Blog = FAIL! BP = FAIL! Louisiana = FTW!

So it turns out I am pretty horrible at keeping up with this. I certainly need to work on that!

This week I am in New Orleans, LA. I LOVE Louisiana. I am not sure exactly what it is, but if I were to guess, I would say the food, the people, the foliage (thats right, foliage!), the music, the wildlife, and ultimately the mystique that attracts me to this place.

With the disaster of BP's gulf oil spill overshadowing this trip I was interested to see what the people had to say. As to be expected there are a lot of angry people in and around the gulf coast. Everything really hit home as I was driving to Galliano, LA to visit for the first time a shop called Animal Xing. A husband and wife own this little full line shop surrounded by a fishing community. When I arrived, Stephanie was in the middle of putting a Hagen order away. I started chatting with her and she said that in there 5 years of being open they were just starting to pull out of this economic rut earlier this year in Jan, Feb, and March, and then when the oil rig exploded, her income immediately plummeted. So many of her customers in the community are intertwined in the fishing communities that everyone was tightening up and not spending money on lavish things like pets, and aquariums. Stephanie, her husband who works a second job, and their daughter run the shop, so it is truly the epitome of a mom and pop pet shop. It was extremely disheartening to hear that this fixture in the local community may be at risk of closing due to the accident that no doubt resulted by a huge company trying to cut corners and costs. My heart goes out to all of the folks in the gulf, not only in LA, but in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Texas who are directly or indirectly affected by this disaster.

Today I dropped by a shop called 50 FathomsPet Shop in Metairie, LA (East of New Orleans) and met with the owner Dane. Dane is a very outspoken person, and may have been even more outspoken because he was dealing with an ornery fax machine. I caught him as he was getting ready to leave the shop with his son to go scuba diving in Lake Pontchartrain. Dane was extremely frustrated with the fact that this leaking well was into the 59th day of spewing gunk into the gulf, and nothing had been done. He is very much of the mindset that between BP and the Federal Government, someone has to have some way of shutting the well off, but he thinks that it has progressed the way it has because BP is after the almighty dollar and why would they want to kill a well when they could still manage to siphon some of the oil out of the spill to be refined. Dane asked where I was from and when I told him Colorado, he said that I had nothing to worry about the spill, but at the same time asked what the people in our area thought about the situation, and I conveyed how frustrated everyone I know is with the situation. Dane was very disappointed with the Government's response to the spill and said that this is the 2nd time in 5 years that the people of Louisiana and the gulf coast had been screwed. He said that at least after Hurricane Katrina, the people could pick themselves up by their bootstraps and begin the rebuilding process, but with the oil spill, and the dispersant, no one knows what is going to happen and the unknown, and the waiting, is what is so unnerving.

It was certainly a gut check visiting with the folks in this area this week. These people have been through the absolute worst and now are facing many unknowns, but if I have learned one thing from this trip, it is that the people of this area will not be dragged down. They are some of the kindest, most genuine people that I have ever met, and are amazingly resourceful.

I dont know if I said it already or not, but I LOVE Louisiana. If you have never been, you certainly must, and if you do go, make an effort to talk to some of the locals. Chances are they will share with you much more than you could possibly imagine, and will tell you some stories, that while may or may not be true, will be wholeheartedly entertaining!

Cheers~!

Jon

Midwest Marinne Conference

Well today was the first day of the 2010 Midwest Marine Conference put on by MASM (Marinelife Aquarium Society of Michigan). There are about 10 wet vendors at the show, notably Cherry Corals, Paul's Corals, Midwest Saltwater, and several others. Reef Nutrition is here, along with Rod's Food, Instant Ocean/Marineland, and several others. Speakers include Jake Adams, John Coppolino, Michael DeGruy, Sanjay Joshi, Kevin Kohen, and Richard Pyle.

The show had a pretty slow start today. I don't know that there were more than 20 or so people excluding staff, that showed up for today's event. It was a pretty dismal turnout, but the weather didn't help. It rained pretty heavily most of the morning, and I think that may have put a damper on things.

There is some unusual livestock at the show, nothing to absolutely die for but it is always neat to see what the livestock vendors have for sale. I still need to shoot some pics. I will have to do that tomorrow.

The event is being held at the Cranbrook Institute of Science. The Science Institute is basically a natural history museum. It is an amazing museum and includes shrunken heads, dinosaurs, an amazing geology/mineral collection, and even 2 really nice reef tanks! Elizabeth and I spent a couple of hours yesterday wandering the halls after we had our booth set up. It is a really cool place. Cranbrook itself is a private school that has classes from Pre-School through High School and the campus has a very Harry Potter feel to it.

