Close to thirty people attended the first GWAPA meeting of 2024. Rick Dotson, a GWAPA founder and ex-president of the club, covered various topics. He talked about how heaters should be chosen based on how much warmer the tank should be compared to the room temperature and not on the generic watt per gallon recommendation. Then he talked about the importance of GFCI outlets and having a drop in the cable right before it goes into the outlet. Rick also explained the effects of CO2, pH, and carbonate hardness in the planted aquarium. He touched upon CO2 injection, including the importance of dual stage regulators and CO2 tubing. Then Rick discussed dosing, dosing equipment, lights, and the importance of measuring PAR. Finally, he went into the topic of automation devices.

After the engaging talk, a few items donated by Oase and Seachem were raffled off.

The meeting ended with a monthly auction which included not only plants, but fish, shrimp, and some relevant equipment, as well. GWAPA would also like to give a special thank you to Joshua Wiegert of Batfish Aquatics and Neptune Systems for the donation of an Apex Jr AquaController System to our auction. This generous donation was greatly appreciated and sparked a lively bidding war to end our auction.

About twenty people showed up for this year’s GWAPA holiday party. We had lots of food and drinks and great conversations. The new GWAPA board was elected. Several items (thermometers, tweezers, scissors, a skimmer, and a CO regulator) donated by Oase were raffled off. Finally, we had our monthly auctions.

Over 30 people witnessed how Corey Wickliffe and Nick Kinser created two paludariums. They made slightly different setups, one was a smaller tank with only about 3 gallons of water while the other one was twice as large. Nick used a more traditional method in terms of aquascaping and planting. Corey, on the other hand, planted her tank by using the background for the plants to anchor to. When the talks were finished, the larger one was raffled off along with a hang-on-the-back filter with a heater that was donated by Oase. A special thank you goes to Capital Exotic Fish store for donating the equipment for the demo.
Please note: Our next meeting will be on Sunday, December 3rd.

Click “more” to see some photos from the event: