Rico

I think the votes are in, Mid-Columbia Saltwater Aquarium Club really kicked it a couple of notches this year. Here is a thread with a lot of pictures and comments from the event, enjoy http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23414&page=3 Also I will have a gallery up on the MCMAC page in a few days. I am still chasing down pictures to put up. Brandy, I was looking forward to meeting you and never did catch up. I hope I will see you at the coral farmers market in 2 weeks. Here is a suggestion to think about. What if we rotated the conference each year between the 3 major clubs in the northwest, Portland, Seattle and the Tri-Ciites. That way everyone is able to work together and make the event even better. :-) Rico

Friday Night 7/20, 6pm social and club hosted dinner at Rick & Barbie's home. Propagation workshop by Kevin Pockell from Aquatic Dreams. Call (509) 521-1761 for information / directions if needed. Saturday morning 8:30 am, breakfast at the Clarion Hotel. 9:30 am, the Tank Tour caravan departs from the Clarion. Maps with tour guide phone numbers and tank bios will be distributed at breakfast. 1pm, conclude the tank tour and break for lunch. 2pm, presentation by Sanjay Joshi on aquarium lighting at the Battelle auditorium. 3:30pm, presentation by Mike Paletta on aquarium design at the Battelle auditorium. 5pm, return to the Clarion hotel for evening activities to include, dinner with roasted turkey and ham. Raffle of vendor donated items, silent auction of corals, clams & nano tank, socializing with no host bar. Rico

I'm sorry to hear that. Why don't you try again in the morning. If you have a problem, call me (509) 521-1761 and I will make sure you get in. It will be much nicer staying at the conference hotel since we start there for breakfast at 8:30 Sat morning, and it will likely go to at least midnight on Sat night. Edit... Just got off the phone with the hotel, they have 6 rooms still allocated to the conference. One is poolside, with kings, queens available. Make sure to specify the Mid-Columbia Marine Aquarium Conference. At first I got the same story until I mentioned the conference and he found it listed as "The Fish Club" LOL, had him change it. http://www.choicehotels.com/ires/en-us/html/HotelInfo?hotel=WA157&promo=gglocal Rick

I just checked with the Clarion and the rooms are going fast. There are 10 rooms left but only 3 are held until the 15th. The $79 rate is still good, normal rate is $105. If you are thinking about going, better get your room reserved ASAP Rico

I just checked with the Clarion and the rooms are going fast. There are 10 rooms left but only 3 are held until the 15th. The $79 rate is still good, normal rate is $105. If you are thinking about going, better get your room reserved ASAP Rico

Brandy, I Forgot to mention that you really should book your hotel at the conference hotel. We have a block of rooms reserved at a reduced rate of $79. I believe they will release the block in the next few days. And with the Johova Witness conference that is in town, they will snag all available rooms not reserved. Also we now have pictures up in the gallery from the last MCMAC with Anthony Calfo. www.midcolumbiasaltwater.com/mcmac Rico

Brandy thank you, So far we have about 80 people with tickets and I know of several more that are planning to attend but are waiting till the last minute. This should be a great time! I think we will beat the last conference record of 17 fully loaded cars/trucks in the Tank Tour. Might have to charter a bus :-) Looking forward to meeting you. Rico

Steve, you can buy tickets at the door. the Friday event will be at my home (2 blocks from the Clarion). I will send you directions. One thing you should know, accommodations may be tight due to another convention in town. we have a block of rooms reserved at a special rate for the conference at the Clarion. Rico

Brandy, Time is running out on the Deal.... You have until midnight on the 4th of July to take advantage of the 5 free raffle tickets for the MCMAC event. Our club will have a booth at the Coral Farmers Market, so we will be supporting the Portland area. Do we have any PNWMAS members that are going to make the trip to Richland in July? We are getting close and have to let the caterers know what the expected head count is for the Saturday night dinner. Thanks Rico

