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Aquafest 2009 - October 16-18, 2009

Road Trip to Maryland!
This October, I had the opportunity to travel to Laurel, Maryland to attend the Aquafest 2009. The drive went smooth and took us about 10.5 hours (including stops) to arrive at the hotel and thanks to Joshua, my roommate and driver for a safe ride to our destination. I went inside to check in, got our luggage, and then headed our way to the room to catch up on some rest.

Beginning the Aquafest
After a couple hours of rest, I headed down to the lobby area where I met up with Dave Williams, also known as “ingg” on the planted aquarium forums. Along with Dave, I met up with Kris Weinhold, president of the Greater Washington Aquarium Plant Association, and he introduced me to a few new faces. I went over to the registration table and picked up my registration packet, inside included the agenda for the weekend, name badge, and wristbands that are for the lunch and banquet. Furthermore, Kris gave me a tour of the fish show room, the vendor rooms, and the clubs display room. There were a total of 4 vendor rooms and each vendor offered many different types of fish, plants, food, equipment, and other aquarium products. The fish show room contained many tanks ranging from 5.5g aquariums to 20g aquariums and displayed fish such as cichlids, catfish, livebearers, anabantoids, and other freshwater aquarium fish. Even though I am personally not too into fish as I am into aquascaping, it was very cool to see the many types of fish that entered the show.

Hanging Out with Planted Aquarium Enthusiasts
While there, I got the chance to take a visit to Kris Weinhold's house, president of GWAPA, to check out his planted aquariums. Walking into Kris’s home housed a native planted aquarium with Blue Spotted Sunfish. Moving onto the basement were the rest of his planted aquariums. He first showed us his 75g planted aquarium that was rescaped earlier this year. The scape contained many stem plants, some if not all that you normally wouldn’t find available at a pet store. The foreground of the aquarium was filled with Glosstigma elantoides, a common and fast growing plant that is readily available. Kris then walked us into another room in the basement to show us his remaining planted aquariums. Inside the room contained a 50g breeder that was also recently rescaped, a 30g breeder farm tank, two 2.5g planted aquariums, a 20g riparium display, a 15g low light planted aquarium, and two immersed plant setups.

Later that evening I was able to meet Jeff Ucciardo, also known as bigstick120 on the planted aquarium forums. After seeing him post on the forums for such a long time, it was great to finally be able to meet him in person. We headed back to the hotel, met up with Jason Baliban, another good friend of mine, and headed over to Outback Steakhouse restaurant to hang out and relax before a busy day to come.

Planted Aquarium Photography
The next morning I overslept and sadly missed the first presentation, "The Fishes of Uruguay" by Ken Davis. However, I was certainly prepared for the next presentation in line, “Planted Aquarium Photography” by Jason Baliban. As I sat down, Jason went ahead and began his presentation on photographing the planted aquarium and his method of creating the amazing “white background”. After his presentation, Jason showed us a few of the tricks he uses to enhance his final shot images without majorly altering the images itself. These tricks were applied in Adobe Photoshop and you had to be there in order to see for yourself, sorry it’s a secret! ;) Overall, the talk was pretty helpful and hopefully I can apply some of the tricks I learned to my future photos.

GWAPA Aquascaping Demo
After lunch, I decided to help out GWAPA with preparing plants and hardscape materials for the upcoming “GWAPA Aquascaping Demo”. Just like the Aquatic Gardeners Association Iron Aquascaper Competition, this demo featured Jason Baliban and Jeff Ucciardo as the two aquascapers going head to head. Each aquascaper was given a one hour time limit to fully aquascape a rimless aquarium setup of which was donated by many sponsors. When both aquascapers were finished early within the time limit, I got to experience something that I’ve never done before, judging! I was one of the three judges that judged the final aquascapes of the competition. I will admit that this was my first time judging and speaking in a large audience, but overall I think I executed fairly well. As the other two judges, Ghazanfar Ghori and Ben Belton explained their explanation and decision, it turned out that Jason’s aquascape turned out to be the favored, but in all fairness, both aquascapers did what they could within the one hour time limit and both deserve to winners.

Banquet with Ray “Kingfish” Lucas
The day ended with a delicious banquet and a guest speaker, Ray “Kingfish” Lucas who focused on three things on his speech, Fishfood, Fun, and Friends. After the banquet, I walked to the vendor rooms and did a last minute purchase for fish and plants before they closed down. I ended up buying a trio of wild caught Blue Rams, a lot of Anubias coffefolia, and a bag of school of Vietnamese White Clouds.

Auction
The last day of the Aquafest was the large auction. As I made my way down, people were bringing in many boxes filled with plants, fish, decoration, etc… you name it, and it was there! Unfortunately I was not able to stay for the whole auction, but I did however, ended bringing home a bag of Cryptocoryne parva, a crypt that I’ve been searching for quite a while. I went to say my goodbyes and made my way out the door and took a last trip to the Baltimore National Aquarium before heading back home.

My Last Thoughts
As always, I had a great time attending the Aquafest being the first one I have ever attended. It was definitely great to see old friends and meet new ones. My thanks go out to all of those who participated in the Aquafest and especially to GWAPA, PVAC, CCA, and those who invested so much time and energy to make it such a great weekend. I look forward to seeing you all next year at AGA 2010!

- Johnny

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