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AGA Conference (LONG!!!)
Just arrived back home from the AGA Conference down in Houston Texas.
First, I want to thank Karen, Charlene, Luis, and all the others who worked incredibly hard to put the conference together. Things went very smoothly, and were very well run. I arrived friday, about 5:00pm by the time I got to the hotel (Houston traffic is the worst I've ever seen, and I lived in SoCal for a while!). There were shuttle vans taking people from the conference hotel over to Village Tropical (a great houston fish store), and to Aquarium Design Group (imagine an art gallery of MASSIVE planted tanks!), and then to Aquarium Environments, a business that does construction, installation, and maintenance of large tanks for businesses. Since I got in late, I didn't get to take the shuttle to Village Tropical. My first stop was Aquarium Design Group. You walk in, and see a MASSIVE wall of tanks. These tanks are 8-10 feet long, about 3 feet tall (the tank itself, not counting the stand/hood), and beautifully planted. As Jeff Senske later explained during his "Aquascaping" presentation at the conference, their tanks use mostly easy plants, and fairly slow growth plants. This is because they are putting together these huge tanks for offices, stores, and high-end homes. They can't prune every other day like high growth would require, and the tank can't require MANY hours per week to keep it looking nice. For views of some of the tanks, you can go to the Aquarium Design Group website http://www.aquariumdesigngroup.com and/or go to the AGA 2002 Contest entries. Jeff submitted several of these massive tanks to the contest. The contest entries can be viewed at: http://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/ After Aquarium Design Group, the shuttle van took us over the Aquarium Environments for a great barbecue that went on into the late evening hours. The next day, bright and early the main conference presentations began. First up, at 8:30am was Don Kingore from Kent Marine discussing a new line of products for planted aquaria being released by Kent Marine. It's whole line of components, including Nitrate, Potassium, Iron, etc. I'll be eager to see the reports from fellow aquarists on these new products. I was up next. I was running on just a few hours sleep, mostly because I was so nervous the night before that I couldn't get to sleep. The presentation went pretty smooth, except that I didn't move from behind the podium the entire time, and so some people could't see the parts of the slides I was standing in the way of! My presentation was titled "Plants: Nature's Test Kit" and the main concept was the idea of determining nutrient levels by simply observing the plant growth. I will be working on a full length article of the subject. The highlight of my presentation for me was when Claus Christensen stood up after my presentation and said how much he enjoyed it. Even if everyone else in the room thought it sucked, I would have been completely satisfied. But from what I saw and heard, the overall reaction was good. I was really worried that I would look like an idiot trying to talk science in front of people who know 100 times more than I do. But it seems I was worried for no reason. After a short break, we all hurried back in for what I consider the "MAIN" presentation. Nothing against myself or any of the other speakers, but this was Claus Christensen of Tropica! And what an amazing show. Photos and stories of plant research expeditions to Asia. There were pictures of a river, and showing the same part of the river in various seasons, with crypts and other aquatic plants, fully submerged at one time, then completely out of the other at another. He had pictures of crypts in the wild suffering from the infamous "crypt meltdown" that we sometimes see in our tanks. We watch Claus and other Tropica researchers wade and swim in these rivers. After Claus' presentation, Dave Gomberg was selling copies of the Tropica plant book. I bought a copy, and Claus was kind enough to sign it for me. After lunch, the next presentation was on Aquascaping by Jeff Senske of Aquarium Design Group. Jeff went into great detail about the design choices he makes when designing one of his companies great tanks. The last presentation of the day was by Erik Olsen. Erik is a great speaker, very relaxed and fun. His presentation was all about photographing an aquarium. He covered just about EVERYTHING you might ever need to know about the subject. And to demonstrate the principals he was discussing, we got to watch the evolution of a tank that he set up specifically for the Amano contest. After Erik's presentation, there were a few unscheduled hours of time before dinner banquet. I used that time to take a trip down to Village Tropical. If you are in the Houston area, do not miss this shop. Dozens of tanks full of plants, lots of them are hard to find species. They had several great display tanks, including one with a bunch rainbows. It's actually a good thing that this store isn't here in Denver, or I