beefytang

Hilarious video of a jawfish and clown spitting sand at each other.

I guess they do some good. They raised my awareness about how bad it to eat animals. But now that I am a cannibal, my social life has taken a turn for the worse.

I believe in ethical treatment of animals but PETA is just so nutty they hurt their own cause. Their nudie girl ads are kind of fun though. =D

Tag you're it! Congrats Mike. I'm really grateful this was put onto you instead of me. =D

Can we kick things off by hosting at my place? I just set up a new 2.5 gallon tank.

We can all cram into our 800sft apartment and look at it. (Joking)

Totally irrelevant but I prefer entire colonies. Why screw around spending serious coin at the lfs for a frag when you can have the entire colony for just about the same price as a store bought frag? Why buy one head of frogspawn for $20 at the LFS when you can generally get a 6 head colony for $45? That just does not make sense to me. Frags are for friends. That's what the whole spirit of having a reef club sums up. Buying, swapping, trading and hanging out with each other.

Makes sense if you have a large tank. But in my case, I don't have a lot of room in my tank. Plus it's interesting to watch frags grow out. To each their own. There's a market for both scenarios.

Great looking tank. Looking forward to seeing how it progresses.

Can't wait to see your pictures!

I know you don't like making appointments but you must make one and go see Austin Aqua Farms in Taylor. All top down viewing and frags galore!

I didn't know he allowed such things. I've seen his site (I'm on his mailing list too) and loved what I saw. It's very impressive. I guess my hesitation with making appointments is that I don't have a lot of money to spend, or room in my tank if I did. I'd just be wasting his time. Someday I'd like to bump up an extra 10 gallons and at that time, might have to make an appointment, like you mentioned. Thanks.

He's got all the essential ingredients. He knows his reef. Apparently has a 400 gallon tank and a lethal octopus that would cower most mortals. He has people skills and the enthusiasm for organizing. Couldn't think of anyone more suited for the job.

Interesting thread got started here!! By the way, so much for analyzing "Beefytang's" post LOL. I can't help it but its way too funny, kind of late to be up at this time and I didn't have my java today No offense just had to point out the funny side.

-Cindy-

Caferacermike is great. I also think he would make an excellent meeting organizer. He's got my vote.

as strange as this sounds i know someone who may want a few of those little (*&%%$#*'s

weird i know but he has a use for them

If you're really serious, please PM or respond in this thread? I'm going to be removing as many as I can find in the next 24 hours and you/he can have them all. Gonna set up a pico to store them for a day or two. I hate the idea of flushing them. Thanks!

Cindy: interesting observation. In the past months I haven't had many of them but recently their numbers have grown quite a bit in my tank. As their numbers grew, so did the number of "bleached" spots on my live rock. Hrm!

I've recently notice that some of this little guys are eating the purple coraline off the glass.....leaving a white discoloration, like they only eat the purple layer.

-Cindy-

+ 1. I've got a lot of them too and my rock is getting white spots like you mentioned.

Austin isn't really big at all. Just TONS of traffic. And I wasn't kidding about the market up north being larger than Austin. There are more than 2 LSF in Arlington (I'm not even factoring in the entire metroplex). It's just that 2 were so exceptional I had to mention it. It's a numbers thing, I guess. There are more consumers, therefore more choice.

I think all the LFS should check out their competition in other cities to improve their local offerings. It's a good thing. But often, businesses become complacent or blinded with the love of their own brand that they don't notice others might be doing it better elsewhere. Or they're just in it for the money. Also, in my observations, the LFS here in town seem more focused towards freshwater, with the reef stuff as somewhat of an add-on. 100% understandable. Freshwater is so much easier to deal with. You know that reefing is a lot more complicated and involved. It takes a certain level of dedication (and crazy) to set up a reef tank. Special equipment that costs a fortune. Hard to keep some of this stuff on the shelf in a small town because of the cost. But no one should be defensive about north vs south. We benefit from competition, not complacency or inaccessibility.

At one LFS here in town I was asking about reef frags awhile back. The employee (perhaps an owner) scoffed at frags saying no one wanted them...only big colonies. To me that seemed really out of touch with the customer base. Not naming names because in spite of, I still love them and give them my money whenever possible. But sometimes I'm left wanting. I'm not alone either. Anytime anyone tries to set up a group buy, it's for these reasons.

But the stores I was referring to up north were both big on the frag scene. One in particular actually had frag tanks low enough that you could view them from above (aka a real frag tank). Haven't seen that in Austin yet, except at Deep Blue (RIP). Lots of Chalice, Acans, Zoas, etc I rarely see here. They were REALLY into it. Also, you don't have to make a reservation to go into these stores. They keep regular hours, open at least 6 days a week. PM me and I'll give you directions and you can go see for yourself. You'll be blown away. And in turn, send me the names/locations of all the reef stores you mentioned here in town, Austin proper. I love going to a LFS! I've been to AquaDome, Aquatek, Gallery of Pets, and RCA. So if you say there are 12 in Austin, then there are 8 I haven't been to.

