Yesterday, GWAPA held their February meeting down in Vienna, VA at Rick & Mary’s home. I had been preparing for this meeting for the last couple weeks because I gave the meeting’s presentation on Algae in the Planted Aquarium. I thought the presentation was pretty well received, and I hope the members in attendance felt the same way.

Rick and Mary had two tanks on display, a 75G and an ADA cube, both which were planted very nicely. In my haste, I forgot to get pictures of their tanks, but the 75G is a nice jungle-style, open-top tank with Bacopa monnieri and Ludwigia repens growing emersed out of the top of the tank. This tank was also outfitted with a neat pH/temperature monitor, and automatic water changing system. Mary’s ADA tank was recently planted in the Amano style, with white sand creating a path from front to back, and was well on its way to becoming a fantastic scape.

The meeting set a GWAPA record for attendance with 39 people showing up. With many of them bringing items for auction, the auction was huge with over 130 items for sale, including many plants that are very rare in the hobby. I managed to come away with Ludwigia arculata, Goo obo gudgeons, Lagenandra thwaitsii, Eleocharis parvula, and Limnophila aquatica. The gudgeons are F1’s, bred by a club member, and will go in my 54G with my other rainbowfish. I’m still figuring out where all the plants should go.

More pictures/info about the meeting available on GWAPA’s website.

On Saturday, GWAPA kicked off 2008 with its first meeting of the year. Dave had been working for months on getting his basement ready for us to aquascape his newly installed 180G aquarium. Dave is doing a soil-based substrate, using mineralized topsoil with a few added nutrients, as his base. It’s capped with a layer of 3M Color Quartz pebbles.

Of course, the hardscape is made up of our porous mossy rock and manzanita, both from California. Being such a large tank, he’s trying to keep it manageable by using lower maintenance plants, such as crypts, anubias, and java fern. There are some other exotics, such as Pogostemon stellatus and Hygrophilia sp. ‘Low Grow’ as well.

Prior to scaping, Dave gave a nice presentation about the Golden Ratio, using yarn, strewn across the front of his tank to demonstrate the principle. As you can see, he’s applied the rule of thirds when setting up his hardscape, as well as, using asymmetry in terms of the size and numbers of rocks in each grouping to make the hardscape appealing to the eye.

We had a huge auction at our meeting this month, as well. I brought the most plants I think I’ve ever brought to a meeting. That’s what happens when there’s almost 2 months in between meetings! My tanks are looking a bit bare right now as a result.

Thanks to Jeff U for the meeting pictures!

Viktor kindly hosted GWAPA December meeting this past weekend. Since the holidays are so busy, GWAPA combines the November and December meetings into one meeting; this year a holiday potluck. Besides being fantastic aquarium keepers, we’ve got a few good cooks in the club too. I really enjoyed a number of the salads that were brought, Dave’s sausage rolls, the various dips, yeah… pretty much everything. Oh, and the desserts were good too — especially the fudge!

Besides eating and socializing, we also finalized the GWAPA board. I was fortunate enough to be elected the club president, which is a challenge I’m really looking forward to in 2008. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I want the driving focus of the club to be this year, but with a few local stores already expressing an interest to work with us, I’m hoping to help get some workshops off the ground.

Of course, one of the treasures of GWAPA is our members’ ability to create beautiful tanks in many different ways. Above, Viktor has created a wonderful planted aquascape without CO2, without a designer substrate (soil), and that doesn’t require constant attention or water changes. Yet somehow, he always has extra plants in the auction, which is a great testament to his ability to grow them. With four new members at this month’s meeting, the talent within GWAPA is only growing.

On Saturday, GWAPA’s October meeting took place at John G’s house in Springfield, Va. I was wondering how many people would show up since Aquafest was less than a week prior, but fortunately, we had a sizable turnout. Beyond that, there were a number of items in the auction that we hadn’t seen before. Eileen had sent some rare bolbitis sp. fern that we’re not immediately sure where it’s from, but it’s not the same leaf form as the type we’re used to seeing. Jim and Ghazanfar brought a few items that they got from Europe at the recent ECS (crypt keepers) conference.

In addition to the Bolbitis sp., I also got some various crypts, a stem of Rotala macrandra, and a bag of Taiwan moss for my new 75G scape. The meeting itself, was pretty interesting. John’s found a way to successfully grow some of the easier plants in the hobby without much intervention.

Also, the results of the aquascaping contest were in. I didn’t take top honors, but finished second in the advanced category. Next year, I think I’m going to abandon the hill-scape idea of the past two years, and move toward a miniature dutch/amano style scape. The tanks in the beginner category really were quite fantastic, with a tight race between the top three tanks in that category. For more pictures and information about the October meeting, check out GWAPA’s website.

Aquafest 2007 was much more than just a set of lectures. In addition to being a fun, social event, CCA also hosted a fish show, showcasing over 100 top-quality fish from around the area. As you can see below, there was no lack of tanks. Cichlids seemed to be the most prominent type of fish on display with discus the size of dinner plates, gorgeous Africans, and even a few apistogramma making appearances. There were also a number of catfish showing.

In addition to the fish show, Ray “Kingfish” Lucas had a number of displays setup, touting products from a number of great aquarium-related manufacturers. Tony Orso was also setup, with a few other vendors, such as Anubias Design, at the festival.

Besides introducing Eric Do, GWAPA’s big event of the weekend was the aquascaping demonstration, led by myself and recent APC tank-of-the-month winner, Jeff U (bigstick120). Aaron T, Dave W., and Eric Do also helped field questions while we were presenting.

We gave a pretty straight forward aquascaping demonstration, trying to mimic Amano’s demonstration at the 2004 AGA convention that GWAPA hosted. Jeff added some brand new Seachem Flourite Black to our 37G Oceanic tank, and began setting up the hardscape. I did my best to explain that you often want to group rocks into odd numbered groupings, and avoid symmetry when possible.

Once the hardscape was in place, Jeff and I started planting HC in the foreground, along with some Blyxa japonica, anubias barteri var. ‘nana‘ and downoi in the midground.

We explained how you want to plant the tank mostly dry, with just enough water to compact the substrate for easier planting. After planting all of stems it was time to fill up the tank.

Eric Do helped out with the chore of filling up the tank, using the empty Flourite Black bag as a shield to disturb the substrate as little as possible. (I mentioned yesterday how Eric is a great guy, right?) I continued planting, and also added some Java moss to the branches of the manzanita.

Finally, with the help of a H.O.T. magnum micron filter, the water cleared, and we were left with the aquascape below. It didn’t come perfectly, but it was enough to inspire plenty of questions from the folks attending. This entire setup was raffled off the next day, with lucky winner Rodney C., winning the raffle.

The auction itself was a HUGE event. Registration started around 9:00am. All items were auctioned off by 7:45pm. Yes, the auction ran non-stop from 10:00am to 7:45pm, selling at least2000 individual items by my estimate. Some club members believe that it may be the largest aquarium auction ever in the history of the three clubs participating. If you missed it, you missed an opportunity to grab anything from books, tanks, equipment, fish, plants, invertebrates, substrate, etc. at great prices.

I didn’t come away empty-handed, either. I won the following:

Fish:
Nannochromis nudiceps
Ancistrus sp. L279 “Huaco Mayo”
Corydoras Paleatus

Plants:
Crypt. wendtii “Dewitt”
Anubias sp. “Gasser”
Anubias barteri var. ‘nana eyes’

I’ll post more about where all of those things went later this week.