** Virginia Chapter - May 22 Meeting! **

First topic message reminder :

The next meeting of the Virginia Chapter will be on

Sunday, May 22 at 2:00 PM

Place:
Cichlid Solutions
6405 Dickens Place, Suite D
Richmond Va.
23230

Come out and meet your fellow hobbyists in Virginia!
Hear what your fellow hobbyists are doing in the hobby today!

*NEW* at this meeting - A short presentation by a club member.
Come out and hear the owner of Cichlid Solutions,
Mark Snead, give a talk on Aquarium Maintenance!
As Cichlid Lover, Mark is also a USAfishbox sponsor!

Take a tour of Mark's shop. socialize with your friends - old and new! - eat some snacks, and then get ready for our popular ...

Mini-Auction!
Many of our members have gently-used or NEW items to donate!
Check it out:

DRY GOODS!

• Marineland Eclipse 6 system set-up,
  5 Gallon reptile tank,
  6.5 foot siphon with large diameter uptake tube,
  Real river rocks,
  pleco breeding boxes/caves,
  homemade caves for cichlids or any fish,
  T-shirts!

... and more!

From Central Aquatics ... *new*

• 25" aquarium scraper kits
  Cord organizer kits

... and more!

From CaribSea ...

• South Seas Base Rock
  African Cichlid Mix substrate - 5.0mm-10.0mm grain size
  African Cichlid Mix substrate - Sahara Sand fine grain
  Coco-Soft Reptile Bedding

...and more!

Purple-Up! - 4 oz. bottles!
Blue Iguana Cal-Stron 10u powder - 6 oz. JARS!
2,000 (seems like it) cans of fish food from TETRA!

LIVE FISH!
3" to 5" mbuna
2" Albino Malawi eye-biter! Dimidiochromis compressiceps *new*
red zebra cichlids - Pseudotropheus or Metriaclima estherae - juveniles and fry!
Possibly some sunset platy fry - Xiphophorus maculatus - Pretty!
...

LIVE SNAILS!
Yes, Snails! Very useful in the aquarium and make interesting pets, too.
- Pomacea bridgesii (effusa) - baby GOLD Mystery snails! *new*
- Melanoides tuberculata - Malaysian trumpet snails (MTS) - the famous substrate-turning snail, keeps the sand or gravel aerated!
...

PLANTS!

• Salvinia minima - free-floating water fern!
  Taxiphyllum barbieri AKA Java moss, a useful favorite! Great for fry.

Live fish and plants!
Donations of fish and plants will be listed here as the list is finalized!
Keep checking back for new items.

Vendor donations!
More items from API, SeaChem, CaribSea, and TETRA have arrived!
Check the list for updates.

75/25 split!
Proceeds from the auction will be split a fair 75/25, with 75% of the sale going to the seller!

Donations Welcome!
Donations of aquarium related items are welcome!
Post your donated item on this thread
or pm parkmond 131 or me.

Don't miss it! It's a great time!
You'll meet some new folks, share your ideas, learn something new, and maybe leave with a great bargain!

Hope you can make it!
Virginia Chapter

DON'T MISS IT!

TankGirl wrote:

It was great to see everyone again and I look forward to our next meeting. We need to nail down a date in July.

The first Sunday in July is the weekend of the 4th, so I'm wondering if we might want to start using the second Sunday of every other month to avoid some of the holidays that might impact attendance?

I had a great time today and am impressed with how everyone gets along so well and comes to agreement remarkably easily - that's no small thing when you get a group of strangers together!

A great big thumb's up to all who attended, and also to those who could not but plan to attend in July - let's all work on recruiting more members!

Great to hear!!!

Let me know if you all need any help. Don't 4get those CL adds help a bunch!

Well worth the drive and my new male Kenyi is doing well and immediately found my female haha.

True enough on both accounts! I mean they IMMEDIATELY found each other. It was kind of cool to watch.

I'm stilling trying to find out if my mother/youngest siblings are coming to visit in July and when. We should be able to make the next meeting if it doesn't coincide with that. However, if everyone is ok with it, I might bring my little brother (12) and sister (9) with along with us because they find the fish stuff quite fascinating. So we'll see. Otherwise again, count us in.

I took a bunch of pictures which I'll resize and upload later on once I'm done with work.

I would be fine with your little brother and sister if the host of the meeting was. In fact, it's a great idea to bring kids to the meeting and get them interested in the hobby.

