You’ve heard all the buzz about LED lighting. The roamers of incredible growth and color. Low power consumption, reduced heat transfer and the High Price tag associated with commercial LED fixtures.

You’ve thought about building an LED fixture for your tank but didn’t know how to pick the right LED’s for the job, or were intimidated by the prospect of soldering all those LEDs into a circuit that would work.

RapidLED and UTMAS are taking the mystery out of building a quality DIY LED fixture. At the next meeting of UTMAS we will be highlighting the new “Plug and Play” LED system by RapidLED. This system makes building your own LED fixture a breeze and in addition well show you how to pick the correct LED’s to make your corals grow like crazy and their colors POP!

Take a look at the DIY LED fixture we built using RapidLED’s new PNP system. It’s sleek and would look great over any tank. So come join us at the Living Planet Aquarium on Thursday, February 14th, at 7:00PM to learn more about building your own LED Fixture.

As always the meeting is completely free to everyone. We’ll have some light refreshments, and don’t forget about our legendary raffle at the end of the meeting. You could take home something sweet for your tank.

UTMAS meets on the 3rd Thursday of every month at 7:00PM, at the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy, located on the NE corner of 106,000S and 700E.

We hope to see you there.

We are sorry to announce that due to scheduling conflicts the January meeting has been canceled but we are gearing up for a great meeting in February. RapidLED has generously donated one of their Plug N Play LED kits for us to build and then add to the raffle at the end of the meeting. The PNP components from RapidLED eliminate one of the most difficult parts of building your own fixture, soldering the wiring to the LED’s. So join us on February 16th for our next meeting and you could walk away with this great LED fixture. For more information see the thread in the UTMAS Information forum.

Tony Vargas recently showed off what will become the cover of his upcoming book on Marine Aquarium Husbandry. I have yet to read an advance copy myself, but from what I have heard this will be a must-have for the fish-shelf!

The Coral Reef Aquarium by Tony Vargas

Check out the article here on reefs.com

Recently Tony Vargas came to the SLC area and I told him he HAD to go out to our co-founder Dave Anderson’s house and see his sweet 210. Well, today he posted up a great review and pics of his visit proving once again that UTMAS members have some of the finest reef tanks in the SLC area! Go take a look on reefs.com and then give a shout out of praise to Dave on the UTMAS forums!

Click HERE to see Dave Anderson’s 210 reviewed by Tony Vargas

At MAX, Neptune Systems announces $149.95 Apex Jr.

So, by now many of you already know that I am an aquarium controller nut-case and a big believer in them for disaster prevention. I have implemented a Neptune Systems Apex on my tanks as well as the tanks of many fellow saltwater hobbyists. One thing that has always bugged me is that there really were two ways to go with controllers: Read the rest of this entry »

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!

So by now you probably already read my review of the Elos magnesium test kit . I know, I know, most of you out there are Salifert test kit die-hards like I was. Well, I decided I was going to break out of my norm and try out the Elos Primaline Calcium test kit. Why would I want to switch kits if everything seems so great with Salifert? Well, as I stated in the previous article, my slight colorblindness makes it hard for me to sometimes see the color shift on the Salifert tests.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have been reading some posts here and there about different test kits and I heard some good things being said about the Elos “Pro” test kits. Some of the positives were the accuracy and consistency of the kits. I have been a Salifert person since entering the hobby a few years back but I decided to pick up the Elos Primaline Magnesium (Mg) test kit and give it a try. Read the rest of this entry »

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.