How was the meeting?

[Ed]

Hi Josh,

The meeting was great! We had an excellent turnout, somewhere around 50 people. Standing room only in Austin Aquariums classroom and more people out in the hall looking in.

I really enjoyed the presentation that Trung from Red Sea gave.

Thank you Trung for speaking and Thank you Michael and Charley for hosting the meeting.

-Ed

[Jimnorris]

I would like to thank Austin Aquarium and Red Sea for hosting the meeting.
Now with this said I thought the meeting was fair. On the high end was talking to everyone at the end of the meeting. The low end was I had so many questions unanswered that I really was interested in.
Mike and others I thought did ask some difficult questions but they needed to be asked. And were not answered. I was very interested in Red Sea's CALK product and their test kits. But I will not try anything "because" they are better. Show me---open those test kits and let me try them to see if they are better than what I am using. Show me why CALK is better than kalk. If they are better then you bet I will use them! I would like to ask this question why was there no items (RED SEA) for raffle? It has be reported that at other clubs this has been done?
Again I am not ungrateful because both Charlie and Trung were good hosts.
These is just my thoughts.
Jim

[MikeP]

Good meeting. I learned a lot about Red Sea's products and got the chance to put a few more faces to names. Kudos to the Austin Aquariums staff and Chris and Misty for pulling it off.

Like Jim I had a lot of questions which Trung tried to answer and did on several occasions. I apologize if it looked like I was being difficult but there is way too much of a medicine show mentality among many companies in this industry and their products are not something I want to try on faith. Given Red Seas admittedly mediocre reputation on several products (Test kits , Prizm skimmers come to mind) Trung did a good job of addressing those issues but I will say I'm from Missouri in this case, show me.

I did pick up some of the vibra grow pellets to try and talked to someone who works at ORA for confirmation on some of the statistics - they do indeed use it for many many of their tank raised fish and actually were instrumental in developing it. This is the only pellet food I have seen my tuskfish go after - we'll see in a few months how they are doing with this as a staple instead of the excellent Ocean Nutrition products.


Store looked fantastic too Charley. I think if you had more livestock you would have definitely sold it after the meeting.

[TexasState]

...

[Chris]

Pictures can be found in the Image Gallery (http://www.maast.org/modules.php?set_albumName=album07&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_album.php).

Like Jim, I was expecting some sort of donated items to raffle off as well. We'll have to make sure there's better communications between the group and our future guest speakers.

;)

[ibissilkti]

Hey Guys,

This is Trung from Red Sea, I would like to thank Michael and Charley at Austin Aquariums for allowing me to present my product line at their store. I would also like to thank MAAST for giving me the opportunity to present the product line at the meeting.

I thought that I did a pretty good job of answering the questions presented, and yes there were questions that I was not able to answer at the meeting, but I did state that I would look into it and get the answers to everyone who is interested as soon as I am able to.

Please post more questions on the thread, I know I should have written the questions down while they were fresh on my mind. Its pretty tough for me anyways to remember things in front of a large crowd.

The question that I did remember was from Mike and that was:

How is the ABC Process (Actively Balanced Consumption) possible, and can it be proven?

------I am trying to get some information avaible about the ABC Process from Red Sea. I am sure they will be happy to provide the information about how Actively Balanced Consumption is possilbe, but I do not think that they will release information that will infringe on how the product is made. It is just like the Vibragro, they will not tell me what kind of fish is used to make the Vibragro formula.

To address Jim Norris,

-----Please let me know what information you need on the Calk and the Test Kits. What kind of proof do you need? You can call the stores that are currently using the product, I will be happy to provide you with this, or the Baltimore Aquarium, they have been doing scientific studies with the Calk and actually have been giving Red Sea the statistical data. If you would like this I can get this for you. Also what kind of info do you need for the test kits? I thought I covered the kits really well. I even asked if there were any questions and I had a couple, but those were answered at the meeting. I have many stores using these kits and they were strong supporters of my competition, until they used my kits. I know I should have done at least one test at the presentation, but there was so much to discuss and we were running short on time, I even forgot to talk about the Reef Base, but if you would like to try out the kits, I am sure Austin Aquariums is more that welcome to let you try them out in the store.

As for the question about the raffle, Red Sea would have been more than welcome to donate some items for the raffel, but I was never contacted by MAAST about holding a raffel. If someone would have asked me I would have donated some product. This is the reason why I brought the Zooplankton, because I wanted to let the MAAST members try out something.

I hope this helps out a little for those who attended and for even those who were not able to make it.

I hope that no one who reads this takes offense to what I have posted, because that is not my intention. Its really hard to write things because sometimes they can sound really cold, really there is no harsh tone to what I write at all. I just want to let everyone know that all the questions presented at the meeting can be answered and will be answered as soon as I get information form Red Sea. I hope I get more questions because they are all welcome.

Thanks again everyone for letting me present the line, and again thanks to Austin Aquariums.

[Chris]

Welcome to the site Trung! Glad to have you aboard. ;)

Perhaps you can stick around and help provide the group with some valuable information?

Is your email address still thl94229@mail.uh.edu? I actually tried to contact you several months ago(feb/march timeframe) regarding a possible meeting but never received a response. Which is why we wound up having Charley handle getting in touch with you.

No problem though! The meeting was great and we had a lot of new faces show up so I'd consider it a success.

Thanks again!

Chris ;)

[MikeP]

Trung I was the one that asked about the ABC - and keeping that many Ions in solution without being detrimental to the livestock. If you can give me any non proprietary information about the process I'd be interested to hear it.

Also your 'Coral Gro' food you were not sure what types of phytoplankton or zooplankton were included and approximate particle size - would be curious to know that also so I can see how it stacks up to DTs, Bioplankton and the Clam and Coral Diet.

Thanks again for taking time out for our little club to answer some questions!

-MP

[minimasterflash]

Trung I am also curious about your "Calk", Some questions I have:

-Can I pour a large amount of Calk into a batch of RO/DI water and let all the excess percipitate out and thereby obtain a saturated calcium solution?

-Can I add this saturated solution ( or properly mixed solution ) into my tank via a normal evaporation/top-off system?

-Do I have to test the solution to ensure it is saturated? How do you know you achieve saturation if you are unsure about your mixing water volume.

-Does this supplementation provide both calcium and alkalinity?

-The redsea site says "Calk is dosed by monitoring the calcium and alkalinity of the water with accurate test kits". Can you give us a detailed instruction set for dosing with this product. I am curious as to how your test reading affect dosage.

Sorry for so many questions, but I am really curious to determine if this is a better system then the one I use now (Kalk drip).

-Yancey

[matt]

A couple of things come to mind, and granted, i missed most of Trung's presentation, so i can't comment on it. One is that I think we need to invite speakers who are proven experts in some area of reefkeeping, and who are not tied to a given company or vendor. I imagine Trung may have been in somewhat of an awkward position, somewhere between a sales presentation and a purely "academic" lecture on reefkeeping issues. For example, we've talked about bringing Eric Borneman from Houston. Great idea, and I'll help to get it going, if possible.

Another is that my experience with Red Sea is that they're trying to make a business out of supplying hobbyists with relatively low cost products, not cheap by any means, but not real high end or esoteric either. To this end, they're successful, and my experience has been quite positive with their customer service. But, our knowledge in the hobby pushes us more and more towards finding DIY and non-commercial solutions to our problems, and consequently the really appropriate speakers at our meetings should be geared towards that mindset. It's about the animals, ultimately, not the gear.

One thing in particular I'd love to see at a MAAST meeting would be a real expert on coral reefs (real ones, not captive), environmental issues, something like that.

Just my 2 cents