would get it big trouble with my wife for spending LOTS of money on plants. Back to the hotel, I went back to my room for a few, and fell asleep and ended up being about a half hour late for dinner! Lucky for me, there was plenty of food, and no activities had started yet. So, no harm done. Dinner was good, and after dinner, the winners of the AGA Conference were announced, and slides of all the winning entries were displayed. The "Best of Show" tank went to Luis Navarro. You really must take a look at his tank. The tank is amazing, and all the more incredible that the tank itself is a standard 55g tank. I'm just most of you know how tough it is to work with a 55g tank, since it's only 12" from front to back. After we finished with the contest results, we were treated to another presentation from Claus Christensen. This time, Claus took the entire Tropica crew (50 people!) down to South America. After seeing the crypts of asia, we figured were going to see some South American soft water plants. Well, we did see lots of South American plants. But the water was ANYTHING but soft. The area they went to was in Brazil. I'll need to ask someone who was taking better notes the exact name of the area, but the water was originating on top of a plateau, where it then filters down thru calcium-carbonate rich rock, and emerges in springs which feed into rivers and a huge swamp type area. Instead of tea-tinted soft water, this was crystal-clear water, with a KH of about 18 degres, and a GH at least that high. Most of the substrate was PURE calcium carbonate. A bright white bottom. The plant growth was unbelievable. The plants were all the usual South-American plants. The ones that we are often told are "soft water" plants. Claus made the point that those plants that are typically considered "soft water" plants are simply those that do a reasonable job of surviving and growing in very soft water. These same plants, in rich hard water, grow MUCH better. There were massive swords, huge fields of stargrass, a few species of Ambulia, basically anything that could grow in South America was found there in the very hard water. Claus showed a slide with some water sample analysis numbers, and even though the plants were growing wonderfully without and signs of deficiency, there was ZERO measurable iron in the water. And since the substrate was calcium carbonate, it seems unlikely that the plants are getting any iron from there. After most people had left the banquet, I was lucky enough to get to spend some time chatting with Claus and a few others who stuck around. And we looked thru the slides again a second time, just to soak up all the details. The next day (Sunday), the morning started off at 8:30am with the Panel discussion. Myself and the 4 other speakers answered assorted questions from the rest of the attendees. One humour thing that took place right after the panel: Claus and I were discussing various nutrient issues, and he asked what I use to fertilize my tanks. I told him that TMG is definitely my favorite, and actually had mentioned that to him the previous day. He nodded, and then a light-bulb went on over his head and he said "Oh, TMG is tropica master grow...." He had never heard it called that before! The final event for the day was the auction. Lots of nice plants, many going for very reasonable prices. I saw some nice other stuff too. Hydrologix donated several things, including one of their very nice CO2 reactors. As far as plants go, one of the hot sellers was Narrow-leaf java fern. But the biggest winner of the auction had to be a mysterious and rare plant brought by Claus. The plant was Pellia endiviaefolia. Look at it up on the tropica site for a sneak peak. There were two small bags of Pellia in the auction, each bag just a few inches long by a few inches wide. One bag sold for $75, and the other sold for $80.00! Well, I hope all who didn't get a chance to attend enjoyed this summary. It was very fun to finally put a face with some of the names I see regularly on this newsgroup, and on APD. I now understand that you don't need to be a professional scientist to participate in, and enjoy these conferences. I have a strong feeling that the fun and excitement of the conference will get me motivated to do some new things with my tanks. And thanks to Dominic Prakash, Dave Millman and Greg Fiske for answering my call for help and sending me some nutrient-deficiency plant pictures. I ended up using one of Dave Millman's unhappy sword pics. Chuck Gadd http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua |
#2
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AGA Conference (LONG!!!)
Sounds like a great experience, thanks for sharing! Someday when I feel like I
know a bit more about keeping planted aquaria I'd like to attend one of these. Again, thanks for describing in such great detail. I certainly enjoyed reading your post. Erica http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/mitoem/mitoem/index.htm |
#4
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AGA Conference (LONG!!!)
oSpam (LeighMo) wrote in message ...
