I will update this post with more information from MACNA.  And videos!  And audio from presentations!

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Wallpaper I made from ORA display tank (1600 x 1200 resolution)

Presentations (Coming Soon)

Videos

Last weekend, Anna and I went to St. Louis.  We went to see the Red Wings play the Blues and also to visit with several friends that live in the area.  We drove to St. Louis on Friday night.  It was an easy drive, a little long (6 hours) but extremely boring!  There is virtually nothing between Indianapolis and St. Louis!

We stayed at the Hampton Inn by the Arch.  I usually don’t give a plug to a hotel, but the staff at this hotel were all very friendly and courteous.  The hotel was nice and clean and for $91/night, it was relatively cheap for a downtown hotel on the weekend.

Saturday morning we had breakfast with Ruthie and newborn Abby.  Ruthie and Michael are friends from college and both of them were in the Chaminade Scholars group with Anna.  Michael was not able to have breakfast with us, but we had a good meal.  I had a Sicilian omelet which was interesting because it was sausage, peppers, onions, provel cheese, and marinara sauce.  I had to try it because I had never seen anything like that for an omelet!  It was good but I would probably order something different the next time though.  Anna got to hold little Abby and I avoided doing so because babies cry when I hold them.

After breakfast, we worked our way through St. Patrick’s day parade traffic towards Scottrade Arena for the Red Wings and Blues game.  We got there early to catch the warm up but had a hiccup with our tickets because they would not scan correctly.  It turned out ok as the arena just put a sticker over the tickets and let us go in anyway, but not after making us wait 15 minutes and making me worry we would miss the warm up, hence the whole reason for us being there early!  But, we did not miss it and got a spot behind the goal along the glass.

The Red Wings won the game 5-2 with an incredible 3 goal burst in 46 seconds in the 2nd period.  Anna missed those three goals and a Blues follow up because the concession line from the 1st intermission was taking too long.  Other than that, it was a good game for the Wings and I thought Ozzie played well.  It was also nice to get a good look at Jonathan Ericsson as I believe he will have earned a roster spot through this year’s playoffs and for next year’s team.

You can view more pictures of the game here

On a related note, I went into the game expecting to be harassed very badly because St Louis HATES the Red Wings, and understandably so.  But it was actually pretty tame and all of the people we talked to were very friendly.  I will say that they were more friendly than Columbus, which is really starting to earn a black spot in my heart with the way they treat Wings fans that also cheer for their team when the Wings are not in town.

After the game, we visited with Kathy.  Kathy and I used to work together when we lived in Florida.  She and her husband Nick just had a baby named Gabriel, but Nick is currently deployed over seas, so we did not get to see him.  Gabriel is a good kid, I only heard him cry once when he was hungry.  He thought my Wings jersey was a toy and decided to hold onto the sleeve for nearly an hour while we ate dinner.  Kathy also showed us her parents home and it was incredible!  Her dad is building his own airplane so he showed me the fuselage, cockpit, engine, and how to build the frame out of fiberglass.  He also recently finished their home theater in the basement and it was equally impressive.  I would say the screen is 5-6 feet and the projector seemed to be high quality.  The sound system was great, too.

On Sunday morning, we walked to the Arch and took the ride to the top.  The Arch symbolizes St. Louis as the gateway to the West.  To ride to the top, you sit 5 people in these little capsules and the capsules are all connected to the train that goes up through the internal structure.  The doors of the capsule have windows so you can see the stairs and internal framework as you go up.  Once you are at the top, you emerge to a very crowded passageway with small windows.  The point of view does not change very much from window to window so I only took a few pictures.  Still, it was neat to go to the top of the Arch and look down at the city.

You can view more pictures of the Arch here

We left St. Louis after that and drove back home.  We stopped along the way to see Greg and Kareema, two friends that recently married last year.  Greg and I were roommates in college so it was nice to see that he and Kareema and doing well.  When we returned home, Anna’s sister, Katie, was waiting for us because she is on vacation for a week.  We also watched the Red Wings and Blue Jackets game in which the Wings trounced the Jackets as retribution for that horrible 8-2 loss last week.

At the start of September, the 20th MACNA (Marine Aquarium Conference of North America) was held in Atlanta, Georgia.  The conference always combines excellent speakers on the hobby and scientific research with a trade show where vendors can show off their new equipment.  This was the first time Anna and I have gone, and my mom went along, too.  We had such a good time we signed up to go to MACNA XXI in Atlantic City next year!

My favorite display at the trade show was the Zero Edge Aquarium display by ORA.  ORA produces aqua-cultured corals and mari-cultured fish from captive bred stock to lessen the demand on wild caught livestock.  At the end of they show, they raffled off all of the fish, coral, and clams in the tank!  I only put a ticket in for a clam, but sadly, I did not win.

Another excellent display was the Drs. Foster and Smith booth.  They had two tanks setup.  The first was a smaller all-in-one cube style tank with tons of beautiful ricordea and the other was an incredible three-tiered zero edge style tank.  The first level contained a refugium and mangroves while the other two tiers contained live rock, corals, and fish.  The clever part of the display was each level had several frogfish that you could only see if you were looking carefully!

All of the vendors brought neat equipment.  I saw a direct comparison of the PFO Solaris against metal halides using meters for light output and power consumption.  LED technology is amazing and they are brighter and use less power than metal halides, but their initial cost is astounding.  Someday I would like to have an LED fixture, but the cost is putting them out of reach.  Reef Nutrition had a booth showing their live copepod product called Tigger Pods and their foods.  I bought some Tigger Pods and Phytofeast and put the pods into my refugium when I got home!  My Reef Creations had a huge display with plenty of skimmers, sumps, and reactors.  The parent company for Kent, Coralife, Oceanic, etc also had a large booth and gave full-sized samples of Marine C and a buffering solution!  Fin’s Reef had a monster skimmer from H&S and Seachill had a chiller cooling the lemonade they were handing out!  Finally, the Tunze display had all of their major products on display and a few new things as well.

There were some incredible corals and clams for sale, but I decided prior to going to MACNA that I was not going to bring back any livestock.  That worked out well because much of the coral I wanted were priced well into the hundreds of dollars!  One giant clam was initially priced at $650 but dropped to $450 on Sunday, but it was a beautiful clam!

Finally, I did buy some things that I really liked.  I bought 3 Deep Water Rock-Mags from Aqua-Mags.  These are fake rocks they have made and have magnets in them so they can be suspended along the walls of an aquarium.  I also bought Anthony Calfo’s Coral Propagation book and he signed it for me.  In the raffle, I won a collection of his “C The Journal” magazines and a four pack of Ocean’s Blend supplements for calcium, strontium, magnesium, and iodide.  I also bought a bunch of Coral magazines as I cannot find them anywhere in the Cincinnati area.  As you can see, we had a great time.  You can see the rest of the pictures here.

I will add pictures from the Georgia Aquarium at a later date.

The WEBN Fireworks were last night on the Ohio River.  I have been going since I was less than one year old (according to my mom… I think she would know!)  I wanted a good challenge for taking pictures of the fireworks and I think I met the challenge pretty well.  I used a tripod with a remote release to get the most consistent shots I could.  Here are a few samples and be sure to check out all of the pictures in the gallery.

View the entire gallery