AlanM

Event: WAMAS Fall 2023 Meeting, FragFest (In-person, not streamed) Saturday, October 14, 2023 Time: 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Speaker starts at 3 PM) Where: North Bethesda Middle School, 8935 Bradmoor Drive, Bethesda, MD 20817 WAMAS members get in free. Guests are $5 each (paid at the door). Join WAMAS at this link. Refreshments provided by WAMAS. Officers are currently discussing how to do FragFest this year. We are trying to come up with a way to distribute the best frags to members with the best chance of survival in tanks while keeping it fun and interesting for everyone attending. Ideas are welcome from members at officers@wamas.org. Speaker: Dr Carys Mitchelmore Dr. Carys L. Mitchelmore is a Professor and Interim Director of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, Maryland. Her expertise is in environmental health and toxicology spans fundamental and applied questions concerning the exposure, fate and effects of pollutants. Her research is directed towards the detection of chemical contaminants and understanding their toxicity and implications to ecosystem health for risk assessment, regulation, and management activities. Dr. Mitchelmore has been building a framework of collaborative interdisciplinary research with NGOs, trade associations, and industrial partners to address societal concerns regarding the environmental risk of emerging personal care product chemicals, including sunscreen ingredient UV filters, especially to endangered and/or understudied species like corals. Her expertise in the impacts of oil and oil spill dispersants was called upon to provide research and expert advice regarding the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil incident. Dr. Mitchelmore received a BSc (Hons) Biology and MSc Applied toxicology from the University of Portsmouth (U.K.), and her Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham (U.K.) in 1997 investigating the metabolism and toxicity of organic contaminants. Prior to joining CBL as an Assistant Professor in 2022 she held three postdoctoral positions at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (U.K.), University of Kent at Canterbury (U.K.) and Oregon State University. Topic: Recent findings and current research in coral stressors and sunscreens Agenda: 1:00 Sign-in / socialize / frag sales 2:50 Club business 3:00 Speaker 4:00 Break 4:30 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 Special thanks to theses sponsors. Please support them & say thanks next time you shop with them. You can find their website address by visiting their forum or the sponsor page on the WAMAS website. WAMAS Platinum Sponsors - Air, Water & Ice - AquaHaus - Avast Marine - Blue Ribbon Koi - Capital Aquarium - ChemiPure (Boyd Enterprises) - Coral Magazine - Dr. Mac's Pacific East Aquaculture - Exotic Reef Creations - FishnReef.com - Frank's Tanks - ICP Analysis - Maxspect - Premium Aquatics - Puddle Aquatics - Reed Mariculture (Reef Nutrition) - Reef eScape - Reef Nerd Aquatics - SaltwaterAquarium.com - Supreme Reefs WAMAS Banner-Only Sponsors - Cobalt Aquatics - Jellyfish Art - MASNA - Two Little Fishies 2023 virtual meeting support provided by Eureka Strategic Consulting, Discover the Extraordinary. Raffle Prizes $50 Gift Certificate for Reef Nutrition products (with $40 bump-up for shipping). (2 chances to win!) $100 Gift Certificate for Reef Nutrition products (with $40 bump-up for shipping) $50 livestock Gift Certificate donated by Blue Ribbon Koi. (3 chances to win!) $50 Gift Certificate donated by Puddle Aquatics. (2 chances to win!) Black Widow Bubble Tip Anemone! $200 value! (1 chance to win) Indo Gold torch coral! $200 value! (1 chance to win) Frag seller setup: Maxspect Jump 30W LED light, 100W Eheim heater, Maxi-Jet 600 powerhead, $175 value, (1 chance to win) BRS Standard Coral Propagation Kit with Glue, $35 value (4 chances to win) Aqua Gadget ReefRack 102 Expandable Frag Rack, $40 value (1 chance to win) Mini Magnetic Frag Rack (9 holes) by Aquamaxx and AquaForest Poly Glue adhesive (250ml), $43 value (2 chances to win) Stingray 10 plug locking frag rack, $30 value (2 chances to win) fragging supplies kit: Dip, glue, epoxy, $66 value each (4 chances to win) More raffle prizes to be announced. Sponsors On Site, Selling @AquaHaus Members On Site, Selling @Mr.Chalice More to be added. Stay tuned!

Thanks to everyone who attended the meeting. It was great to hear from Sanjay who is always an entertaining speaker and frequently presents original research, like he did yesterday, with results that go against the current prevailing ideas in the hobby. We felt that the location was a good one with convenient parking, friendly staff, and lots of room inside with good temperature control. What did you think if you were there? Please let club officers know at officers@wamas.org which goes to all of us. Also, if you have suggestions for what other activities we can do at the meeting or opinions on the shorter timeframe (we started at 2pm instead of 1pm) please let us know that too. If you won a gift certificate yesterday you will get contacted this week by one of us with information on how to redeem it at the email address you provided.

A few hours until the meeting! More raffle prizes are coming in! As a reminder, this meeting starts at 2pm, not 1pm. Officers don't get access to begin setup until 1pm, so nothing will be ready if you arrive earlier. The meeting ends at the same time at 5pm after the raffle.

BRK is not able to be at the meeting in person, but they did donate three $75 livestock Gift Certificates for the raffle! New arrivals are usually on their Facebook page and they always have a huge selection. Thanks for the donation Johnny!