This is your last chance to get five free raffle tickets when you purchase your ticket for the Mid-Columbia Marine Aquarium Conference, July 20th and July 21st. Tickets must be purchased by midnight (PST) on July 4, 2007 to qualify for the free tickets. Some of the items to be raffled are: Sequence Pump PFO Metal Halide Lighting System SeaChem RO/DI Water Purifiers Euroreef Protein Skimmer Tunze Streams 29 Gallon Acrylic Tank Additives from Brightwell Aquatics Numerous Gift Certificates . . . and more Click here to purchase tickets for the best MCMAC ever! www.midcolumbiasaltwater.com/mcmac (If you have already purchased your ticket, you may pick up your free raffle tickets at the Saturday night event at the Clarion) Also . . . We are getting embroidered shirts made up for the conference. We need all pre-orders by next Sunday, July 8th (we'll collect the money at the conference). We'll have a very limited number of shirts to sell for those who decide not to pre-order. We've decided on the following: Women's tank top, light grey or yellow, $18 Women's v-neck or scoop neck short sleeve shirt, aqua or pink, $18 Men's or Women's Polo, various colors available (email us for colors), $28 T-shirts, ash, stonewashed blue, or stonewashed green, $15 You can place a pre-order by sending an email with your selection. The colors above aren't all that's available, so go ahead and ask if you want something different - just remember that we need all the details for the final order by next Sunday. Light colors will work best with the logo, since it has black letters.

Unfortunately they recently expired due to a close encounter with a closed loop suction screen and could not get away. I have since completely changed the closed loop suction to now incorporate 12" of perforated 2" pipe to reduce the suction velocity. They had been in the tank over a year and a half. Rico

Ok, Here are a few pics And here is the web site (2 pages) showing the construction of the 240. http://webpages.charter.net/rberg/ Rico

Update on more donations. Steve Tyree has just agreed to provide 4 or 5 very nice frags from "Coral Farmers Market". One will be the highly sought after "Sunset Montipora". These will be in our silent auction, so everyone will have a chance to get these great corals. The good stuff keeps getting better. Rick www.midcolumbiasaltwater.com/mcmac

Deal (clap) Rico

I designed my sump to allow maximum water flow with minimum bubbles, and to be easy to maintain. I found that filter socks require more effort to maintain than just pulling out filter floss and throwing it in the garbage and then dropping in a new piece of filter floss. It takes me about 30 seconds to change my filter. And if the tank is stirred up I can double the floss material for a quicker polish. The main point is to show how you can setup flow through a sump to use filter floss (quilt batting) to easily keep your tank clean. Sump Design Notes To minimize noise and bubbles I made 2 vertical saw cuts up the length of the pipe. This allows air to escape without producing gurgling bubbles. By forcing the water from the tank to flow over the top of baffle #1 before the filter floss, a large amount of the bubbles are eliminated. The filter floss is just 10 ounce quilt batting purchased from the local fabric store. Very cheap. I can buy a full roll for about $45 and it lasts close to 2 years. The flow of the water will normally keep the filter floss in place, however you may want to put another layer of plastic grate on top as air bubbles can collect under the floss and if you stop the flow, it will rise. Forcing the water to flow under baffle #2 and then over baffle #3 any remaining air bubbles will be forced to the surface of the water. Baffle #2 is intentionally not allowed to go to the top of the sump. This provides a fail safe path for the water if the filter floss material become clogged. The bubble trap baffle covers the pump intake as it tends to create a vortex and suck from the surface. This is a piece of acryic that is siliconed inplace on all sides with a 1" gap from the bottom of the sump to the edge on one side only. This forces all water to the pump to be drawn from the bottom of the sump and stops the vortex problem. I have a 240 main tank with 2 45 gallon refugiums and can easily run 3000 gph through this sump without getting bubbles. Feel free to ask if you have any other questions. Ricol

I went away from the socks as I found that the cleaning process was a hassle. I designed my sump to flow the incoming water over an 18" x 8" filter floss pad. The flow of the water keeps the pad in place and it rests on top of the plastic egg crate material commonly used. For floss material I go to the fabric store and buy a full roll of 10oz quilt batting. This costs about $45 and lasts about 1 to 2 years. About once every 3 months or so I cut out a bunch of pads and store them away. When I have to change filter pads it takes less than a minute to pull out the dirty pad and drop in a new clean pad. I then throw away the old pad and I am done. I typically change the pad once a week, and if I am stirring up the detritus, I'll double up the pads for a quicker polish job on the water. If anyone is interested I can sketch up the design. Rico

