January 2015 Meeting
GWAPA’s first meeting of 2015 was hosted by Viktor Gyorffy at his home in Gaithersburg, MD, on January 24th. Inclement weather threatened to postpone the meeting but turned out to be pretty mild and the meeting went on without incident. There were some new faces in the crowd with attendance being around 25.
Our president, Sean Murphy, spoke of upcoming events in 2015 such as The Big Fish Deal: AquaMania 3 in February, the AGA convention in April, the GWAPA picnic in July, and the Planted Aquarium workshop in September.
More information as well as registration for AquaMania can be found here: http://capitalcichlids.org/aquamania/
Kris Weinhold spoke more in depth about the AGA convention that GWAPA with be hosting in April. More information about the convention as well as registration can be found here: http://www.aquatic-gardeners.org/convention.html
Please register; it should be an amazing event.
If you would like to volunteer to help out during the convention, please contact Kris; there is plenty of work to be done.
We would like to remind everyone that you can pay your 2015 membership dues in person at a meeting or online via Paypal here: http://gwapa.org/wordpress/join/
Membership gives you full forum access, participation in group buys, participation in club events like the aquascaping contest, a discount on the AGA convention, and discounts from some vendors.
The 2015 Aquascaping contest is officially underway and will be announced soon. This year is a free for all, so pick your favorite style and get scaping. There will be a beginner and advance category. Prizes and details will be announced soon. There will be a nominal registration fee.
Our first speaker of the year was Cavan Allen, who gave a wonderful talk about some of the more uncommon, unusual and often unavailable aquatic plants. He talked about the characteristics of the following species: Hemianthus reflexus, Aciotis acuminifolia, Marsilea (various species), Penthorum sedoides, Callitriche terrestris, Juncus repens, Hyptis lorentziana, Acmella repens, Diodia virginiana, Diodia kuntze, Cuphea amagalloidea, Syngonanthus caulescens, Sphaerocaryum malaccense, Lagenandra meeboldii, H. hottoniifolia, Hydrotriche gallifolia and finally several different Myriophyllum species.
The end of meeting auction was a good one that included twenty-three plant species, four fish species, and some dry goods. Some of the species mentioned in Cavan’s talk were represented in the auction.
As always, we would like to encourage people to attend the meetings; they are always fun, and there is always something to learn.