CoralEverAfter.org (ReefdUp) is donating a Space Invader Pectinia coral for the Reef Bingo game. Photo attached below. Also donating acropora frag for the raffle.

Silverbook Soap is donating two soap packs worth $15 each: - One Ocean-themed pack (see photo above) - "Ocean Lovers Need Coral Soap" - "Only Clown-ing Around" - "We Need a Vacation" - One holiday-themed pack (not photographed) - "A Busy Year Needs Winter Solace" - "Pranksters Need Fruit Cake" Soap - "Family Needs Pumpkin Pie" Soap - "Stockings Need Peppermint Soap"

Nikki will be running the "Reef Bingo" game again at this meeting. Everyone will get a bingo card when they arrive and should go around and ask other WAMAS members questions to try to fill out a row on their card. The first person to fill a row will win a prize (probably coral frags). Nikki will also be there selling coral frags with her daughter who will also have some awesome reef-themed homemade soap available.

In addition to the raffle prizes from sponsors WAMAS will be auctioning off a new VorTech MP40wqd powerhead! Retail value on the powerhead is $429, so definitely a nice prize.

Justin from Avast Marine Works is donating a Plank Automatic Feeder for the raffle! It's a $209 value and some lucky WAMAS member will go home with it. Justin is coming to the meeting in person to demonstrate the operation of The Plank and will have some extra units for sale as well as the one you can win in the raffle. It's a really inventive way to keep the fish browsing for small food all day. The Plank keeps the freeze dried food nice and dry while dosing out tiny amounts into the feeding tube throughout the day. The small pump in the tube circulates water to hydrate it and lets it randomly head out the bottom to be consumed. Nothing down the overflow and no huge food dump which the fish will miss half of which ultimately ends up in the substrate. Thanks Justin for coming and for the donation!

New Raffle Item: From Marco at ERC: Four chances to win $25 gift certificates on fish! If you've been seeing his posts lately like this one: or this one: You know it's one of the easiest ways to get very healthy fish with hands-on service and follow-up. Thanks ERC!

I see a tube worm right there.

Reed Mariculture has once again generously donated some gift certificates for our raffle at the July meeting. They are the makers of the Reef Nutrition products. From personal experience, if you have a fish that's a picky eater it's practically guaranteed that they'll like Arcti-Pods. Alexie over at Reed has generously provided... One gift card valued at $100 (plus an additional $40 to cover shipping costs) AND Two more gift cards valued at $50 (plus an additional $40 each to cover shipping). These are great products that, once you've tried them, you're bound to love. Our most sincere thanks to Nancy and Reed Mariculture for their generous support!

If a member or sponsor wants to sell on-site at the meeting please send me a PM @AlanM to help us coordinate. We also plan to have a table designated at the meeting as a "Meet up spot" for advance sales to meet each other and exchange items.

Getting some more info on the summer meeting. I will start updating this post with more info about the talk and about Sanjay as well as raffle items that have started coming in.

Really interesting. I assume that you just drilled out the holes in the top of your ReefOctopus (I think?) skimmer air intake in order to run it into that container? I'll be interested in a followup of how long that media lasts.

The summer meeting date has shifted back out to July 22, 2023.

Small update. Since it connected to Fusion and was happily on the network I knew it must be something odd with not allowing local IP connections. I checked the network settings and saw that somehow the port number for running the local Apex interface was set for port 0. I set it to port 80 and it works fine. No idea why the thing was set to that. I also got the pH probe working. I had to do a manual configuration because the automatic complained about the range it was reading. I bet those calibrated offsets were vastly off as well and were zeroed out somehow. I had some long-expired 7 and 10 pH solution which should at least get the probe working since I don't really care about the exact number, just the swings. ORP is a bit harder to try to calibrate since you're not supposed to do it yourself. I'll see if I can source some solution or see if Apex phone tech support can help at all on Monday.

I got the new Pro, plugged it in, and followed the forum instructions for doing a restore of the old configuration which was not exactly seamless. I eventually got everything manually reconfigured, but there are still some hiccups. It doesn't seem to be reading my ORP and pH probes. It just always gives max/min values from what I can tell. It also doesn't give me access on the local IP address. I'm continuing the ticket with support on the issues.

Don't worry, we can satisfy that itch by sending 1000 bags and some large coral colonies to you in October so you can still do fragfest and overnight it all back to us. 8)

It seems logical to me that since the low pH is due to acidification of the water from an increase of CO2 then if the folks that worry about the effect ocean acidification on coral growth are correct it would have some effect on your coral growth. Mine doesn't have that large of a swing, but I do see the low points and high points at the same times you do.

Yep, they are trying again to ship a Pro. It will be USPS priority mail, so should get it by the end of the week. I'll just put the Apex Jr and the broken Apex Pro in the same box for RMA return. The Apex still seems to be working, and I can see the data in real time, just can't see anything in the past. It's "not the painless replacement experience they strive for" hah.

RMA replacement arrived finally. It's an Apex Jr they sent, not an Apex Pro despite the invoice in the box saying Apex Pro. Looks like it will be a while longer.

I did make a backup and will try to restore it when I get the new one in.

They didn't say, but I gave them access to my fusion account and they came back with an RMA replacement of the head unit. I think jhOU called it with the bad SD card. If it wasn't in warranty I would have cracked it open myself to try to replace it.

It's an RMA return. They are cross shipping one with deposit refunded when they get mine returned.