OVAS AQUAMANIA WEEKEND – Ottawa, Ontario – March 23 – 24, 2013
DAY 1 – Well it is now Saturday and I’m at the Ottawa Valley Aquarium Society’s Aquamania weekend event. (LOCATION: Best Western Hotel and Conference Centre, 1876 Robertson Road, Bells Corners, Ottawa, Ontario). Today has a full slate of interesting speakers and tomorrow is the annual GIANT AUCTION. Our previous AQUAMANIA blog post provides a full schedule for today’s speakers but, just in case, here it is again. The majority of speakers will be focusing on the Freshwater aspects of the aquarium world but the last speaker of the day can certainly talk SALT.
What’s the schedule?
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Saturday, March 23
Speakers
10:00 a.m.
Dr. Hernán López-Fernández – “Fish collection in South Americaâ€
Despite being a bit early on a Saturday morning :-), the speaker was present and he enjoyed telling the audience about his many hours of struggling through some pretty rough, muddy, dirty conditions in search of some rather interesting South American fish. In the darkened room, photography was pretty difficult but that only bothered the photographer.
11:00 a.m.
Dr. Stephan Tanner – “Techniques for breeding egg layersâ€
Dr. Tanner got lost somewhere in the USA with travel complications and Zenin filled in admirably with and interesting presentation on one of his favorite class of fishes – the Loaches.
1:00 p.m. Les Wilson – “Food Nutrition: from the basics to the futureâ€
Food nutrition seemed like a good topic for a lunch time speaker but I headed off to the restaurant to fulfil some of my own nutrition needs.
2:00 p.m.
Jason Baliban – “The Art of Aquascapingâ€
At lunch we heard that the “Rule of Thirds” might apply to the aquarium aquascaping “art” but I was off buying a bag of spiral val from Heinz before heading home to post these photos before returning for Jamie’s SW presentation.
3:00 p.m.
Dr. Stephan Tanner – “Pleco nutritionâ€
4:00p.m.
Jamie Baquero – “Sustainability of the marine hobby tradeâ€
Exhibit and Sales Room
10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Confirmed exhibits: Angel Fins, Cobalt, CAD Lights, John’s Fish Foods, Ponds and Aquaria, Seachem, and Zoo Med.
Definitely lots to see in the vendor exhibit room. The following images will provide some idea of what it was like in that room.
The folks form Big Al’s have a midnight madness sale on tonight to coincide with the Aquamania event, and for those who were present at Aquamania, you might understand why I thought it might be interesting to caption this shot “Watching the coral grow”. The humour will be lost on anyone who didn’t see the display :-).
The folks at Big Al’s weren’t the only ones with some pretty brightly colored items on display. Some of the vendors had set up equally interesting tanks ranging from the tanks of beautiful angels to the racks of coral frags. There were also sufficient dry goods to satisfy most interests.
The t-shirts that show up at these events year after year are always interesting to see and this year is no exception.
More youth being added to the hobby every year :-).
Tomorrow all of the vendor areas will give way to the Giant Auction. I can hardly wait!!!
