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Next meeting of The Cleveland Aquarium Society:
Tuesday April 2, at 7:30 pm
We will be hosting Ken McGill to talk about Native Fish, building fishrooms and Free
Fishing Weekend in May.
The Society meets on the first Tuesday of each month except July in the Cleveland Zoo’s education building.
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We have making some changes with our current website. We have added a full feature user forum that is available to both registered users and our club members. Registration is free and only requires an email address. Come on in and check it out and tell us little about yourself. Click HERE:
For new aquarists, fellow club members can offer a wealth of advice born of years of experience. They can save you (and your fish) from many of the beginner’s mistakes that can wipe out an entire tank and leave you frustrated and discouraged. Club raffles and auctions can help you build up your collection of livestock, plants, food, and equipment at rock-bottom prices (and you’ll be helping the club at the same time.) Club members can suggest types of equipment (or at least what to avoid); tell you which shops have the best deals, the healthiest fish, or the widest selection; and walk you through various solutions to problems you may run into.
For experienced hobbyists, clubs can help you network so that you can finally get your hands on a hard-to-obtain species. More advanced members (or those who specialize in a particular family) can give you tips on breeding and other more complex aspects of the hobby. Horticulture and breeder award programs can provide challenges and keep you interested in the hobby. Finally, club members provide an attentive audience for your “fish stories.” Your friends might not understand what’s so amusing about the killifish that’s in love with your cory catfish, but other “fish people” will get a chuckle out of the tale.
There is much that you can learn from other club members, and much that you can offer, regardless of your experience level. Old hands love to help newbies… any reason to run our mouths about our favorite fish is a good one! Because the Cleveland Aquarium Society is an all-species club, it will give you the opportunity to learn about a variety of species and different aspects of the hobby that you might not have heard of otherwise. And, of course, it’s fun. You can hang out with a diverse group of people who have an interest in common and maybe make some new friends out of the deal.
The Cleveland Aquarium Society meets on the first Tuesday of each month in the Cleveland Zoo’s education building. Come by and check out a meeting. You never know what you’ll find!
Click here for directions: Google Maps
Today we talked about lighting our tanks. Tony had brought in a video from his 120gallon tank. He is using 3 standard utility shades over this tank. Lighting a large tank in this manner gives a great effect where portions of the tank are brightly lit with darker areas between the lights. Al had brought in a modified florecent light that had lamp fixtures holding standard screw-in cfl lights. These lights have really become affordable an offer a great opportunity to increase your tank lighting on the cheap. Lastly, I brought in my DIY LED fixture. These little lights pack a punch, and make for an easy DIY project. Although the light components are easily purchased online and can be assembled with minimal effort, cost is still a barrier. A DIY LED fixture really doesn't provide a huge advantage in money savings. The cost of building your own is likely going to be on par with buying something commercially available. Whatever type of lighting you choose for your tank, it is always a delicate balace between the lighting effect our human eye prefers over our aquatic plants. Our eyes like to focus on lights that have more yellow in them. This is why soft white lighting has this tinge when compaired with a full spectrum daylight bulb. Your salty critters heavily utilize the blue spectrum. While freshwater plants need more red spectrum. This explains why 10k to 14k bulbs are used in the saltwater comunity. These lights have a slightly blue tint to them that provides a good compromise between the lights we can easily see and the light that coral critters love. Grow lights used for terrestrial plants and freshwater aquatic plants have a sort of pinkish color to them. I personally cannot think of a single aquarist with a pink lighted tank. Maybe they are out there. What are we to do to give our plants more of the light they crave and have an aquarium worth looking at? In this case we surmised it would be best to mix your lights. Instead of using just grow lights or just daylight bulbs over your freshwater tank, you could use the grow lamps in conjunction with your daylight bulbs. Looking forward to seeing everyone at the next meeting. Keep up with those water changes!
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