AndrewB

We have the following specials available on salt mixes available until 9pm, Monday night. Pre pay, pre order all of these please. No limit on quanitities! Instant Ocean 160gal bucket - $34.99 Instant Ocean 200gal box - $34.99 Reef Crystals 160gal bucket - $42.99 Tropic Marin Sea Salt 200gal bucket - $54.99 Tropic Marin Pro Reef Salt 200gal bucket - $64.99 Red Sea Pro Reef Salt 175gal bucket - $44.99

Introducing The Red Sea Max! The most complete Nano-Reef aquarium yet. A 34-gallon system complete with integrated protein skimmer, light timer, separate switches/power centers, three different access modes, 110Watts of HO T5 lighting and multi-stage filtration chambers. See Red Sea Max Specs for more information. Available in black or silver, with or without cabinet stand. Order yours today from SCALES Tropical Fish Warehouse. Pre-order, Pre-pay special price of $599.99 for the kit and $149.99 for the cabinet stand! Come by the store or call in to reserve yours!

At long last, Oceanic Systems has restored its production of aquariums and is shipping. SCALES TFW is the premier dealer in the area for their new tank lines! If you have been waiting for your new glass aquarium, it's now in reach. Here's the scoop though... Their web site has not been updated. The wholesalers and sales reps don't have the promo sheets yet. It's almost impossible to get information on the tanks. Most of these tanks just landed at the wholesaler's warehouse last week. This isn't good enough for SCALES. We pushed and pulled to get the info on these tanks so that we can make it available to you as quickly as possible. Call us now to get information on your new Oceanic glass aquarium. The new line is called "Ultimate Aquarium". They feature high-clarity, beveled Starphire glass on the front panel. The glass edges are precision polished for safety and a clean, finished look. All of the Ultimate Aquarium line are available as reef-ready aquariums with AGA's patented Megaflow system. Most importantly they feature a lifetime warranty. Custom drilling is available from the factory. Available trims on the frame are Light Oak, Cherry and Black. Also available with tanks are their "American Cherry" furniture lines. Of course we can work with you on stand and canopy sets from Oceanic, AGA and R&J Enterprises. For a true custom fit, we contract carpenters that can make you gorgeous aquarium furniture to perfectly match the rest of your space. All sizes are indicated in inches as Length X Width X Height. Now available in the Ultimate Aquarium line: 58gal 36.5x18.5x21 70gal 36.5x18.5x25 90gal 48.5x18.5x25 105gal 48.5x18.5x29 120gal 48.5x24.5x25 140gal 48.5x24.5x29 156gal 60.5x24.5x25 178gal 60.5x24.5x25 135gal 72.5x18.5x25 150gal 72.5x18.5x29 215gal 72.5x24.5x29 Also available now are Pre-engineered custom aquaria. These are aquaria made on demand in the most popular sizes for custom tanks. They feature steel band frames and corner protections. I can't list all the sizes but if I were to buy one now it would be the 36" cube... Tax returns, anyone? See you soon.

I missed it last night, there's also a flaming royal purple encrusting Monti here with a Favia-type brain growing on the same rock. Sweet piece! For those of you watching the post: Come by and prepay or call with a cc# before Monday at 9pm and get IO 200gal box for the promotional price of $34.99. Salt will be in on Wednesday evening. No limits on quantity. Same deal on Tropic Marin Pro Salt buckets at $64.99 each.

We are full of corals, most of which are less than $40! Lots of SPS frags 24.99-49.99, small Crocea clams for 34.99. Plus our nano tank shelves with corals from 4.99 to 19.99. Don't forget your club discount on all of this! Looking for color? Great lobos, red blastos, yellow polyps, and lots and lots of zoos! Our fish section keeps growing too. It's too cold to do anything else. Come on by!

We had a shipment switched with another store and ended up with a whole bunch of Salifert Magnesium Test Kits. When I get lucky, you get lucky. We'll let them go at $14.99 each until they're gone. If they sell well, we'll look at bringing in the whole line...

On behalf of everyone at SCALES Tropical Fish Warehouse I want to thank everyone who came to the store for the CMAS/WAMAS social. It was great to meet so many new faces, to be able to introduce you to the store and we look forward to a great relationship with the local aquarium clubs. Thanks to both clubs for turning out a great crowd and especially to those of you who took home new corals, fish or supplies. We hope to do it again sometime soon! Andrew

Next Promotion: Oceanic Bio Cube 8-gallon kit $134.99 Oceanic Bio Cube 14-gallon kit $164.99 Oceanic Bio Cube 14-gallon kit and matching stand $259.99 As with the salt mix, please e-mail me before this coming Saturday, January 20 with your order. This offer is only available to those attending the social on January 28.

Just in, Large pieces of beautiful Tonga Live Rock. Not cured yet, but these won't last. If you're looking for some big pieces, come on by. Only $5.99/pound for hand-selected premium live rock.

