February 2018 Stylaster Frag Demo Pics

[badxgillen]

As usual PNWMAS had an outstanding monthly meeting. Just In case you were not there or aware, this month one of our old school members that you all know as Stylaster opened up his home for the February 2018 gathering. Not only did he host the meet but he also put on a coral fragging demonstration for the club of two very different corals, a chalice and an acropora. But before I dive into the demo we should take a look at things from a proper order.

Due to the distance and a couple small accidents causing traffic Miles and I were a tad late to the party, but its cool. The demo had yet to begin, people were just getting social,

raffle tickets were getting sold,

and there was plenty of shrimp on the platters for me to "sample".

  I have to give some credit to the hosts offerings and all who brought a food item,  the appetizers put out were very tasty and much appreciated. So Yummy.

After making some quick greetings I made my way around to snap some pictures of Stylaster's main tank, and let me tell you, shes a beauty thats for sure.

Such nice dimensions and such clear acrylic, not sure how he keeps all that coraline algae at bay without scratching it all these years but he does and it is crisp! 

The dimensions make it necessary to take this shot in at least 3 parts. Each side being just as in depth and diverse as the other.

These fish are really lucky to have made it into Roy's tank, they got it made in there.

Once I got a number of pics of the display I made a dash to the garage...That is were the reefers were aggregating at, and I know why. This thing is a straight operation!

Pacific Corals Is In The HOUSE!!!

Actually I am in the house of Pacific Corals but you know, I just wanted to raise the roof on this one.

Who wants some Corals!? Roy has got a Plethera hiding out in his frag tanks, a straight treasure trove i'm tellin ya.

Better get those bone cutters out man, I am gonna need my Acro fix after seeing these colors pop.But I suppose thats enough of the marine systems for now, I will move onto some of the Human members who attended...Sorry Princeton and Max.

OH SHOOT!!! The Frag Demo is about to begin.

Gather round to see what Roy has in store for us. The club funded the purchase of two colonies for the meet with everyone attending getting one of each coral cut during the demonstration. How Freaking Cool is That!? Great idea Roy!

Here are the pieces half cut, getting ready for their turn under the saw for division amongst the club. An interesting Chalice here with UFO ringed eyes And...

This Crazy green tabling Acropora, I swear I saw something very similar at The Premium Aquarium a couple weeks ago. Good Stuff right here.

Love this shot. Both of these guys are veterans to the reef hobby but Roy, right, being the owner of Pacific Corals was leading the demo for us today. And Roy is going to show us how its done!

For the chalice he used an Inland diamond bladed band saw to make short work of the plating coral. Just so oyu know Inlands do not normally have that nifty light unit attached tot he side, that is Roy's idea...That I am going to use. Love the little improvements and tricks each ingenuitive reefer has to develop.

You cannot tell by the picture but the band saw allows for very precise cuts even curved slices are able to be made. Something you can see in this picture though is to the bottom right is a HUGE thing of super glue. So many frags..

The acropora got its turn in the spotlight as well, Roy payed a special amount of attention here as some of the branches overlap making it harder to get the proper cuts.

Right after the Chop! The fresh frags go into a bit of tank water with a few drops of Lugols Iodine in it, this helps prevent infection to the damaged tissue.

These Bad Boys are now ready to be glued down or simply placed in the aquarium now to heal up. The whole process is actually rather quick, especially on a band saw.

As usual it was super fun getting to see many familiar faces and a couple new ones from the North.

The Clark here, he is kinda like super man, though he won't admit it. He is one of our IT Tech guys along with the Chief. He keeps the forum purring like a kitten, whenever there is trouble Clark and Chief are on the case. Good seeing you man, I am always glad to see you at a meeting. You always have some good ideas about reefer related equipment and have been a generous guy all around. Weather is warming up again so maybe we can work something out again ship wise. Oh, and I will be moving some GI Joes up in the tank for some higher PAR...Gonna BLAST em and see if I can get the effects you were talking about.

OptimusPrime, I didn't know you were getting into SPS. I could have brought you some frags just to try out in your tank. If you ever have too much problem with some of your zoas trying to mess with your acro base feed em a little bit of kalkwasser paste and they will go away right quick. In coral wars someone always loses, it is neveer fun but sometimes you have to pick a side. I will also see about getting you a frag of the Chongs Bongs and something else different. Looking forward to seeing your tank in the near future man.