Thanks for the detailed report! The next best thing to being there. And very, very interesting, that part about plants preferring hard water. Leigh http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/halloween/881/ I attended. I was one of a handful of newbies who had not previously attended. I am a relatively new AGA member and have only been doing plants for about 2 years. I found the conference to be quite worthwhile. I learned a lot, saw some fabulous tanks and got the opportunity to get some really nice plants - at the meeting auction and, as I ultimately did, back at Village Tropical before I caught the plane back. And, I got to meet people such as Chuck and other noted, experts in the field. All were very willing to provide help, and answer questions, in person as they do on the web. Bob |
#5
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AGA Conference (LONG!!!)
Ok, so when is the next AGA Conference? ;-)
I'm going to Houston for Thanksgiving, I might have to check out this lfs everybody's talking about. Not that I have room for anything else in the tank though... -- Victor M. Martinez | The University of Texas at Austin | Department of Chemical Engineering http://www.che.utexas.edu/~martiv | Austin, TX 78712 If we knew what we were doing it would not be called research, would it? |
#6
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AGA Conference (LONG!!!)
Chuck Gadd wrote:
Just arrived back home from the AGA Conference down in Houston Texas. Chuck, Thanks very much for the detailed trip report! And thanks to Dominic Prakash, Dave Millman and Greg Fiske for answering my call for help and sending me some nutrient-deficiency plant pictures. I ended up using one of Dave Millman's unhappy sword pics. That's a heck of a way to earn my 15 seconds of fame, but glad I could help. |
#7
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AGA Conference (LONG!!!)
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#8
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AGA Conference (LONG!!!)
On Mon, 11 Nov 2002 21:00:57 +0000 (UTC),
(Victor M. Martinez) wrote: Ok, so when is the next AGA Conference? ;-) About the same time next year. I don't know where it's going to be, but I'll definitely try to work it into my schedule. I personally would like to see it take a trip down to florida. There could be actual field trips out into the wild, and maybe a chance to see some of the commercial plant nurseries down there. I'm going to Houston for Thanksgiving, I might have to check out this lfs everybody's talking about. Not that I have room for anything else in the tank though... Visit two places: First, Village Tropical. 3612 S Sheperd Dr, Houston, TX 77098 (713) 524-0173 And just a little down the road from them is Aquarium Design Group (the "art gallery" I mentioned.) I believe their showroom is open Monday thru Saturday. Call ahead of time to make sure, but it's worth the effort! Aquarium Design Group 3461 West Alabama, Suite 100 Houston, Texas 77027-6028 713.622.6467 Chuck Gadd http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua |
#9
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AGA Conference (LONG!!!)
Thanks for the detailed report. And wow, what pictures! Boy, something to
aspire to.. what talent. -Bruce Geist |
#10
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AGA Conference (LONG!!!)
Village Tropical had one wall of tanks full of plants. Probably 12-14
or maybe 21 - can't remember if three levels or just two. At entry they have a large tank - maybe 150 gal? under the counter. Also 3-4 nice display only planted tanks that have been set up for a while. Very nice knowledgeable people about fish and plants. Met a guy who raises Killies at home - with 100 tanks (something I was in to years ago). I bought a couple of Cryptocoryne Retrospirilas and a single Apogenta Longipannonnong (spelling probably bad). Had to come back and pull out some large amazon swords from my 55 gal and take to my lfs. Also had to prune back the ever-growing sunset hygro. Lots of plants at the auction. Some plentiful I had and others seemed more for more advanced folks so I quit bidding and went to Village Tropical. Bob oSpam (LeighMo) wrote in message ... I learned a lot, saw some fabulous tanks and got the opportunity to get some really nice plants - at the meeting auction and, as I ultimately did, back at Village Tropical before I caught the plane back. Did they set up and plant the tanks just for the weekend? And what kind of plants did Village Tropical have? What did you get? Leigh http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/halloween/881/ |
#11
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AGA Conference (LONG!!!)
