[AGA-mcm] NEC Notes

[Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>]

Well, I've been back a few hours, and the 9.5 hours of taped video are 
transferring to the computer (the 11 hours of hard drive video is already 
there).  Jotting down some notes that might be fleshable into an article, 
before I forget it all.  [it's too scattered to be an article in this 
form]

Ghazanfar did the same excellent caliber talk that he gave in Seattle 
(which you can download for free via bittorrent at 
http://www.gsas.org/torrents/ghazanfar.torrent ).  I was actually a little 
bummed that he didn't get a bigger audience, especially since we paid for 
all/some of his talk.  The folks that were there seemed to enjoy it, 
though not quite with the frenzy I saw in Seattle.  I suppose it's that 
2PM Friday thing.  Karen suggested we invite him to AGA 2010, and I 
completely agree.

I took a peek at Bailin's bitchen nano aquascape and the usual 
self-service AGA booth in the vendor room.  Interestingly, they've moved 
their vendor room to be right next to the talks, kinda like we do with our 
conventions.  I think it's better that way.

OK, so after Ghazanfar's talk it was Wolfgang Staeck, who is one of Kathy 
& my heroes, co-author of our first well-worn cichlid books: the Tetra 
'apisto book' and 'Westie' book; at one point, the latter was all that was 
available in the hobby to read about the many species Pelvicachromis 
taeniatus (think pre-Aqualog).  Of course, he talked about totally 
different subjects this weekend, Characins and Tropheus.  Very nice guy, 
very pleased to be speaking in the US for the first time ever.

I missed Bruce Turner's talk on livebearers in the other room, because I 
sat with Bailin bagging and labeling our plants for the Friday-night 
All-Plant Auction.  I schlepped a few ziplock bags of stuff out of my 
tanks and since they weigh nothing, I figured, what the heck, maybe make 
back some of the money I spent on plane fare and videotapes.  The 100 or 
so lots went for good money.  Doug Patak and the other auctioneer were not 
plant nuts, so Ghazanfar and Bailin were conscripted to describe the bags 
as they were auctioned.  It worked well.  I think that if this were 
perhaps a bit better publicised, especially to some of the big hobbyists 
in the area, participation could be improved next year.  My personal 
highlight of the auction was that Kathy wanted some pygmy chain sword for 
my nephew, who has been bitten by the hobby in a big way.  The stores in 
Seattle either don't have the stuff or want $6 for a single node.  I was 
happy to win the single bag of the stuff (about 10 nodes) for three bucks.

OK, but before the auction was Ole Pedersen's first talk, on CO2 
fertilization.  I'm thinking I've seen this before, either he or Troels 
did this material in San Francisco in 2006.  The red-eye plane flight was 
starting to catch up on me majorly, so I zoned out a little on the talk. 
I'll discover what it was really about as I edit it anyway.

They worked the room purposing VERY cleverly this year.  It's your typical 
hotel ballroom, in three sections.  The third section can further be 
subdivided into three 1/9 scale rooms.  So they put the vendor room in 
section 1, the screen and podium in section 2, and then section 3 was 
being continually changed.  A second "satellite" room was used for 
counter-programmed talks and to keep people out of the ballroom while they 
re-configured it.  Initially section 3 was walled-off as part plant 
auction staging area, part hospitality room.  The talks took place in the 
middle 1/3.  Then they pulled back the walls for the plant auction (2/3 
space) and the following morning's "breakfast talk" continued in the 2/3 
space.  Then they had a single talk off in the other sattelite room, and 
while this went on, they re-walled the ballroom so that the next two talks 
were in the middle 1/3 again, the right 1/3 now walled off as a lunch 
lounge.  Once again, they held a singlet talk in the satellite room, while 
the 2/3 ballroom was set up for the banquet.  The entire time, the podium 
stayed put, right under the Gen-3 LED spots I had set up.  Couldn't ask 
for more.

OK, to day 2, and this is the part I said I'd cover for TAG as Bailin and 
Scott had to leave.

First up Saturday morning: Les Kaufman gave a wide-angle view of fish 
conservation, touching on areas familiar to me, such as Lake 
Victoria the efforts of Project Piaba in South America, but also some 
unfamiliar, including reef damage and reconstruction.  As I mentioned, 
this was acually a sort-of "breakfast banquet" with awards presented 
afterwards, to make the evening banquet a little shorter.

Dr. Staeck did his second talk, this time on the genus Tropheus from Lake 
Malawi.  Cool to see it given by a different person, but this is the sort 
of thing Ad Konings has presented quite a lot at ACA conventions.  I'm so 
freaking jaded. :P

Then they went into the crazy competing sessions that NEC is infamous for. 
Stephan Tanner spoke on Loricarid nutrition in the big room (drawing a big 
big crowd), while Bruce Turner gave a killifish talk to a significantly 
smaller audience.  Walking back and forth between the talks to make sure 
everything was taping, I never got to hear either in too much detail.  But 
Tanner seemed to give a lot of good pointers in his presentation that I 
anticipate referencing as we breed our Ancistrus.

The second pitting was Rusty Wessel, famous but apparently new as an NEC 
presenter, talking about the genus Thoricthys, vs. Justin Credabel, a 
teacher and coral propagation expert.  Oddly, Justin was not the only 
person present at the convention with a big mohawk.  In fact, this is the 
first convention where I've seen a woman with both a mohawk and a baby 
stroller.  Justin's doing a lot to promote coral husbandry to high-school 
age kids though the various programs he's involved in.  It was pretty neat 
to see that.  I've seen Rusty's talk before, so again, I'll check it out 
in post.

The last main talk was Ole's second presentation - "The Algal-free Planted 
Aquarium - Is it Really Possible?"  This was something entirely different 
from anything we saw in 2006.  In fact, the whole program was Ole's 
experiements on various algae removal techniques, one (does Excel work?) 
even apparently arising from conversations at the 2006 AGA convention. 
Ole tested the effacacy of various grazers (Amano shrimp, cherry shrimp, 
SAEs, etc) directly on identical soiled tanks, ranking them, giving actual 
numbers!  He also had some nice videos of cleaning in action.  This was my 
favorite talk of the convention.

Before the banquet, we were treated to a Star Wars re-enactment troupe 
that was selling photo ops for charity.  Someone, I think maybe Jeanine, 
pointed out it's pretty cool to see another group of hobbyists who are 
just as crazy/passionate as we are.

Finally, the banquet talk was given by our own Karen Randall.  Yes, the 
fifth plant-specific event in this convention!  We saw a variant of this 
back in November at the AGA convention when Karen talked about her trip to 
Thailand in early 2008.  Since then she has become a Google Earth Geek 
(tm), noting some of the collecting spots on the first trip are connected 
to the same drainages.  She's also gone back to Thailand for a second 
time, comparing these collecting spots and digging deeper.

I breathed a big sigh of relief when my technical support time was over 
and I could hang out in the hospitality suite (1/3 banquet hall) with old 
friends (and new)... until I realized I had to be in the lobby at 7 AM 
this morning to go home.  Ah well.

So looking back: Holy crap, four plant talks at a fish convention?  Add a 
live demo, and it's nearly an AGA convention.  I wish more plant geeks had 
come.  The attendance seemed low, almost on par with an AGA.  In this 
economy and the slow trend towards Internet-ization and forum-ization of 
everything, I wonder if the days of the big fish convention are numbered. 
I've already seen two regional shows go under in the Pacific Northwest 
over the last ten years.

Anyway, good to be home.  I will edit something for Cheryl after I edit 
some of the videos!

   - Erik


-- 
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com
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