Got to formally meet Lewisfisherman, left under the 460 nanometer LEDs. Hope you like the frags I brought over, the zoas are bright and beautiful and so is the yuma...But be careful, as that Ricordea will get pretty good size when it is happy and will win many coral to coral confrontations. Hit me up if you need a few more flavors at some point yeah.

Gumby on the right is another Outstanding member who lends a helping hand when he can in addition to doing a bit of behind the scenes work for the club here and there, he actually helped land the Fragfest Venue for us...What a guy. He is another person who also has some pretty intense corals in his system. With his connects in Washington it is not uncommon for Gumby to have something special on his frag rack.

Here we have Karen, our head of the Tanks For Teachers program and a great member of our PNWMAS BOD. We really didn't get to chat much this time around Karen, sorry about that.Don't forget though, if you want a coral or two for a TFT tank give me a shout out and I will see if I can get something your way. I always have something I can trim back or rehome. And apologies on the photo, I had very few pictures of her this time around so I apologize about the slight blur. Apparently I need to take more pictures, who would have guessed?

Now I know this is a saltwater reefer forum here but I thought that this picture of FlashyFins and the Carissa with their canine kin was too cool to not post up. They were both such well behaved animals...Cherany on the other hand!.. Just kidding, I kid, I kid. FlashyFins , left, does a great job sitting on our PNWMAS Board Of Directors making great use of her abilities in organization and enthusiasm. She did much of the coordination with Roy to make this meeting a success.Thank you Cherany, and thank you Roy and Carissa. 

Well, instead of being redundant with some of the pictures taken I decide that some of the raffle photos could serve as some "profile" shots as well. 

We had an impressive number of sponsor gift certificates to be had, as well as some killer door prizes given out by Pacific Corals. Upscales!, Barrier Reef!, Pacific Corals!, Seahorse Aquarium!, and some of my favortie frozen foods Rod's fish food!

Some of the ORA posters were Great! I scored one for myself but there were so many kinds it was a hard decision on which one to choose. Now I gotta collect a few more and get them laminated, they need to be in a fish room or by an aquarium.

 A funny pic here of AlbertaReef far right, enthused about his raffle win! You can practically hear him sayin, YES!!! Middle is The Clark, and Far left is Stylaster. Look at that blue background glow, like our own kind of Party lighting for a reefer atmosphere.

MilesMiles won in the ORA drawing and snagged this Sweet coral poster, way to go Miles! This is another member of our PNWMASS officers always trying to do his part for the team, good man. 

What a good looking bunch right here. Danlu and family made it out to the meeting, as you can see Daniel took home the ORA Tridacnid clam poster. And you can also see that his son doesn't need no regular blue, he wants a nice black and gold striped Maxima. He knows whats up. Always fun to watch the next gen reefers grow up.

Before I say thank you I have to apologize on not getting everyone picture in here, as well as not having all the raffle shots. I was having some technical difficulties with my camera battery dying and am now ordering a brand new one, I think the existing one is no longer holding a charge. Who knows how many photos I have taken with it though so it is what it is. To those I did not have in here, please forgive me, maybe Cherany or someone else had a few pictures to share with us that will have a different set of faces in it or another vantage point.

And at last I must say a BIG Thank You to all those who made this possible. Thank you to the Officers of PNWMAS and to the Board Of Directors for keeping this whole Marine Aquarium Society thing running, it is no easy task that no one person could do. All of your selfless participation means everything to the club. So Keep up the good work!

And a BIG Thank You t the club members to whom without there would be no club at all, thank you all for being who you are, considerate, conscientious and thoughtful reefers. Thats what we all try and promote here.

Thank you to all that is PNWMAS!

 

 

 

[Emerald525]

Thanks again Bert! I’m really sad to have missed this meeting but it looks like you had a great turnout! Thanks again Roy for hosting and Sean for stopping and getting the raffle prizes from me !  We have a great group of members and board and looked like everyone had a smile on their face !

[albertareef]

Awesome as always Bert!  I should have known you would get a pick of my raffle celebration... meant I could bring home a piece of Roy's sweet "Exquisite" acro so yeah, I got a little excited.  Thanks again to Roy for hosting and organizing the informative frag demo and thanks to the club as well for providing the colonies that ended up going home with all the attendees as frags - that was a cool idea.  It was great to spend some more time with some of our Northern contingent who can't always make the trek south for meetings.

