MACNA XIX

Over 1000 hobbyists traveled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this year to attend the 19th annual Marine Conference of North America. This three day event was full of great information. 21 talks were scheduled throughout the conference on every aspect of the hobby, as well as coral fragging demonstrations. One talk I especially enjoyed was about how to set up a green house for coral propagation. A few other popular ones were European Reefkeeping & Aquarium Photography.

Throughout the event, vendors were present displaying their hardware, additives or livestock. Each day was filled with opportunities to learn, discuss, or just visit with old friends. One my favorite reasons for attending MACNA each year is to meet people that I've only had the opportunity to chat with online, finally putting a face to that username seen so often. I'm an equipment junkie, so I tend to spend all of my time checking out all the skimmers, pumps, and goodies on display throughout the conference.

The Pittsburgh club put together a excellent conference, and those that attended this year were blessed with free breakfasts, free liquor in the evenings (open bar!), plus the opportunity to win items during each day from a few of the vendors. And those that attended the talks also had the opportunity to win a BioCube tank. Speakers would ask a question at the conclusion of their talk and the person with the matching answer scored a new tiny tank. How cool is that?

Plenty of pictures were taken, and these have been sorted, organized and linked over a series of pages. I hope you enjoy the images.

Pictures, in no real particular order. Just go with the flow if you will. Images have been divided over a series of pages to break up download time.

My day started much too early after being up much too late with much too much to do for much too much too long. A bit much, right? Anyway.... (btw, do you ever notice if you type one word too many times, it begins to look like it's spelt wrong? )

I start off my day with a good breakfast daily.

The night before, I ran into a shady looking guy - from EcoTech Marine - with a cardboard box. Quickly I knew he had to be tackled, relieved of his stuff, and.. um, I better not add any more details to avoid legal action.

When asked later about the incident, he remained silent.

This is Randy, owner of Champion Lighting

Some products, including Ken Stockman's overflow drain (white PVC thing)

Coming soon: 1.5" Sea Swirl with all black PVC connections. Kinda neat.

Deltec set up a pass-through booth, where you could enter from a couple of directions and see all their goodies. Prices vary, and often what you see is already sold prior to the show. That way the new owners can pick up their newest toy at MACNA. Doug was smiling non-stop; he loves MACNA almost as much as I do.

This is Anthony Calfo, who just celebrated the 12 month anniversary of his magazine "C - The Journal." His magazine featured several pages about the conference and carried the program schedule within. Every person that attended the show got a free copy.

To his right is the owner of Reef Exotics, who owns acropora.net where I've purchased my ReefLux bulbs.

Reef Exotics sells this new reflector. I saw one in the Sunday raffle as well.

Here is the MACNA XX booth for 2008. If you want to go, or even think you MIGHT go, sign up immediately because the longer you wait, the higher the entry fee. www.macnaxx.com

This is the MASNA booth. To the right is smiller, RC moderator. I don't remember the sweet woman's name to his left so feel free to fill in the blank.

Here is Geo's booth, and look at the beautiful reactors. Geo himself is seated direction beneath the ".com" of the banner.

I don't know who this tall guy is, but how could you not buy one from a salesman with that smile? ;)

I've never heard of this site, but did wander through this area to meet some RC Lounge Lizards.

Hikari was represented.

The view from my room in the hotel wasn't bad. To the left, some beautiful green trees rose up the hill, and to the right of a tall building was a view of the nearby mall. On Thursday night we walked over there to eat dinner at Hoolihans.

ORA's display

PFO Lighting, with Joy (formerly of Harbor Aquatics) who has now become their rep. Joy was the person to sell me my very first blue Maxima clam in 2002 at MACNA Fort Worth. Their booth compared the Solaris LED lighting to a MH bulb with two tanks using PAR meters.

Pure Reefs was selling their Cati-Ani system, as well as a few other products. They are based out of Colorado, I believe. Kip's a friend of mine, but he wasn't in these pictures. We met via RC years ago, and at MACNA Boston actually shook hands for the first time.

Reef Sanctuary, owned (at least in part) by Travis Staut of Reef-Life.com - I saw Travis later that day.

These were the 12 pictures that won Picture Of The Month on their site. The guy on the right is a swell guy with no name. :o

Tunze was represented by Roger of course, based in Austin. I think he blinked as he normally appears smiling and relaxed. ;)

Random shot of what I would call an intersection between some booths.

Salty Critters

This dendrophyllia (closed up) was $250. Two years ago, they sold for $50 per polyp.

This Maze coral was hyper-extended, with the green barely visible and the brown tissue literally moving in the flow. Very unusual and interesting.

Seachem's booth was full of goodies.