January 2005 Meeting
Sunday, January 30th, 2005 at 5:18 pm
The December meeting was held at the home of Mary and Rick Dotson — the latter being our new GWAPA president. A descent sized crowd showed up for the meeting. Rick showed off his hybrid aquarium/paldarium and gave us a tour of his fish room. Mary gave brief talk on building backgrounds using silicon, moss, and other similar materials. Then we discussed the upcoming year and, of course, had our auction.
I. The Meeting
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- Cube project – We’re going to order a few sheets of plexiglass to build our own cubes. We will add 30watt DIY lighting at a subsequent meeting. Hopefully, things will turn out well enough so that we can hold a GWAPA aquascaping contest, and showcase them at our workshops. 5-6 people were interested to participate in this project. If anyone else is, please speak up so we can order the proper amount of materials. More info on cost to come.
- Workshops – We’re hoping to have 2-3 workshops this year. Preliminary discussions have been had with an aquarium shop owner in Ashburn. Two other stores are on our radar.
- Field Trips – Planting sea grass in the Bay — Rick will be gathering and posting more information on the forum, as he receives it.
- Huntley Meadows – they are seeking volunteers to ID plants, count animals, gauge water quality, etc. of some wetlands neat Alexandria and Mt. Vernon. Watch the forums for more info.
- Membership Cards – we’re going to print these up, and hopefully establish a relationship with several store owners to owner discounts in exchange for traffic.
- Move Website/Forum to new host – We’re going to switch ISPs because our current ISP has been very unreliable. This will occur in mid-February.
2005 Agenda (in no particular order)
II. Plant Auction
- The mini-auction consisted of a number of items this week: sagittaria subulata, ammannia gracilis, riccia fluitans, Crinum calamistratum, and even a pair of mollies! Most plants went real cheap – as usual.