I knew I was going to really miss out! -- and I did too! Maybe next
year? By the way, I found a great source for some *very* cheap CaCO3 recently. The ceramics industry uses it, and refers to it as "whiting." -- much cheaper than brewery suppliers, etc. On Sun, 10 Nov 2002 23:09:17 -0700, Chuck Gadd wrote: Just arrived back home from the AGA Conference down in Houston Texas. First, I want to thank Karen, Charlene, Luis, and all the others who worked incredibly hard to put the conference together. Things went very smoothly, and were very well run. I arrived friday, about 5:00pm by the time I got to the hotel (Houston traffic is the worst I've ever seen, and I lived in SoCal for a while!). There were shuttle vans taking people from the conference hotel over to Village Tropical (a great houston fish store), and to Aquarium Design Group (imagine an art gallery of MASSIVE planted tanks!), and then to Aquarium Environments, a business that does construction, installation, and maintenance of large tanks for businesses. Since I got in late, I didn't get to take the shuttle to Village Tropical. My first stop was Aquarium Design Group. You walk in, and see a MASSIVE wall of tanks. These tanks are 8-10 feet long, about 3 feet tall (the tank itself, not counting the stand/hood), and beautifully planted. As Jeff Senske later explained during his "Aquascaping" presentation at the conference, their tanks use mostly easy plants, and fairly slow growth plants. This is because they are putting together these huge tanks for offices, stores, and high-end homes. They can't prune every other day like high growth would require, and the tank can't require MANY hours per week to keep it looking nice. For views of some of the tanks, you can go to the Aquarium Design Group website http://www.aquariumdesigngroup.com and/or go to the AGA 2002 Contest entries. Jeff submitted several of these massive tanks to the contest. The contest entries can be viewed at: http://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/ After Aquarium Design Group, the shuttle van took us over the Aquarium Environments for a great barbecue that went on into the late evening hours. The next day, bright and early the main conference presentations began. First up, at 8:30am was Don Kingore from Kent Marine discussing a new line of products for planted aquaria being released by Kent Marine. It's whole line of components, including Nitrate, Potassium, Iron, etc. I'll be eager to see the reports from fellow aquarists on these new products. I was up next. I was running on just a few hours sleep, mostly because I was so nervous the night before that I couldn't get to sleep. The presentation went pretty smooth, except that I didn't move from behind the podium the entire time, and so some people could't see the parts of the slides I was standing in the way of! My presentation was titled "Plants: Nature's Test Kit" and the main concept was the idea of determining nutrient levels by simply observing the plant growth. I will be working on a full length article of the subject. The highlight of my presentation for me was when Claus Christensen stood up after my presentation and said how much he enjoyed it. Even if everyone else in the room thought it sucked, I would have been completely satisfied. But from what I saw and heard, the overall reaction was good. I was really worried that I would look like an idiot trying to talk science in front of people who know 100 times more than I do. But it seems I was worried for no reason. After a short break, we all hurried back in for what I consider the "MAIN" presentation. Nothing against myself or any of the other speakers, but this was Claus Christensen of Tropica! And what an amazing show. Photos and stories of plant research expeditions to Asia. There were pictures of a river, and showing the same part of the river in various seasons, with crypts and other aquatic plants, fully submerged at one time, then completely out of the other at another. He had pictures of crypts in the wild suffering from the infamous "crypt meltdown" that we sometimes see in our tanks. We watch Claus and other Tropica researchers wade and swim in these rivers. After Claus' presentation, Dave Gomberg was selling copies of the Tropica plant book. I bought a copy, and Claus was kind enough to sign it for me. After lunch, the next presentation was on Aquascaping by Jeff Senske of Aquarium Design Group. Jeff went into great detail about the design choices he makes when designing one of his companies great tanks. The last presentation of the day was by Erik Olsen. Erik is a great speaker, very relaxed and fun. His presentation was all about photographing an aquarium. He covered just about EVERYTHING you might ever need to know about the subject. And to demonstrate the principals he was discussing, we got to watch the evolution of a tank that he set up specifically for the Amano contest. After Erik's presentation, there were a few unscheduled hours of time before dinner banquet. I used that time to take a trip down to Village Tropical. If you are in the Houston area, do not miss this shop. Dozens of tanks full of plants, lots of them are hard to find species. They had several great display tanks, including one with a bunch rainbows. It's actually a good thing