Well anyhow, as promised before here are some pics from my recent trip to Houston. This first set of pics is from a shop called Fish Gallery. They have an amazingly beautiful shop, but sadly are going to have to move shortly. Here goes:

This is a shot looking at the saltwater side of their fishroom. In between the curved tank is the bagging station.

The massive filtration room taking care of all of the salt tanks.

One of their unique tiered coral display tanks.

Their huge 4 ft x 4 ft display reef.

Another pic looking across the salt side of the fishroom.

One of the many artistically aquascaped freshwater display tanks.

Another of the FW planted displays.

Their GIGANTIC south american display tank in their consultation room.

A VERY unique and eccentric FW display aquarium in their consultation room.

Finally, another look at the giant display tank and a cool circular tank that are part of the Fish Gallery consultation room.

And thats it for now! Ill try and snap some pics of the conference tomorrow, hopefully we will get a better turnout!

Cheers~!

Motorcity Mayhem!

Wow, so it has been a long time since I have posted a blog. A lot has been happening since my last post. We had ReefEd, a big ole conference in Denver put on by MASC. We had Matt Pedersen, world renown fish breeder, and Eric Borneman, world renown coral expert as speakers. I also was slated to give 2 presentations, one for new hobbyists, and another on Reef Pests. Unfortunately the other speakers' presentation went way over on time, and I had to cut my Pest presentation out of the mix. We had some local wet vendors that showed up, a kick-ass raffle, and some killer mexican food made by one of our own members that stole the whole show. It was pretty cool, however the member turn out was pretty dismal.

After ReefEd, i worked in Denver for a week. Saw some cool shops, didnt get any pics. Ill have to work on that the next time I am home.

Next I was in Houston. I HATE Houston. I dont know what it is about it. Maybe it is the fact that it is the 4th largest city in the US. Maybe it is the fact that the last time I was working in Houston I had a horribly painful ear infection. Who knows what it is. However, even in my dismay, there are a few awesome shops. Ill post pics of my 3 faves over the next couple days while I am in my hotel.

I am currently in Detroit, which I am also not a huge fan of, for the Midwest Marine Conference. The show set up was this evening and runs Saturday and Sunday. The conference is being held at the Cranbrook Institute of Science, which is a kick ass museum tucked inside a wooded area north of Detroit. Elizabeth from our home office and I are out here for the conference, and took a little tour of the museum tonight. It was awesome! They had a freaking shrunken head in their collection!

We visited one shop while we were here in Detroit. The shop is called Stingray Bay. Greg, the owner of the shop is an awesome guy with a cool shop. Greg has a mated pair of Freshwater stingrays that consistently give live birth to babies. I believe that the species he successfully breeds are Potamotrygon leopoldi. Here are a couple of pics of the parents and their babies:

The Female saying hi at the front of the tank

Another shot of the female. This girl was easily 2ft in diameter and probably 8" thick!

A bad pic of the babies. Sorry for the poor quality.

Female in the foreground, Male in the background. The female was super active, would cruise the tank and "blow" in the gravel hunting for food. The male just sat around and let the lady do whatever she wanted.

So thats it for now. Ill try and snap some pics of the conference tomorrow, and get them posted up along with some shots of the shops in Houston.

Cheers~!

Austin...Continued!

So as I sit here waiting for my delayed flight home to Denver, I thought, what a perfect time to add my last set of pic updates for my trip to Austin! At the same time, I hope that the coral, leopard wrasse, snails, and donut holes (thats right, donut holes. I am a fat kid after all!) are all situated someplace out of the sweltering heat and humidity that is holding the city in its grasp. It rained all day yesterday and is like 80+ degrees today, which makes it a nice sticky sauna outside. Hope all the critters are ok!

So yesterday, which was my last day visiting stores here in Austin, I dropped by my other fave LFS, Aquatek Tropical Fish. Bruce, one of the co-owners of the shop, is one of the coolest guys I know. Aquatek has been open for 10 years and is jamming on a day to day basis. They specialize in rare and unusual FW fish, are a dealer for Tunze product (I have never seen so many waveboxes in action!) and have a great selection of saltwater livestock, corals, etc. After this visit, Aquatek is also a Gold Dealer in Seachem's SD program! A great shop with some very knowledgeable people and a killer selection makes them one of the premier shops in town.

I spent a bit of time with Bruce, chatting about the industry as a whole and where we see things going in the next few years. Here are some pics of Aquatek:

After entering the store and looking to the right, a shot across the front display tanks.

A look to the left after entering the shop at the freshwater holding tanks.

The Current USA Cardiff display tank right next to the store entrance.

Their impressive 120g SPS dominated display tank

A look at their FW planted display tank down the row of saltwater holding tanks.

A shot of one of their african cichlid display tanks, along with the dry goods sales floor to the right.