The first promotion offered for the WAMAS/CMAS Open House is: Instant Ocean 200gal salt mix boxes: $34.99. E-mail me at andrew@scales-tfw.com to reserve your boxes. These must be ordered by Saturday, January 20. You must come to the store to pick these up at the Open House. There is no limit on the number of boxes ordered. In the unlikely event that our suppliers run out, they will be back-ordered and guaranteed for the same price. If you are looking for particular fish, corals or critters please let me know. If available, I will order on a no-obligation basis, within reason (as store policy we do not sell penguins, whale sharks, or Portugese Man-of-War jellyfish).

Please note! Orders for the salt and Bio Cube promotions must be received by me in my e-mail box by Saturday January 20! Please make your order now if you intend to take advantage of either promotion. SCALES Tropical Fish Warheouse cordially invites WAMAS and CMAS members to an open house at the store on Sunday, January 28 starting at 6:30pm. Refreshments including food, soft drinks and alcohol will be served! The store is located at 744 Cloverly Street, Silver Spring, MD 20905. Our phone number is (301) 384-7839. This event is after regular store hours and is exclusive to WAMAS and CMAS. Door Prizes! The Grand Prize is an Oceanic 29gallon Bio Cube and stand! Runner-up prizes too. You must be a paid member of either club to be eligible for the door prize drawings! Membership staff of both clubs will be on hand if you want to join or renew membership. Join us for tours of the facility, social time, etc. We encourage you to bring frags to trade with other members but request that only pre-arranged trades take place in the store. Please also write "Frag Trade" on the bags that you bring so our cashiers don't get confused. We'll reserve an area in the store to store the frags until you're ready to go home. Since you may be coming from some distance and may even want to enjoy an alcoholic beverage or two, we strongly encourage everyone to carpool. Find friends in your area to share a ride. We will also have a number of promotions for special purchases on a variety of items for pick-up at this event. Look for announcements as follow-ups on this thread. See you soon! Andrew Blumhagen and James McChancy, Owners, SCALES Tropical Fish Warehouse

Now Available! Intro price, $34.99/22kilo bucket, mixes 175 gallons. Also, the new fish systems are slowly being stocked. Some cool stuff here! Two new coral tanks are lit too with lots of promo prices on the corals. Come on down, check it out, we'll see you soon.

More than 2,000 gallons of marine fish aquariums got filled and turned on today. Stocking starts tomorrow! For perspective, the guy in the black shirt at the end of the row is about 5' 11". The top row is for quarantine, the bottom two are fish for sale. Here are the skimmers we built for the systems. Each is just over 5' tall. Closer and closer... Stay tuned!

All the cleanup came in looking great! Add Halloween Hermits to list too... A small coral order too, heavy on SPS. This is right out of the bag, still soaking in Reef Dip. All but one of the corals here will be $40.00 or less, plus your WAMAS discount. We'll call it Catch of the Day.

Lots of cleaner critters coming on Wednesday night; Blue Leg, Zebra, Scarlet and Cortez hermits Cerith, Pacific Turbo, Black Turbo, Margarita and Trochus snails Emerald crabs, Peppermint shrimp, XL Sally Lightfoots (lightfeet?) Plus, a box of mystey corals. We don't know what's in it but it's always great. Should be heavy on SPS too... Not to mention all the great corals we already have in stock. Come by on Thursday to check it out!

Just didn't work out this time. We'll set aside the BioCube for a future event. Congrats to WAMAS on a successful auction! I know Waikiki will appreciate the donation.

The rock involved was almost certainly "Reef Bones", a dead, coral skeleton rock not colonised like live rock but collected from a marine environment. I have some of this rock in the store which is clearly a large Montastrea skeleton. When this product first appeared on the market it was coral rock like the stuff mined in Florida, not clearly identifiable as a coral skeleton. As time went on, however, it became more recognizable as dead coral. I suspect that carelessness in collection became the real problem and eventually they got busted. Smelling Reef Bones, it's definitely got some biological goo in it, but I can't imagine that it was live coral sacrificed for the rock. It would have been pretty ripe by the time it got to me. This is actually of some concern from a conservation standpoint. Many people recommend using as much "base rock" as possible both to avoid the cost of filling a tank with live rock and to minimize impact on the natural resource. Reef Bones, while I'm completely ignorant as to its collection impact, made great base rock. Not anymore. The reason I speculate that Reef Bones was the product at issue is that it very suddenly disappeared from availability from wholesalers despite being a very popular product. In addition, the wholesale cost calculated from the stated value in the press release lines up pretty well. CaribSea, of course, makes a great line of reef products and I hope they'll be more careful in the future about collecting.

Corals came in really nice. Pics: Come on by to see!

There are some great fish breeders in the Potomac Valley Aquarium Society as mentioned. There's also a local (Virginia) chapter of the International Betta Congress. These members specialize exclusively in breeding bettas and you may find some excellent breeding stock from them.

We have a 29-gallon BioCube set up at the store if you want to see one in action.

Two big shipments coming in today, One came in Monday. Corals, Critters, Fish and loads of live rock. Tonga Specialty live rock comes in with amazing growth of coralline, macroalgae, tunicates and much more. Only $5.99/pound. Try something new! Uncured rock in small quantities offers amazing diversity of life for an established reef. See you soon. SCALES Tropical Fish Warehouse