Friday Sept. 26 Meeting of my club DAAS

[TwoTankAmin]

DAAS + Danbury Area Aquarium Society. For those not Americans, that ids in Connecticut. The odd thing is the club meetings are held New York. I had a good night at th meeting on Friday Sep. 26. But first a shameless plug for the club.

.......... the Danbury Area Aquarium Society (DAAS) is a non-profit organization serving the Hudson Valley Area, Westchester, Fairfield and Litchfield Counties of New York and Connecticut. DAAS is a member of the Northeast Council of Aquarium Societies (NEC), a member of the Federation of American Aquarium Societies (FAAS), and C.A.R.E.S. preservation program. General meetings are held the 4th Friday of the month (except July & December) at Laura Sprain Memorial Cornerstone Park, 1 Fair Street in Carmel, NY. General meetings normally begin with a brief business meeting followed by a guest speaker, refreshments, door and raffle prizes and a mini-auction of live fish, plants and other hobby related items.

I managed to bring 2 bags holding 13 assassin snails, a bag of 10 Neo Caridin davidi, blue dream variant and an anubias I need to use a 10 inch wide fish bag to hold it. But the best parts are with what I managed to come home.

Firstly, th breeder from whom I was supposed t get 6 Hoplisoma at the June meeting put me off because he was unsude that they were perfectly healthy and wanted to wait and watch. He did not show at the Aug. meeting, He was there tonight and he said he had a bag of 8 of them. I said I wuld take them all and be happy with 12 andstead of 10 total. I had won a club auction for 4 of them from him earlier in the year. They were close to an inch and the price was $50 for all 8 which is $6.25/fish.

There were more bags of fish and plants tonight than I have ever seen ay a meeting for the past 5 years. A lot of huges plants. The were a few bags of fish I really wanted buy had no way to keep them now. A trio of Montezuma swordtails I would have love to have but no place to put them and they do require some care. I used to keep Montys. I bid on some keri tetras to add to my goupd in the inwall 75. But, I stopped bidding at $20 for the 6 of them which is a steal. I did not have to have them.

There were some huge java ferns and Bolbitis heudelotii. I have one of the latter but, when I was able to buy a Java Fern with over 30 leaves and the taller ones made the plant abut 15 inches tall I wanted it. I have bought plants from this seller before, he grows amazing stuff and some of it is quite large. He also bought 5 of my last few super white L236 (now part of the H. seideli complex). So, I paid the amazing sum of $10 for it. But, the thing I really wanted were the two pairs of Celestichthys margatitatus aka Celestial Pearl 'Danio' for the price of $10/pair. I have kept this species before.

I won them for the nice price of $10/pair. The meeting ran very late tonight due to all the items in the auction. I got home at about 11:45. The corys and CPDs went into the 29 gal Q tank which has a bunc of blue shrimp and assassin snails in it and a ton of plants. the entoire surface is amost covered bu the frogbit I got at the last meeting. I prut some of it into 5 different tanks and it has done the best in the 29 gal. Q. I parked the fern in the inwall 75 for the night. I am not sure where will be its permanent home.

What I sold, after the club took their cut, paid for the the fern and CPDs I got and another $3.60 in cash. I took the $3.

 

[fishorama]

What fun club meet! & you're up $3 & your club got a cut too!

My plant club only meets sporadically & I've skipped the last few. We mostly give away extra plants & no longer wanted fish. It's very different that other clubs I've been to.

Clubs are great! & I encourage everyone to check local-ish 1s. Road trips are sometimes fun & in addition to a club you can check out a new restaurant & LFS. Fish, plants & food! What's not to like?

 

[GaryE]

Just do it. Forget shoes - do cool things!

I called a local, face to face meeting after I moved here after I realized the club only existed on Facebook. Half a dozen skeptical people showed up, and we managed 4 meetings. Then a local store owner got involved, and the next year, we managed 7 of a planned 10, before we ran out of steam. The year after, we had a full season of meetings, averaging 15 to 20 attendees. People got to know each other and became interested in each others' interests - plants, shrimp, salt, fresh, fish, breeding fish, etc. We also discovered that while a wide range of personalities are into aquariums, there is a nice feeling to meeting people who don't care if the world thinks they're fishnerds, and don't find multiple tanks or a lot of curiosity too weird.

This year, we have 10 local speakers lined up with topics chosen, sponsorship from aquarium supply companies and increased involvement from 3 independent pet stores. They want to connect in. The employees of the two chain stores around here (we don't thankfully have the big US monopoly chains) are dropping by, even if corporate doesn't allow store support for local things. The locally owned stores see us as supportive, and want to support in turn - we're negotiating discount days with our membership cards.

The local reptile crew recently held a face to face meeting, and say they want to try a quarterly schedule. We are 50 minutes away and one hour fifteen away from two cities the size of ours (not big), and people have started driving to our meetings. We had 28 at our last monthly get together, and 5 were from out of town. Winter can be a travel issue here, and they're talking about making their own versions to create a local network. I hope they can do it.

There are only 3 of us involved from that first meeting in my living room. We've attracted a good crew of active members, and have an active executive of five people running things. We have every strike against us. Our city is small. We are off the beaten track for the aquarium hobby. We're four hours each way to the nearest large aquarium store, though we have small local ones trying to grow. Our local airport won't accept fish as cargo. The nearest other aquarium club is an eight hour drive away and speaks a different language - for an English language club it's a ten hour drive. Shipping within Canada is expensive, especially to old industrial ports like where we are. It doesn't matter. You can make it happen.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

My club now as member who is about 12. One of his senior relatives (parent, grandparent or aunt) accompanies him. We have a second youngster who shows up less regularly. These two young people are treated the same way as the rest of the members. They may be young but they are, after all, fish keepers. We need more young people coming.