A look across the back of the shop.

Aquatek does a lot of maintenances around the Austin area, and have a lot of customers who specialize in live plants. They have an extensive live plant collection, along with dry goods to care for any range of hobbyist.

I will leave you with this. My plane has finally arrived and we are almost ready to board. This is a favia/montastrea coral colony that I found at a shop called Gallery of Pets, that was in the midst of releasing gametes into the water column! One of our local reef club members recently had this happen with a type of small clove polyp, however this is the first time that I have ever seen anything like this firsthand from a LPS coral in captivity! Kinda cool!

Next week I am at home, the week after that I am at home visiting shops in CO. I will try to snap some pics of my new stock and get them uploaded shortly!

Cheers~!

Keeping it Weird!

Well Oklahoma was just that, OK. I ended up finishing my run a day early, so I bummed around OKC last friday before catching my flight home.

This week I was in Austin, TX. Flew in late in the afternoon on Monday, and also finished a day early so I had all day today to bum around the weird city. (this is where the title of today's blog comes from. Austin's self proclaimed motto is "Keep Austin Weird" and if you have ever been here, this is absolutely the best way to describe the city) I love Austin, it has an amazingly eclectic mix of just about everything. The fish store scene is ok, I would have expected something more from the capital of Texas, but in the few shops that are around there are a couple of hidden gems, and the food is absolutely unbelievable!

On Wednesday, I got to visit one of my favorite shops, and quite possible the most unique LFS I have ever been to. The shop is the one and onle Austin Aqua-Dome! Yep it is called DOME, because it is located in a DOME! Not a Thunderdome, or Superdome, but a freaking AQUAdome! AAD has 3 employees, Gary the owner, Terri the FW manager, and Hunter the salty fella. They are an aquatics only shop that has been under current ownership since 1998. They do fw, sw, corals, frags, dry goods, and ponds and such behind "the Dome". Here are some pics so that you, the humble reader can get the Dome experience!

This is the Austin Aqua Dome from the outside (I cheat this pic is from Jan, everything is green now!)

A shot from behind the counter looking as some of the dry goods. Behind the last rack on the right is a staircase heading...Upstairs! to the saltwater livestock area...Upstairs!

The entry to the FW catacombs from the front dry goods department.

A look from the back of the FW catacombs to the entry in the photo above.

Isnt it cool how the rows of square tanks follow the curve of the Dome?

From the absolute back of the shop. My back is on the back door with tanks along the wall to the left and right of me and rows and rows and aisle and aisles of livestock options!

Now we are upstairs looking at the SW fish holding systems. The maps on the end of each of the tanks are the locales that those particular fish hail from!

A look across the top of the SW area with corals on the left, fish on the right and the cool Sun portal at the very top of the Dome!

I always manage to pick something up from these guys. Last visit it was a nice Micromussa colony, this time is was a wicked favia colony, a leopard wrasse some columbellid snails that they had breeding like weeds. The fact that these guys are a gold dealer in Seachem's Select Dealer program is simple the icing on the....DOME!

OK week...

Oklahoma that is! Back in Oklahoma city this week. Flew in this afternoon, hit one shop, found out another was closed and stopped by one of my distributors in the area. Quality Pets is a dry goods and livestock wholesaler based out of Oklahoma City, that distributes their product to OK, KS, AR, TX, LA, and NM, which is pretty crazy. They are modeled after the big livestock distributors in Los Angeles, and have a very clean livestock floor.

Of course I managed to drop by as they were closing for the night, so I didnt get a chance to take any pics, and the coral/saltwater tanks' lights were already off for the day. I wonder if I can make time to swing back by and scope the corals out before I leave on Friday? Ill see what I can do!

On Sat. my wife and I went over to our local reef club's (MASC) monthly meeting at one of our members' homes. I of course forgot to bring my camera, but we got to marvel at a couple of 300+ gallon tanks, one a reef, the other a fish only system. Scott had some amazing livestock, and his angelfish were certainly the showpieces of his tanks.

Thats it for now. Ill try and snap some pics and have some updates for the rest of the week. Tomorrow is going to be a long day with about 7 hours of driving planned, the goal being to hit about 5 shops that are several hours south of OKC. Wish me luck!

Cheers~!

Fun at the Dallas Cowboys Stadium!

So on Wednesday, I spent most of the day in Fort Worth visiting shops, and then at 6, had to head to the new Dallas Cowboys stadium to set up our booth at the Central Pet Dallas Open House. It was awesome and took like 15 minutes, where other people were setting up shelving and gondolas, etc, and trying to fit pallets of product around their booths. I feel bad for the dog food peeps! Here's a pic of the Seachem booth:

Set up our booth, then headed back to the hotel, where I was dealing with distributor issues while also trying to watch Community, Parks & Rec, The Office, etc.

