Chris' favorite part of the entire tour. They had two sharks and a shit ton of stingrays you could pretty much play with in this large tank. Aside from wanting to throw the little kids out of the way, this was really cool. 

This Photo Courtesy of Amber Purstell

     We were then brought over to see the octopus they have there and the jellyfish room. I don't have a good photo of the octopus but, the below picture is of tiny, tiny jellyfish in that container :)

     A beautiful tank leads us to the back of it where they explain how they switched over to LED's recently. Ugh! Hate LED's! This would explain the decline in any SPS in that tank. However, the RBTA's are magnificent. 

     We head over to the backroom of what I believe was some sort of large fresh water tank. I could be wrong and the pictures of the fish I have can't be distinguished between a fish or a blob. 

     Then we went over to the sea turtle tank. I liked this one. Everyone got to go up and watch them in small groups from the top of the tank. 

     I think everyone got a kick out of the valves on this monster skimmer. 

     Then over to the tank that houses the fish that have been found in Long Island Sound. 

     Behind it, this tank...

     Then off into the back room of the aquarium. In one or two spots you can look into these little holes and see a small portion of what we were able to experience. If you ever go there, look for them and take a peek!

     Finally to the shark tank...to the top to watch them feed!

     We hit a few other spots and I have more pictures but, they weren't amazing or just more blobs. These were the highlights of the tour (to me anyway) which is why I posted what I did. 

     Eighteen tons of salt are used at this aquarium each year. I can't even recall how many thousands of gallons of water they had running through the entire system but, it was amazing! It's certainly worth a visit if you ever get the chance.

     Once the tour was over Chris and I walked the entire facility (missing the meerkats dammit!) and then spent another hour petting the sharks and stingrays :)

     Until next time...

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