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

The FFM (kinda like the BFG but, really not)

     Ahhh....it's that time of year again. Yes, the FFM is coming. The Frag Farmer's Market held at the E.O. Smith High School in Storrs every year. This year makes for the 6th annual FFM. The first time Chris and I went we were like kids in the candy store. Zoanthids and sps everywhere! When we left, we vowed to someday set up our own tank someday and sell our frags too.

     This year was the year. 

     What is a Frag Farmer's Market you ask?

     'Inspired by the idea of the the reef club frag swap, the New England Frag Farmer's represents a regional event with "farmers" from all over New England gather to sell their home grown "crop." The E.O. Smith Coral Project opens the doors to the school for any local hobbyist, retail or online store to come in and set-up a tank to sell coral frags. Admission is free, so anyone can come in and chat with the farmers, share information and get a few nice homegrown frags to stock their tanks.' (http://www.eosmithcoralproject.org/FFM2013.html)

     Chris grew out his corals for months waiting for this day. 

     We made cute little shelves to go in each bucket we brought and made plenty of our own water to bring with us. We noticed a lot of people have issues when using the water donated (slimed up corals, no polyp extension and cloudy tanks). We made lists, more lists and then double and triple checked each one. We even had lists of corals on our lists! We were ready. 

     The morning of we woke up bright and early and started the transition of putting all the frags into the buckets. We had our oldest daughter come with us in order to help with the crowds and off we went, tank, lights, coral, water, cords...the kitchen sink :)

(photo courtesy of Rich Hogan)

     This is our set-up. Nifty right? Even with the old metal halide instead of LED's like everyone else was using, our corals popped with color and the polyp extension was crazy!!

(photo courtesy of Rich Hogan)

     And we were busy!!!

(photo courtesy of Rich Hogan)

     As were many others...

(photo courtesy of Rich Hogan)

 (photo courtesy of Rich Hogan)

(photo courtesy of Rich Hogan)

     At the end of the day we chatted a bit with Greg Hiller who had a booth next to ours. Chris gave him a piece of red dragon. I wouldn't have only because he kept saying "Red dragon, red dragon, red dragon!" in a childlike sing-songy voice every time someone came over and started talking about ours. He wanted a piece to try in his tank but, refused to pay the amount we were asking which was far cheaper than anyone elses at the swap that day. Chris does stuff like that all the time. 

 (photo courtesy of Lisa Messier)

(photo courtesy of Lisa Messier)

     We donated a dollar of every coral we sold to the Lutz Tank too. We tried to get more people on board with the idea however, only one reefkeeper saw me when I went over to Ron to give him the money and he came over and matched our donation. Maybe next year...

     Seventy percent of what we took home that day went to me for the wedding. I did use some of the cash to pay some bills but, the rest was squirreled away until certain vendors were found!

     We plan on attending again this upcoming year (2014) and can't wait! Those funds will all go towards the wedding too so if you see us remember to stop by! :)

Until next time....don't blow your bank account, practice safe reef buying until the FFM! ;)

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