On Thursday, we headed back to the stadium for the actual open house. I was hoping to see a bunch of my shops from the Southwest market. The open house went from 9AM - 4:30PM. The stadium was unbelievable. They were giving tours of the stadium, which I unfortunately didnt get to check out because I was at the booth the whole time, but heard really cool things from the people who did go on the tours. I guess that the stadium actually has a jail inside of it, as well as a 2 lane road below the stadium that 2 semis can pass each other driving opposite of one another, not to mention the largest television ever made. I guess that now is a good time for some pics!:

Exterior of Cowboys stadium.

Shot of one of the massive girders supporting the stadium.

The giant glass front entryway.

Shot of the field after entering from the giant glass doors above.

A shot of the field and the giant TV screens above.

Shot of the TV screens against the retractable rooftop.

Close up shot of one of the 2 giant Mitsubishi HDTV's

A look at the interior side of the giant glass entryway. The top deck is sponsored by Dr. Pepper, the middle, by Ford, and the bottom by AT&T, which is where the open house was held.

A close up of the Ford deck which had about 8 cars parked along the sides, and a fountain on the floor!

Pretty amazing huh? So as options for the open house, manufacturers could pay for tours for the attendees, could pay to have Cheerleaders stop by the booth, and could even pay to have one of the Cowboys stop by the booth. Thankfully Eheim opted to pay for 2 of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, and they dropped by the Eheim booth for about 3 hours to take pictures and sign autographs for the attendees, and we were only a couple of spots away!

Tobie on the left and Meredith on the right who dropped in to sign autographs and take pics.

Ultimately it was kind of a disappointing turn out. I was hoping to see many more of my accounts than actually showed up, but did get to chat with quite a few folks. The week was more than productive as I visited 2 shops that moved up in the select dealer program, wrote some orders, and found out that Central brought in our new line of products, which can always be kind of tricky seeing as how they own Kent Marine.

I left Dallas at the crack of dawn on Friday morning, made it home to Denver at 7:35 AM, and got to decompress for a bit, which was nice. The wife and I went and saw Date Night at the movie theatre last night, which was hillarious, but was almost ruined by some jackass lady who kept laughing at unfunny parts of the movie. She was a loud talker to boot! For example, and I am not kidding in the least, this is an actual quote of what she said, "Oh My God look at them they are driving a car HAHAHAHAH!" I wanted to reach around and karate chop her in the throat to keep her quiet, but that is inappropriate in a public place such as a movie theater.

Today I have a meeting of the local reef club to attend in Loveland. I will try and take some pics and post them up later tonight or tomorrow!

Cheers~!

Long Awaited return....and with coral!

Ok well not really. I did score some sweet corals on my trip to Dallas last week. Ill have to snap a pic of the stuff when I get a sec. I scored a 6" colony of Spongebob Favia, a HUGE green with red eyes chalice colony, from Dallas North Aquarium and some badass lunar eclipse palys that were similar to some that I named the mexican red-knee tarantula spiders back in the days of Dons.

Here are some shots of DNA:

One of the 4 display tanks, this one a reef, (the hand is grabbing my chalice colony) at DNA

The African Cichlid display at DNA

An absolutely stunning Planted display tank at DNA

Another awesome reef tank display at DNA

The sectional walls dividing each of the display tanks

A look across some of the dry goods towards the display tank wall

More dry goods looking towards the front check out counter

A shot of some of the saltwater holding tanks in the fishroom

A shot of some of the freshwater holding tanks at DNA

Kept things low key over the Easter weekend. The wife and I planned to head home to the mighty Pueblo to visit family and friends, but things just werent meshing and we ended up staying home in Greeley. I hurt the crap outta my back somehow, which of course managed to get much better before leaving Monday morning to head back to Dallas, which is where I am currently. One of the distributors for my territory is having their open house at the Dallas Cowboys' new stadium. My Sales Manager and I came out early to visit shops and get set up for the show on Thursday. Monday I hit a couple of shops, most notably being Mid Cities Aquarium in between Dallas and Fort Worth. Some pics of Mid Cities:

The main display tank at Mid Cities

Female Crosshatch Trigger in the Display @ Mid Cities

Male Crosshatch in the same display

Some interesting RPE variants next to some Lunar Eclipse Palys and a nice Meteor Shower Cyphastrea in the display

A pic of some of the livestock holding tanks at Mid Cities

Today we hit a couple of other shops, placed some orders, and fought with our new computer system, which is always a treat. Tomorrow is another day of visiting shops, and later in the evening we are setting up the booth at the show. Ill be sure to take some pics and update the blog manana!

Cheers~!