OVAS AQUAMANIA WEEKEND – Ottawa, Ontario – March 23 – 24, 2013

AquaMania-Banner

OVAS AQUAMANIA WEEKEND – Ottawa, Ontario – March 23 – 24, 2013

DSC_8871-OVAS-t-shirt

DAY 1 – Well it is now Saturday and I’m at the Ottawa Valley Aquarium Society’s Aquamania weekend event. (LOCATION: Best Western Hotel and Conference Centre, 1876 Robertson Road, Bells Corners, Ottawa, Ontario).  Today has a full slate of interesting speakers and tomorrow is the annual GIANT AUCTION. Our previous AQUAMANIA blog post provides a full schedule for today’s speakers but, just in case, here it is again. The majority of speakers will be focusing on the Freshwater aspects of the aquarium world but the last speaker of the day can certainly talk SALT.

What’s the schedule?
 

Saturday, March 23

Speakers
10:00 a.m.
Dr. Hernán López-Fernández – “Fish collection in South America”
Despite being a bit early on a Saturday morning :-), the speaker was present and he enjoyed telling the audience about his many hours of struggling through some pretty rough, muddy, dirty conditions in search of some rather interesting South American fish. In the darkened room, photography was pretty difficult but that only bothered the photographer.
DSC_8866-Uraguay
11:00 a.m.
Dr. Stephan Tanner – “Techniques for breeding egg layers”
Dr. Tanner got lost somewhere in the USA with travel complications and Zenin filled in admirably with and interesting presentation on one of his favorite class of fishes – the Loaches.
DSC_8896-Loaches-by-Zenin
DSC_8895-Loaches
1:00 p.m. Les Wilson – “Food Nutrition: from the basics to the future”
Food nutrition seemed like a good topic for a lunch time speaker but I headed off to the restaurant to fulfil some of my own nutrition needs.
2:00 p.m.
Jason Baliban – “The Art of Aquascaping”
At lunch we heard that the “Rule of Thirds” might apply to the aquarium aquascaping “art” but I was off buying a bag of spiral val from Heinz before heading home to post these photos before returning for Jamie’s SW presentation.
3:00 p.m.
Dr. Stephan Tanner – “Pleco nutrition”
4:00p.m.
Jamie Baquero – “Sustainability of the marine hobby trade”
Exhibit and Sales Room
10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Confirmed exhibits: Angel Fins, Cobalt, CAD Lights, John’s Fish Foods, Ponds and Aquaria, Seachem, and Zoo Med.
Definitely lots to see in the vendor exhibit room.  The following images will provide some idea of what it was like in that room.
DSC_8867-Aquamania
The folks form Big Al’s have a midnight madness sale on tonight to coincide with the Aquamania event, and for those who were present at Aquamania, you might understand why I thought it might be interesting to caption this shot “Watching the coral grow”. The humour will be lost on anyone who didn’t see the display :-).
DSC_8900-Aquamania
DSC_8916-OVAS-merchant-disp
The folks at Big Al’s weren’t the only ones with some pretty brightly colored items on display. Some of the vendors had set up equally interesting tanks ranging from the tanks of beautiful angels to the racks of coral frags.  There were also sufficient dry goods to satisfy most interests.
DSC_8873-Aquamania
DSC_8876-Aquamania
DSC_8878-Aquamania
DSC_8877-Angelfish
DSC_8882-Aquamania
DSC_8905-plate-anenome
DSC_8907-coral
The t-shirts that show up at these events year after year are always interesting to see and this year is no exception.
DSC_8909-Frag-it-t-shirt
DSC_8914-T-shirt
DSC_8872-Aquamania
DSC_8889-Aquamania
More youth being added to the hobby every year  :-).
DSC_8892-Aquamania
Tomorrow all of the vendor areas will give way to the Giant Auction.  I can hardly wait!!!

About Ron

Ron has long had an interest in photography and traveling and, in recent years, has had more time to devote to both activities. Long a Pentax user, Ron switched to Nikon gear when he went digital. The advent of the digital SLR camera, and the ease of the internet blogging process, has provided a venue for sharing his photography and travel experience at the local, national and international level. More about Ron
This entry was posted in Aquariums, Home and About and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply