Gatortailale

Add ideas here for vendors and working to get more focused donations from meeting * gift cards from stores to get more customers in stores * big items from online stores

Time: 1:00 PM - 4:30 PM (Speaker starts at 3:00 PM) Where: North Bethesda Middle School, 8935 Bradmoor Drive, Bethesda, MD 20817 WAMAS members get in free. Guests are $10 each (paid at the door). Join WAMAS at this link Agenda: 1:00 Sign-in / socialize / frag sales 1:30 Workshop - TBD 2:00 Break / socialize / frag sales 3:00 Speaker - Charles Delbeek - Lessons Learned from Managing a 212,000 Gallon Reef Tank over 18 years 4:00 Break 4:15 Raffle! Directions to North Bethesda Middle School: - NOTE: The school is just inside the north edge of the beltway near Old Georgetown Road. Here's a map from Google Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/bKz79Y9HmQF2 Bio: J. Charles Delbeek is currently Curator of Aquarium Projects at the Steinhart Aquarium, California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, California. Charles consulted on the design of the Academy's 212,000 gallon reef system and now manages the team that cares for this challenging system. Previously Charles spent 13 years working at the Waikiki Aquarium in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is a member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and serves on the Steering Committee for the Aquatic Invertebrate Taxon Advisory Group (AITAG). Charles' professional interests include the ecology and captive husbandry of marine and freshwater fishes, live corals, mangroves, seagrasses, freshwater aquatic plants and cephalopods. Charles co-authored three popular aquarium books with Julian Sprung from 1994 to 2005; The Reef Aquarium series. Since 1986, Charles has presented at over 160 conferences, aquarium clubs and scientific meetings, and has written over 100 articles and papers. In recognition of his long history of contributions to the marine aquarium hobby, he was presented with the MASNA Award in 2008. Presentation Title: Lessons Learned from Managing a 212,000 Gallon Reef Tank over 18 years J. Charles Delbeek M.Sc. Curator of Aquarium Projects Steinhart Aquarium - California Academy of Sciences While managing the largest indoor reef in North America over the past 18 years, one learns a thing or two. From lighting, to filtration to even the use of magic erasers, we have been able to glean a few things. However, the most telling thing, and the one that has led a miraculous turn around in our system in coral health, growth and system stability, has been the work we have done in understanding the role of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) levels, and more importantly, the ratio of these two and how this value level may have greater importance than their individual levels. While our understanding of the role of dissolved nutrients in coral health in aquaria is still evolving, I feel the examination of N:P ratios may be a useful tool to have in your toolchest when troubleshooting coral issues. This presentation will present an overview of the system and evidence of how the N and P ratios affected the health of our corals and, ultimately led to a dramatic improvement in the system. Sponsors On Site, Selling Vendors On Site, Selling Members On Site, Selling @gws3 Special thanks to theses sponsors. Please support them & say thanks next time you shop with them. WAMAS Platinum Sponsors - Air, Water & Ice - Avast Marine - Blue Ribbon Koi - Champion Lighting & Supply - ChemiPure (Boyd Enterprises) - Coral Candy Aquaculture - Exotic Reef Creations - Fintastic Aquariums of Maryland - Frank's Tanks - Reed Mariculture (Reef Nutrition) - Reef eScape - Supreme Reefs WAMAS Banner-Only Sponsors - Bulk Reef Supply - Cobalt Aquatics - Coral Magazine - Jellyfish Art - Maxspect - Two Little Fishies

Were you using an outlet to control a heater directly, instead of running heating control via an Inkbird? I did this few years ago and over time the energy draw of heater and cycling caused by EB832 to fail. I think I've read about people on Facebook neptune group discussing way to fix bar. But expensive lesson to learn to not have outlet control a heater directly. Mine did similar thing of flashing lights. Mine still has power to some outlets so I pulled the interface control wire and just use as a constant on power outlet now.

Hope everyone who came out to the meeting had a great time and went home with some nice frags. While you are snowed in the next few days feel free to share pictures of what you got.

Here’s your 2026 Officer team: President - Craig Kuhn @Gatortailale Vice President - Garrett Stone @gastone Treasurer - Chris Mahoney @ReeferMan Membership Director - Michael Iskander @monstamich Secretary - Jim Gentile @Jgents Thanks to outgoing officers Nilkki Bridges, Scott Friedman, & Milton English for their years of service to the club!

What a fantastic meeting and it was great to see over 85 member-attendees come out & enjoy a great lecture, feast on the potluck food, and go home with several frags to add to their collection. I reckon we were fortunate the weather held off so that we could go forward with event. Thank you Dr. Richard Pyle for taking the time to speak to our club. We are fortunate that we know a guy with connections to make it possible, @copps 😉 On behalf of myself and all the Officers + membership, we appreciate all the contributions from our fantastic sponsors - over 135 vendor donated frags - as well as the 150+ member donated frags. Thank you Blue Ribbon Koi & Marine @johnnybv @Coral Candy Aquaculture @Combat Corals Top Shelf Aquatics, & Frag Shack from NJ. Amazing! 🙏 And thanks to Blue Ribbon Koi & Marine, Combat Corals, & Frag Shack from NJ for setting up a tank with all those tempting corals in your booth displays, even with snow in the forecast. In addition, I want to thank all the members who answered our request for help in bringing a dish to share in the potluck or coming early/ staying late to help with the room setup & cleanup. Appreciate everyone engaging and making WAMAS community special to apart of. Special thanks to the WAMAS Officers, especially the newly elected who jumped into the fire and worked their butts off for their first time to put on the meeting, as wellas Dan who helped at the welcome desk. And thanks to Our President Emeritus, Tom & Doug, who continue to donate their time to help the club. 🙏 In closing thank you Garrett & Chris for your efforts working with our sponsors and vendors to source frags & developing a plan to get frags to our members & speed us on our ways. 🍻

Meeting is on - latest weather forecast shows snow not arriving until 11:00 pm tonight. We have over 125 vendor donated frags (SPS, LPS, Zoas, Softies, Euphyllia) from: - Blue Ribbon Koi - Coral Candy Aquaculture - Graham (GW3) - Fragshack - NJ - Top Shelf Aquatics * Attendees get a free ticket for a vendor frag; bring a potluck dish, get an extra ticket for a free vendor frag. * Extra vendor frags; and member donated frags, will be available in the WAMAS Fundraiser White Elephant Fragfest Exchange (for a small fee) - All proceeds go to WAMAS to help make events like this possible. We also have the following sponsors/vendors/members selling frags: - Blue Ribbon Koi & Marine - Combat Corals - Graham (GW3) will be selling frags and typically will pre-sale via the WAMAS forums. - Fragshack - NJ If you aren’t a member and you’d like to join, do it in advance of the meeting at https://wamas.org/forums/join.php/ You can join at the door, but we don’t want to create a backlog for our volunteer door checkers. We look forward to seeing everyone there!

Forecast shows the snow holding off until later Saturday night, so right now we are still planning to hold the meeting. We will also look into adjusting the agenda and see how we can speed things up to try to get everyone out sooner and back home. We will update all social media platforms and send email from the Forums if updates or changes need to be made.

Welcome. Looking forward to meeting you and saying hi at the meeting. We appreciate the support as we are an all volunteer org. and your membership goes to good use putting on the meetings and paying for forums and other operation items. Craig

Rich Pyle's talk title and abstract has been added to original post.

We are working to get a list of vendor donated frags posted soon. In members-only forum is a thred on signing up to bring a potluck dish. Below are a few pictures from the frag event and potluck last year.

Next up to spotlight and thanks to is Fintastic Aquariums of Frederick. Fintastic Aquariums came on board as a WAMAS sponsor in early 2025. Whether you’re a Maryland resident or live in the DC Metro area Fintastic Aquariums has the fish & coral you are looking for to add to your saltwater collection. The staff can provide maintenance services to your aquatic system, offers install services for both residential and commercial clients, and 24-hour emergency service to help address a problem. The store also carries a complete line of products and supplies to keep your tank clean and livestock healthy and well fed. Be sure to visit the store or online at: Fintastic Aquariums of Frederick

Next up to give a special thanks to is Air, Water, & Ice. AW&I offers lab-grade water purification systems and filtration media at affordable prices. Check out their Reefkeeper line of RODI systems which are perfect for your saltwater aquarium. Need parts for your water filtration system, or want to expand and add a drinking water system to your home, AW&I has everything you need to get the job done. And orders over $99 ship free. Remember, WAMAS members get a 10% discount when placing orders with Air, Water and Ice! Use discount code #29439 Thank You Air, Water, & Ice for your support of the club! Check out the online store here: https://airwaterice.com/

Next up to give a special thanks to is Champion Lighting & Supply. Celebrating 40 years of business, Champion is your online one stop shop for all your saltwater hobby needs. Whether you are looking to pick up a name brand product or looking for an item from Champion's Blueline product line, they have it all. And considering their warehouse is located in PA most items arrive to the DMV area within one day of shipment. Beyond Champion Lighting & Supply sponsoring the club, they also sponsor and support numerous hobby-related conferences and aquaculture projects like Reef Retreat conference and the Florida Aquarium's coral spawning project (as discussed by Keri O'Neil at fall meeting). Be sure to add a note to the comments of your order to thank them for their support of the club. You can check out all Champion offers here: https://championlighting.com/

Next up to give a special thanks to is Reed Mariculture/Reef Nutrition. Reed Mariculture offers a vast line of cultured live feeds, phytoplankton, live pods, nutritious pellet foods and much more to support both the professional hatchery and home hobbyist alike. They are recognized as one of the industry leaders for their techniques in culturing & handling processes to create sterile products to help you have maximum success with captive breeding fish and inverts and feeding your reef tank. Reef Nutrition is a long time sponsor of the club and supports the club holding in person quarterly meetings. You can check out their product line here: https://reedmariculture.com/ Thank you Reed Mariculture/Reef Nutrition for your continued support of the club!