Not interested in coordinating meetings at all. I do my part on ARC in other ways. And I give away a lot of free frags through ARC. Thankfully some reciprocate, others do not. Just playing devil's advocate on the meetings. Sometimes you can't get a ball rolling without making some noise. I mean come on. We don't have a meeting in eons and all of a sudden we're going to have a tour that one could argue consists of multiple meetings in a single day? When it rains it pours, eh?

FYI I've lived in Austin, left Austin, came back. Thinking about leaving again. It isn't what it used to be. There isn't a lot to do here sometimes. Costs a lot. Traffic stinks. Trying to remember why I moved back. But you certainly remind me why I left the first time. That good ol' Austin is king attitude. Ugh. ;-)

Beefy,

While I appreciate your opinions, I think you're being pretty darn harsh.

I like small tanks, myself. But you have to think of the experience a large group of people would have trying to cram around a little tank in a person's home. It's like inviting a bunch of people over to watch a movie at youtube on a little computer screen. That's the nicest way I think I can express how I perceive the idea. I hope it isn't too harsh. I don't want to hurt your feelings. =D

This tank never fails to impress me. Nice work with your new camera, too.

Tours would be tough, especially since people on this board are scattered from as far north as Temple, and south past Buda/Kyle. My suggestion for a tank tour would be to break it apart into a specific region (say n. austin) to contain the driving for people. I have done pond tours in the past, and it gets tiring tracking through both north and south austin areas.

True. Two of the nicest tanks I've seen from ARC'ers aren't even in Austin. Mike Delgato in Salado and the Mannings in Leander. At the very least, if a tour never happens, maybe someone will start a full tank shot thread soon.

Yeah tanks fresh out of a cycle or under 100 gallons seems a little underwhelming for a group tour. Maybe people like looking at bare live rock in small confines....OMG HEY LOOK A STOMATELLA! =)

The really interesting tanks seem to be large, well aged and encrusted. Didn't know Marc's tour included the club. I didn't see any group shots in his article or anything so it gave the appearance of one-on-one visits. What happened to Headless? Did he enroll in reeferholics anonymous?

That's where reef networking comes in handy. Make a friend and get a personal invite. Marc Levinson did a tour here and made an interesting article of it on his site.

http://melevsreef.com/pics/07/09/austin_tank_tour.html

I love our LFS here in Austin. You make do with what you have. But I don't think they are as much on top of reefing trends as they are up north. I'm not much of a customer anyway with a puny 20 gallon tank. But my point, and not well-articulated earlier, is that Austin is a REALLY small market. And the saltwater fish/reef market is especially small here. We don't even have a city aquarium and we're the capital of Texas. It's kind of a bummer.

Getting together at people's houses for a meeting? I think it's a bad idea. All it takes is for one unfortunate incident and a cloud could hover around the "club". For example, someone steals something and next thing you know, everyone is suspect. Or someone gets mauled by a dog. Any number of things could go wrong. Plus, if you're going to have a meeting at someone's house, there better be a REALLY good tank involved or it'll be boring. I guess if people are willing to take a risk, it's their right. To each their own. If people want to fork off and do their own thing, more power to them. But I question whether doing such things under ARC would be a liability for Andrew. Personally, I like visiting people to view their tanks one on one. Most houses aren't all that great for big crowds. Even if you have a 100+ gallon tank, with 30-50 or more people it's impossible to view with any degree of comfort.

What might be ideal is a frag swap at a community center but I'm sure something like that has it's own unique hurdles.

Supposedly we had a new meeting organizer assigned back in October. But apathy runs deep in Austin and nothing ever came of it. Probably best not to even bother with meetings. It's too small of a town with nothing going on really. I think meetings like the one at Mike's office is about as good as it gets, due to ample parking space etc. No dogs to deal with or tiny tanks.

All the serious reefing seems to be going on up north or perhaps near the coast. The LFS are far more serious than they are here. In places like Arlington you have two LFS within a few miles of each other with massive 500 gallon tanks and corals etc you rarely find available here. In Dallas you have the World aquarium which puts anything Austin has to offer to utter shame. Not trying to be a downer or anything. That's just the way it is.

nudis usual look like what they eat and it looks alot like a white sponge. I would guess that would be its food source BUT that is just a guess. If that is the case your a lucky. I too have battled the zoa nudis and remember the pain I went through. Once I move my big tank to AUstin I am going to set up a QT tank as well

I have wanted to set up a pico for some colorful nudis but the more research I do on them the more I think it will not work. The only nudis that I know that people are able to keep and reproduce are the Berghia and that only works if you have plenty of aptisia to feed them.

John

You're right about the pico. As tempting as it is, I'm sure it's a bad idea for a lot of reasons. I think I should be content with just looking at photographs of them on the internet. Def would like to have a Berghia or two for aptasia, though. Finding them in Austin is probably going to be a challenge though.

!0 seconds in...bailed. Can't deal with the backstreet boys. ;-D

I started thinking about this and man...you're really clever. I bet your wife was all like "I wear the pants around here. You gonna stop playing with that goldfish tank, we gonna move and you gonna be my baby daddy." And then you go and flip it on her all sly. You're like "I'm gonna keep my crib, my 40oz, my game and then some." And booyah. FOWLR tank AND a killer nano. Skills bro. Props.