[TheClark]

Cannot say enough how much we all appreciate you @badxgillen. 

Generous guy in every way with frags.  Combined with years and years of documented meetings. 

It was really nice to have the opportunity to make a meeting and geek out reef-style.

Thanks also to the board, Roy and everyone else who helped out including but not limited to @albertareef and @Flashy Fins and @kknight.

 

 

[Gumby]

Thanks for hosting Roy. Acros were amazing as ever. 

[Flashy Fins]

I love seeing photos from our meetings; it feels like we're have the fun all over again! I took a few pictures at this one, as well. Bert is such a dedicated documenter, he rarely ends in the pics, so I made sure to remedy that as soon as he walked in the door!

Our club VP and overall terrific guy, badxgillen joined me in adding a splash of color to the group! Groovy tie dye, dude.

 

Is it just me, or is Sean giving a look of, "WHY would you take my photo?!" Well, I did, and I'm posting it here! Gotcha! His lovely wife Darcy put up with our club shenanigans rather well.

 

Lewisfisherman & theclark, labeling themselves and eyeing the tasty selection of appetizers.

 

Miles here, doing a bit of socializing with dog and baby, reefers by association.

 

Our gracious host, Stylaster, standing by to control the amount of drool falling into his frag tank as members came through to eye up the goods.

Dodge & Jeremy, checking out the display tank of wonder: 312 gallons of colors and textures galore!

 

How does the lemonpeel hybrid do with all these corals?

Well, there's your answer! Black Lemon didn't wait for Roy to tell his business to anyone; he just showed us! Apparently, this is the only fish in the tank who cannot be tricked into a trap. The tangs will be feasting away and having a grand time in it, while the angel looks on all-knowing and wisely stays out. Who can blame him for wanting to leave such a rich buffet? He probably has it better in this tank than he did on the reef in the wild!

Look at those beggars! Always at the front of the tank wanting more food, despite being incredibly well fed.

Vlamingi enjoying a bit of personal attention from his human. Ahhh, yeah, that's the spot! Scratch right there!

Impossible to view without a sense of calm washing over. At least until the envy sets in!

 

Time for some fragging! I joked the loser of the raffle would get this frag of putty being sawed off, but there ended up being enough of each coral that everyone went home with a frag of each! (Except for Beth, who left without taking hers. If you're reading this, let us know! She couldn't remember her username at the meeting, so we don't know who to contact.)

 

Intense concentration from these guys!

 

If you enjoy playing Where's Waldo?, you can play Where's Bert? and Where's Karen? in this photo!

 

Old Man Max checking in on how the fragging demo is going. He's thinking of starting a tank now that he's reached retirement age.

 

Miles getting in a bit of bonding time with my 14-year-old fur monster. Big thanks to Roy for welcoming Princeton to the party!

 

Yours truly, happy to have spent the afternoon with fine friends of the reef keeping variety! See you at the next one!

[albertareef]

Thanks for adding your pics Cherany.  Glad to see Bert actually get to show off his tie dye!  Still can't compete for overall color impact though 

[Flashy Fins]

Just now, albertareef said:

Thanks for adding your pics Cherany.  Glad to see Bert actually get to show off his tie dye!  Still can't compete for overall color impact though 

He'd have to dye his hair for that!  But I welcome anyone who wishes to share the rainbow hair stage with me.

[stylaster]

Thank you for the great writeup you guys!   Meeting was a blast and glad to see so many of you that made the drive up.  I look forward to next years meeting

[Optimusprime3605]

Great write up, Bert, as usual. You really take great candid pics of everyone. Yes,@badxgillen, I'm starting to dabble into sps a bit more and unfortunately, my pockets aren't too happy, haha.
It sure was awesome to see familiar faces and some new faces, as well. Roy, thank you for hosting the meeting and inviting us into your home. Your tank is looking great, as always!
The fragging demo was very informative, for sure. Roy made fragging look so easy. Time to aquire an Inland or Gryphon bandsaw, lol.
Cherany, awesome pics, as well! Always great to have you attend the meetings, you light up the room with your vibrant colors.

Once again, thank you, Roy for the great assortment of sps frags I acquired from you. My pockets will recover, eventually [emoji23]. Also, thank you, PNWMAS, for the freebie frags, as well.
See you all at the next one!

Sent from my man cave while drinking Coors light! [emoji481]