We will most likely hold our next meeting at someone's house or a park, and hold a BBQ or cookout type of meeting instead of the more formal indoors one.

All ages should enjoy that!

In fact, it's a great idea to bring kids to the meeting and get them interested in the hobby.

That's what I was thinking. My little brother actually had an aquarium (I believe a 20 gallon with some neon tetras), but he was much younger at the time and he as well as the adults in the house had no clue how to actually take care of the tank or the fish. But ever since seeing all of our aquarium pictures, he keeps begging my mom to re-setup the tank, but she refuses to because she's just afraid it won't be taken care of properly. We're going to educate him regardless when they're here, but I know he'd love to tag along he's here the same time as the next meeting. And since they're driving in, if we're doing another auction, he might want to bid on a few things to take home with him for his tank.

Looking forward to the next meeting!

GREAT meeting!! It was a lot of fun and it was nice that we had some new people show up. Way to go VA.

I think it would be awesome to have your siblings come along. Any chance you get to get kids involved in the hobby is always a plus.

Here's the photos I took!

Striking won the door prize. Lots of cool goodies, and he was actually sporting the Seachem shirt yesterday LOL:









Some of the many cool auction items:







We won the bid on this really nice piece of driftwood. It's going to look awesome in our 280 Discus tank once we get it setup (soon I hope!):

Thankyou for posting the pics Ash.

Great pix, Ash! And a *nice one* by Kin on the previous page.

I'll do some ID for those who don't know us and may be interested!

Kin's pic on page 8, by user name L to R:

-------------------------------------------------------------
Standing, back row - Ben.
Sitting, last row - strikingthematch, zeashness, and a Cichlid Solutions customer. He came to the meeting via an invitation from Mark.
Middle row - snoskiur (in light green shirt), D'Claro, and TankGirl.
Front row - ronmar.
Standing, front - Cichlid Lover.

Ash's 6th pic on page 9, by user name L to R:

-----------------------------------------------------------
Facing camera - Cichlid Lover, parkmond131, steves_kiki, Ben, and strikingthematch.
Back to camera - D'Claro, ronmar, TankGirl.
Way over to the left of D'Claro - Steve, of steves_kiki *lol* He's been to every meeting!
Kneeling in front of tanks, far right - parkmond's GF. She's been to every meeting, too!

These two pix cover all those that attended, I think.
It was a great meet, IMO. I had a great time and came away with a very awesome piece of wood pictured in the fifth pic on page 9 - you can see the edge of it sticking up. It was a massive 21" X 15".
Thanks, JB!

Some auction items are pictured on the previous page - medium and large pieces of Philippines base rock, African root wood, water conditioners and adjusters, African cichlid sand (bag and bucket!) 5, 15, and 20 gallon tanks, and some wonderful fish including an albino eye-biter! *Kin's giant pond snails were amazing!*

Cichlid Lover (Mark) gave a great presentation on aquarium maintenance and we talked about a club field trip to see some of the largest tanks that he maintains through his business. Looking forward to that!

*Thanks very much to Mark for letting us hold the meeting at Cichlid Solutions!*

I was able to pick up a female venustus about 6" and a malawi eye biter about 2" for livestock. Picked up some salvinia to float in some tanks. I also picked up 3 pieces of grapevine and 2 base rocks along with a cord organizer for one of my tanks.

Very good Pics. Ash! July should be fun, I can not wait.

Great pics! Looks like you all had a blast. I will attend one day

Very lucky to have a sponsor in the area to help support. Everything over here is chain stores ;9(

Wow Looks like another great Va. Meeting sorry I could not make it and also sorry I have not been on the forum more. Still recovering from surgery, but everything is going great and I look forward to July.

I think we had a pretty good meeting. Hope everything goes well with your recovery and look forward to seeing you in July.

Elrollo wrote:

Wow Looks like another great Va. Meeting sorry I could not make it and also sorry I have not been on the forum more. Still recovering from
surgery, but everything is going great and I look forward to July.

Glad to hear everything is going great! Hope your recovery continues to go well!

WOW! First a road accident, then surgery - what will keep you from us next? Frogs? Locusts? Boils? I'm joking with you, of course!

Elrollo wrote:

Wow Looks like another great Va. Meeting sorry I could not make it and also sorry I have not been on the forum more. Still recovering from surgery, but everything is going great and I look forward to July.

GET WELL SOON!