April 2004 Meeting
The April meeting was held at the home of Ghazanfar Ghori. About 8-10 people braved the horrendous traffic and managed to show up. A new member, Ben, also attended the meeting. Actally he signed up towards the end of the meeting so it seems we didn’t managed to scare him off.
I. The Meeting
- Mini Photography Meeting
People got to see several setups, many of those were plagued with algae. Ghazanfar tried to blame the algae on several factors but we know why the algae is so prolific in his tanks – he’s good at growing it!
Ghazanfar spoke about preparing your tank for competition photgraphs. It covered the basics, getting the plants to optimum, water changes, cleaning the glass (inside and out) etc. The talk strayed slightly off topic and whole tank photography was also discussed.
Orders
Rick Dotson distributed whatever was left of his PMDD group order. He made TONS of $$ on it and is thinking about setting up a side business selling PMDD.
Nathan finalized the details of the group order and collected pre-payments. He’ll be placing the order in the next day or two.
Several ‘regulars’ were MIA – and we missed you folks, but overall – another fun meeting!
II. Plant Auction
- People walked around for a bit, looking at Ghazanfars setups, whispering about the algae until it was time for the mini auction. Sean Murphy brought in his bucket-o-plants. A ‘little’ bit of this – a ‘little’ bit of that.
We actually made him bag it all up – turned out to be 8-10 bags of stuff. Huge clumps of Anubias nana, hairgrass. We also had some rare items in the mini auction including Vallisneria nana, Phylianhus fluitans, Microcarpea minima, Upward growing moss. Most plants went real cheap – as usual.
III. Future Meetings and Field Trips
- May 15th: We will meet at the home of Treasurer Sean Murphy in Gaithersburg, MD. Sean will be talking about Soil Substrates. He’s been doing this for 10+ years so he’s got the experience, the good, the bad and we can learn a lot from him. You don’t want to miss this one folks!
In June: Members are traveling to the Tampa, FL area to collect plants and snorkel. Their plan is to rent a van. Dates TBD for this 5-6 day trip.