What an incredible meeting we had last Thursday. The Spring Fragtacular was attended by nearly 100 people! The craziness began shortly after hearing the rules – members had a 2:00 minute mad-dash head start to the frag room. We had lights on hand so people could inspect corals under the light and see how they looked. All frags were $5 and $10 for members and let me tell you there were a lot of happy campers leaving the meeting on Thursday. Also, we added another dimension to the Fragtacular experience, Frag Pong! I think it also was a big hit. In addition to the nearly selling out every single coral, UTMAS signed up almost 20 new members! So, let’s all give them a warm UTMAS welcome!

Be sure set your calendars for next month, May 19th, as it will be yet another great UTMAS meeting as Andy Allison and his staff give us a treat of a behind the scenes tour of the Living Planet Aquarium including their new exhibit, “Animal Superheroes”.

Well we are just a few days away from your opportunity to get a lot of cool corals without killing your wallet. Not everything has been fragged up yet, and we have donations coming in every day, but I wanted everyone to get an idea for some of the stuff that will be there on this Thursday 4/21 at 7PM at the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy. Show up early if you need to still get your 2011 UTMAS membership. Remember, everyone is welcome, but UTMAS members get a two minute jump on the frag room and all frags are  just $5 or $10 for members! Click the link below to see some of the great corals (but not all of them) that will be up for sale.

Click here to go to the Fragtacular photo album

Paul Locke (builderofdreams)

On behalf of UTMAS members, I wanted to thank the members and presidency of the Wasatch Marine Aquarium Society for letting us both attend as well as participate in this really cool event yesterday. At least three UTMAS members participated in the event and together combined showed off our tanks to over 100 people! From the time Mark Peterson came to our meeting with an outstretched hand to invite our club members, I knew that this would be great for the hobby and all hobbyists to bring both clubs together. Once again, thank you WMAS!

Click below to see some additional photos.

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OK everyone, the time is almost here for the Spring Fragtacular. What is the Fragtacular? Well, it is a special UTMAS meeting where everyone is invited to stock up on some great frags at incredible prices. Our Fall Fragtacular was a huge success – that’s not me saying that – thats what people told us at the last meeting. So, we decided to bring it back for Spring - with a twist…

The Spring Fragtacular will have all corals priced at $10 or below for all members! And, these are not going to be tiny 2-polyp zoanthids or a bag of xenia – no way, these are going to be large frags with lots of cool stuff – zoanthids, palythoas, acroporas, yumas, and much more! Even better, we will be placing some Easter Eggs out there that will be labeled as $5 but are really corals worth $40 or more! In the pics below you see we have lots of stuff fragged up already, but there is still more to do…

So, save your pennies now, start making spots in your tank, get ready for SPRING FRAGTACULAR!

April 21 @ 7PM – The Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy.
(Remember, just like last time, everyone is welcome, but all members get a head start on the frag room. So come at 6:30 if you need to get a UTMAS membership – this month the pro-rated UTMAS membership is just $22.50)

Click here to see the some of the frags and colonies yet to be fragged LIVE in the UTMAS frag tank!

Have you ever wondered if you could breed saltwater fish like you did as a kid with your guppies?

Do your clown fish lay eggs but you have no idea how to get the little guys to survive?

Do you want to own more demanding species that require live foods like baby brine, pods, and rotifers but don’t want to pay for the food and would like to “grow your own”?

Well, now you can answer all those questions because this month Suzy’s Reef is coming to the UTMAS meeting to talk to us about breeding fish, and growing live food for the larvae.

Suzy Applegarth is an accomplished aquarist who has had many aquariums through out her time in the saltwater hobby. She has successfully raised sea horses in her home, and is involved with The Living Planet Aquarium.

Suzy has also raised many live foods for the fish she has breed and raised, and is coming to share the knowledge with us at the next meeting.

So come on down and join us for this awesome and informative meeting with one of our local gurus! This meeting will also have a raffle that includes products from Brine Shrimp Direct (BSD) in Ogden, and we always have a great raffle with tons of corals (Marine Aquatics, aka HighEndCorals).

In addition to this great talk we have boutique coral vendors (Like ReefKingdom) on site with lots of unique corals for sale.

So, if you had to name one person who has seen more LED designs over the last few years, who would it be?

Well I know who first came to my mind…The senior editor of ReefBuilders.com, Jake Adams!

Well, guess what? UTMAS is bringing Jake to SLC so you can see and hear his brand new presentation on LED aquarium lighting based on all his years of examining and testing various LED systems. Jake says this is not going to be any lightweight fluffy presentation and that you should come with beverage in hand and find a comfortable seat…it is going to be one of the best presentations of the year for sure!

So, where and when can you come hear this great presentation? Well at the next UTMAS meeting of course! It’s being held February 17th at the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy at 7PM. I suggest you come a little early as this will be a crowded meeting for sure!

And if that is not enough, this presentation is open and free to everyone, young or old, member and non-member alike.

So, mark your calendar, and come down for a great presentation!

Jake Adams is a professional, practicing aquarist who has been an active participant in the national marine aquarium community for about 15 years. Jake has a Bachelor’s Degree in Marine Science and he is the senior editor of ReefBuilders.com.

Well, we told you that 2011 was going to be an awesome new year for UTMAS with more fun, learning, and opportunities to grow in the hobby…and here is the first example.