that this store isn't here in Denver, or I would get it big trouble with my wife for spending LOTS of money on plants. Back to the hotel, I went back to my room for a few, and fell asleep and ended up being about a half hour late for dinner! Lucky for me, there was plenty of food, and no activities had started yet. So, no harm done. Dinner was good, and after dinner, the winners of the AGA Conference were announced, and slides of all the winning entries were displayed. The "Best of Show" tank went to Luis Navarro. You really must take a look at his tank. The tank is amazing, and all the more incredible that the tank itself is a standard 55g tank. I'm just most of you know how tough it is to work with a 55g tank, since it's only 12" from front to back. After we finished with the contest results, we were treated to another presentation from Claus Christensen. This time, Claus took the entire Tropica crew (50 people!) down to South America. After seeing the crypts of asia, we figured were going to see some South American soft water plants. Well, we did see lots of South American plants. But the water was ANYTHING but soft. The area they went to was in Brazil. I'll need to ask someone who was taking better notes the exact name of the area, but the water was originating on top of a plateau, where it then filters down thru calcium-carbonate rich rock, and emerges in springs which feed into rivers and a huge swamp type area. Instead of tea-tinted soft water, this was crystal-clear water, with a KH of about 18 degres, and a GH at least that high. Most of the substrate was PURE calcium carbonate. A bright white bottom. The plant growth was unbelievable. The plants were all the usual South-American plants. The ones that we are often told are "soft water" plants. Claus made the point that those plants that are typically considered "soft water" plants are simply those that do a reasonable job of surviving and growing in very soft water. These same plants, in rich hard water, grow MUCH better. There were massive swords, huge fields of stargrass, a few species of Ambulia, basically anything that could grow in South America was found there in the very hard water. Claus showed a slide with some water sample analysis numbers, and even though the plants were growing wonderfully without and signs of deficiency, there was ZERO measurable iron in the water. And since the substrate was calcium carbonate, it seems unlikely that the plants are getting any iron from there. After most people had left the banquet, I was lucky enough to get to spend some time chatting with Claus and a few others who stuck around. And we looked thru the slides again a second time, just to soak up all the details. The next day (Sunday), the morning started off at 8:30am with the Panel discussion. Myself and the 4 other speakers answered assorted questions from the rest of the attendees. One humour thing that took place right after the panel: Claus and I were discussing various nutrient issues, and he asked what I use to fertilize my tanks. I told him that TMG is definitely my favorite, and actually had mentioned that to him the previous day. He nodded, and then a light-bulb went on over his head and he said "Oh, TMG is tropica master grow...." He had never heard it called that before! The final event for the day was the auction. Lots of nice plants, many going for very reasonable prices. I saw some nice other stuff too. Hydrologix donated several things, including one of their very nice CO2 reactors. As far as plants go, one of the hot sellers was Narrow-leaf java fern. But the biggest winner of the auction had to be a mysterious and rare plant brought by Claus. The plant was Pellia endiviaefolia. Look at it up on the tropica site for a sneak peak. There were two small bags of Pellia in the auction, each bag just a few inches long by a few inches wide. One bag sold for $75, and the other sold for $80.00! Well, I hope all who didn't get a chance to attend enjoyed this summary. It was very fun to finally put a face with some of the names I see regularly on this newsgroup, and on APD. I now understand that you don't need to be a professional scientist to participate in, and enjoy these conferences. I have a strong feeling that the fun and excitement of the conference will get me motivated to do some new things with my tanks. And thanks to Dominic Prakash, Dave Millman and Greg Fiske for answering my call for help and sending me some nutrient-deficiency plant pictures. I ended up using one of Dave Millman's unhappy sword pics. Chuck Gadd http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua E.W. Marshall Colorado Rockies |
#12
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AGA Conference (LONG!!!)
On Wed, 20 Nov 2002 15:17:30 GMT, E.W. Marshall
wrote: I knew I was going to really miss out! -- and I did too! Maybe next year? Sounds good. By the way, I found a great source for some *very* cheap CaCO3 recently. The ceramics industry uses it, and refers to it as "whiting." -- much cheaper than brewery suppliers, etc. Cool. I picked up a big bottle of it at a health-food store, just a few bucks. Don't remember the actual size. Chuck Gadd http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua |
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