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~!