Brandy, The conference is located in Richland, WA. We are about a 3 hr drive from Portland. We have a block of rooms reserved at reduced rate of 79.95/night at the hotel where the conference is being held, The Clarion Hotel and Conference Center, Richland WA. (509) 946-4121. Friday night, July 20th, will be at our home and is a dinner & social event visiting with our speakers Mike Paletta and Sanjay Joshi as well as other salt water enthusiasts from all over the northwest. We will also put on a coral propagation workshop on SPS, LPS, Softies and Anemones, with the resulting frags to be given away. Saturday morning breakfast at the Clarion, then a 4.5 hr tour of the local tanks. Next is the presentations by Sanjay & Mike at 2pm till 5pm. Then we have a catered dinner at the Clarion with all the donated items to be given away in raffles and a silent auction for some very nice corals and clams that we are brining in. This will go as late as we want, last time it was about 2 am before the lights were turned off. This has been a great event in the past and this year we are trying to make it even better. This link has information about raffle prizes... http://www.pnwmas.org/forums/showthread.php?t=4444 Hope to see you there Rick www.midcolumbiasaltwater.com/mcmac BTW, Coral Farmers Ticket has been purchased. :-)

Brandy, I have a deal for you :-) I will buy a ticket for the Coral Farmers Market and hope you buy one for MCMAC 07 :-) www.midcolumbiasaltwater.com/mcmac Can I buy a ticket online? We have a paypal button on our web page. Thanks Rick Berg

More information on donated items at the event... Two cases (36 bottles per case) of Brightwell Aquatics products http://www.brightwellaquaticlabs.com Sea Chem just donated 2 R/O - D/I units and some additives **************************************************************** I opened up the package of donations from PSAS. What an awesome club! PSAS donated the following... $50 gift certificate from Shark Reef. $25 gift certificate from Ocean Reef Aquatics $50 gift certificate from Ocean Reef Aquatics $25 gift certificate from Reef Mystique 2 tubes of IC-GEL reef glue. Thank you PSAS for helping to make MCMAC 07 even better. **************************************************************** Hello all, This is going to be a great event! I would highly recommend attending. Here is a list of what I've gathered together so far. (16) tubes of IC-Gel super glue. (9) 50 gallon salt mix of Instant Ocean. (2) $25 gift certificates for Aquatic Dreams. (4) Digital Thermometers. (3) 90 gallon salt mix Oceanic. (6) Large packs of Ocean Nutrition dried seaweed. I will also be giving the corals away that I frag on Friday night. I will be fragging a soft coral, LPS, and SPS coral. Hope to see you there, Kevin Pockell, Aquatic Dreams, Spokane WA. **************************************************************** We also have a brand new 29 gallon acrylic tank, with built in overflow. Rick

I believe the tanks are about 7 gallons each, the sump holds another 2.5 gallons and the auto water top off reservoir holds about 1.5 gallons. I installing 70 watt AstraLux 14k HQI lamps. We just received several shipments of great stuff from our sponsors. Here is a forum post from Reef Frontiers http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?p=298551&posted=1#post298551 Just wanted to let you all know that if you buy your tickets to the MCMAC 2007 by July 4th we are tossing in 5 free raffle tickets. So far we have vendors providing the following for raffle items. Reef flow - Sequence Pump Euro Reef - Skimmer IAP - Sump PFO - Metal Halide Lighting System Tunze - Nano Stream, Nano Chem, Carbophos Brightwell Aquatics - Chemicals Sea Chem - Salt or test kits Anthony Calfo - Autographed posters PSAS - Gift Certificate Aquatic Dreams - Frags, Glue, Salt and a bunch more ELOS - Aquatic Chemicals Mid-Columbia Saltwater Aquarium Club - Custom Nano We will also have custom event shirts available. T's for the men, V-neck and Tanks for the ladies. Last time they sold out quickly, so if you are interested let us know. This is the 3rd time for this event and will be even better than before. Sanjay Joshi and Mike Palleta will be our guest speakers. This is a great bargain. The conference includes 2 dinners, local tank tour, coral propagation workshop, and presentations by 2 very highly recognized and accomplished experts in our great hobby. http://midcolumbiasaltwater.com/mcmac Rick Berg (509) 521-1761

Conference goodies I just wanted to share with you the Great Nano tanks that we have for this year's conference. We have two, one is made of natural purple heartwood, the other is black walnut. They have built in auto topoff systems so the salinity in the nano does not fluctuate so much. Great sump design with carbon and media filtration, 100 watt heater, ICE Probe chillers and 70 watt HQI MH lighting. They are currently for sale as fund raisers for the club, however if they do not sell we will auction one and raffle the other. These were custom built by our club members. Here are a few pictures... These are awesome and look great on a desk. Rick Berg