This photo was taken while I was doing research on living echinoids and crinoids in Palau (Jan 2010). The animal in my hand is the crinoid (feather star) Oxycomanthus bennetti

At our meeting on January 20, 2011 we will be featuring an awesome talk from none other than the starfish and urchin expert himself, Forest Gahn.

Forest is an invertebrate paleontologist that specializes in the evolutionary ecology of marine life, especially echinoderms. After completing his PhD at the University of Michigan and a post-doc in the Smithsonian’s Department of Paleobiology, he joined the geology faculty at Brigham Young University—Idaho (2006). While at BYUI, he was asked to oversee the installation of a 125-gallon reef aquarium, which provided his introduction to the “hobby.” Forest has integrated his newfound passion for reef aquaria with his research interests, and has successfully kept all five classes of living echinoderms. Moreover, he has an active research program involving captive echinoids and crinoids (sea urchins and feather stars). His work has been published in Integrative and Comparative Biology, Paleobiology, PNAS, Science, and featured in National Geographic, MSNBC, Science News, and Smithsonian magazine.

Forest will be addressing the general biology of echinoderms and his experience with the captive care of all five echinoderm classes, including feather stars, sea stars, cucumbers, and urchins. In addition to general physiology, he will discuss feeding, reproduction, and the pros and cons of keeping various echinoderms in aquaria.

So, make sure not to miss this meeting, it is going to be awesome!

(click here for more meeting details)

As the year winds down, we here at UTMAS want to wish everyone Happy Holiday’s and a safe and happy new year. To finish off the year with a bang, we held out first annual cookie exchange/Holiday Feast. Nothing says the holiday’s like the smell of food, cookies, and freshly cut frags!

Food!

Cookies!

Just look at that spread!

After enjoying some excellent food and great company, it was time to get down to the business of giving away some amazing frags.

The first lucky winners!

Please pick me! Please!

Another satisfied Member

A huge Thank You to all of our Sponsors, The Living Planet Aquarium, Marine Aquatics, Reef Kingdom, Eagle Creek Cabinets, Corals4Reefs.com, The Living Art Aquarium, Cerameco, Aquatica, Reef Runners, BerghiaDirect.com, Marine Aquarium Expo.

Thank you all for believing in UTMAS and helping make 2010 such a huge success! Most importantly, Thank You to all of our members. Utmas is your club. Without you, it would not exist. Without you, the club would have faded away like a late summer sunset. Because of you, the members, Utmas is still here and stronger than ever! So as we leave 2010, let’s raise all raise our hydrometers, refractometers, test kit vials, or whatever is near by in a toast to the greatest members in the world.

Happy Holiday’s and a Happy New Year!

If you thought 2010 was great……2011 will blow your fish loving mind!

Postcard - Marine Aquarium Expo 2011

Just a reminder, UTMAS will be representing Utah hobbyists by exhibiting and even giving a workshop at the Marine Aquarium Expo on April 2-3. We will be helping organize carpools for any member that might want to go down and check it out. I highly recommend this event if you want to check out the latest gear and high-end corals that are out there. Also, there are always great deals to be had on both equipment and livestock. Check out the postcards I just got from the organizer…you can pick up a hard copy at Marine Aquatics in Midvale as well as other LFS that will put them out for their customers. You can find their site at www.marineaquariumexpo.com

If you want to chat about this event or try to find carpools, click here and go to our forum and post there.

Well our December meeting is less than two weeks away so I thought I would give the preview of what will be going on. First off, let’s discuss the importants stuff:

• FOOD
• CORALS
• COOKIES

Not necessarily in that order!

But seriously, to celebrate the holidays, UTMAS will be sponsoring a ton of great, old-fashioned finger foods (BBQ meatballs, Deviled Eggs -from our free-range chickens, Wraps, Fruit).  This will be the kind of stuff no one ever wants to admit they really like!

In addition to the food, as always we will have an great coral raffle and three free door prizes will be raffled off. We still have quite a bit of coral in our UTMAS frag tank that I will be bringing in like zoos, chalices, montiporas, and much more. Also, I am sure that our sponsors will be kicking in some sweet raffle items as well. For those that purchase their 2011 UTMAS membership at this meeting, there will be an additional 10 raffle tickets as a special promotion!

And, the best part of the evening is the 1st Annual UTMAS Cookie Exchange. Everyone knows that it is fun to bake Christmas cookies…at least the first couple of dozen…but then can get tiresome and you really only have a couple of varieties to enjoy. The cookie exchange solves that problem. Just bring in a couple of dozen (or more) of your favorite Christmas cookies and we will lay them out with all the others. Then, near the end of the meeting, everyone can go to the table and take a few cookies from others that have brought in. Basically you come in with 24 of one type and leave with an entire plate of all types! Even if you don’t bring cookies, you are welcome to participate, but it is always better the more variety we get.

And now for the mundane…hehehe

So, what will be the topics this month? Well since I had a mini-mishap or two over the last month, I thought it would be good to make our main topic this month be Disaster Preparedness and Avoidance. Find out all the things you should be doing and have on hand for when that disaster happens…and if you plan on being in this hobby for more than one year, it WILL happen…

In addition to this, I am asking everyone to submit to me via PM their “Gear of the Year” or “Specimen of 2010″…in other words, one thing you got for your aquarium this year that changed your life so to speak and/or one coral, fish, or invert that made your year.  Let me know what they were and why they were so great. I will be assembling everyones into a presentation and going through it at the meeting.