On October 17th and 18th, three D.C. metropolitan area aquarium clubs, GWAPA, CCA, and PVAS, will host Aquafest 2009. Aquafest is a bi-yearly event in Laurel, MD where each club brings in an expert speaker to present on Saturday. In addition, GWAPA will give an aquascaping tutorial and competition and CCA is conducting a high-caliber fish show where some very prized fish will be on display. Top notch vendors will also be selling their goods and livestock. On Sunday, PVAS will conduct an all-day auction, which is open to the public, where just about anything fish, plant, or piece equipment imaginable will be for sale.

Registration for Saturdays lectures and events is only $15.

Don’t miss this opportunity to hear veteran fish-keeper Ken Davis talk about the fishes of Uruguay. Jason Baliban, an award winning aquascaper, will talk about aquascaping and photography, and participate in an aquascaping faceoff with local GWAPA talent. Randy Carey, expert breeder and author, will discuss barbs, danios, and rasboras.

There will be something for everyone. You will get to mingle with some of the top breeders, aquascapers, and aquarium keepers in the region. Don’t wait to register, as space is limited. I hope to see you there!

This weekend, myself and another GWAPA member helped a third GWAPA member, Paul, rescape his 90G aquarium. Paul has been in the club for awhile, but wanted to make an earnest foray into the high-tech world of aquascaping. He has a nice T5 fixture on order, CO2 rigged up, and replaced his old gravel mixture with several bags of Eco-Complete.

It took us longer than you would think to place eight rocks in the aquarium. We added a rock, stood back and looked, gave directions to the person closest to the tank to move a rock a little to the right or left, and ultimately ended up with the rockscape you see above. You can see a little bit of crayon on the front of the glass because we drew a very minor sketch on the tank beforehand. The crayon wipes right off.

After setting our rockscape, we added another two bags of Eco-Complete to mound up on both sides. Then, we added in a few manzanita branches that Paul wanted to use in the scape. After doing this, we were ready to start scaping. We wanted to to keep a relatively simple plant arrangement for the time-being, so we used a number of lower-maintenance plants, with a couple stems thrown in.

We used Sagittaria subulata and a short Lilaeopsis species in the foreground, with Lobelia cardinalis and Crytocoryne wendtii in the midground, and on the right side background. There’s Echinodorus sp. ‘Vesuvius’ and Ludwigia inclinata var. verticillata ‘Cuba’ in the left background. Overall, I think we were all pretty happy with the scape. Obviously, it needs to do a lot of growing in, but it should fill out nicely. It’s definitely a lot of fun to aquascape with other people!