Banner image

MAS 2025 EXPO (1 Viewer)

W

Willie

Joined
Jun 5, 2024
Messages
14
Location
St Paul
Minnesota Aquarium Society's 2025 EXPO is scheduled for Saturday, March 22 at Hagfors Center, Augsburg University in Minneapolis from 9 am - 6 pm. For TCMAS members, Bill Capman will speak on "An introduction to coral reef fish and invertebrate breeding". Augsburg students will give regular talks of their science facilities, including those fantastic marine tanks in Bill's lab. And of course, there will be the usual fish show stuff. If you're not familiar with the MAS EXPO, there's an article in the Jan/Feb issue of AMAZONAS magazine covering the show. The meeting is open to the public, with free admissions and free parking.

EXPO Swap Info.jpg
 
This is a wonderful chance for reefers to see @capman incredible marine lab with a amazing 350gallons display tank!

And he’s doing a talk? Awesome!
 
The entire abstract of Bill's talk is:

"Using clownfish and neon gobies as main examples, this presentation will discuss the critical basics of marine fish and invertebrate breeding, including similarities to and differences from freshwater breeding, establishing breeding stock and inducing spawning, larval rearing, the critical importance of nutrition (for both adults and larvae), and more. The planktonic nature of marine larvae and the special challenges this presents will be discussed, and the design and rationale for the special rearing tub systems that are critical for rearing marine larvae will be explained in detail."
 
MN Aquatics has registered to exhibit at Aquarium EXPO 2025. As of mid-January least one coral vendor has booked a swap table.
 
This is awesome! Augsburg College my old stomping grounds… oh wait it is Augsburg University now. Good memories… I’m going to check it out for sure
 
spsick said:
This is a wonderful chance for reefers to see @capman incredible marine lab with a amazing 350gallons display tank!

And he’s doing a talk? Awesome!
Click to expand...
I don't know when you saw it last, but I've had to do several MAJOR coral prunings over the last 6 months or so (including a MAJOR heavy chunk of coral growth that had grown all the way to the water surface - a chunk of dense heavy coral skeletons about 2 feet across and a foot high), and we had a stupid situation that killed back some corals about 3 months ago or so, so the tank is sort of in a state of recovery right now. Corals are healthy now though, are growing well, and the tank looks nice, but it isn't the perfect looking tank of mature colonies that it was. It's getting there.

The fish are pretty spectacular in that tank now though!
 
Willie said:
The entire abstract of Bill's talk is:

"Using clownfish and neon gobies as main examples, this presentation will discuss the critical basics of marine fish and invertebrate breeding, including similarities to and differences from freshwater breeding, establishing breeding stock and inducing spawning, larval rearing, the critical importance of nutrition (for both adults and larvae), and more. The planktonic nature of marine larvae and the special challenges this presents will be discussed, and the design and rationale for the special rearing tub systems that are critical for rearing marine larvae will be explained in detail."
Click to expand...

My goal is to try to help beginners at marine breeding a bit with climbing what I found to be some of the more challenging parts of the learning curve when I was first getting my lab set up and first started doing marine breeding.

And an important part of this is talking about the hows and whys of designing rearing tub systems for marine larvae. I needed to take a trip to the Omaha zoo and have an aquarist I know there show me their setup before I fully understood how to proceed in designing and building mine. I hope to save you that sort of hassle...

After my talk I'll be able to bring small groups of people into the back room of the lab where the rearing tubs are to see these in person. I am creating a bunch of diagrams and some animations to explain these tubs, but even if you understand all of that, when it comes time to actually build something like this the devil is in the details. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, but seeing something in person can be worth, well, a LOT more words! I'll be able to show people at least one way of doing this first hand.

It won't be possible in one talk to adequately cover all the details (say, of phytoplankton culture, copepod culture, etc, not to mention some of the peculiarities and specifics of dealing with different fish or invertebrate species), but I hope that folks will leave my talk with a clearer understanding of the fundamental principles and issues, and how to proceed (including understanding what the critical details are that they will have to get worked out in in their own fishrooms in order to have success with marine breeding).
 
spsick said:
This is a wonderful chance for reefers to see @capman incredible marine lab with a amazing 350gallons display tank!

And he’s doing a talk? Awesome!
Click to expand...

We are also going to have 4 or 5 microscopes set up with live corals and some other live critters for people to see. My former student Kayla will be overseeing that aspect of things. Kayla worked in the lab with me for four years, and she played significant roles in the development of our phytoplankton culture methods, and our sea urchin breeding/larval rearing methodology.
 
mrbill said:
Is there a particular lot we should use for the free parking?
Click to expand...

NOT the small lot directly adjacent to Hagfors Center.

But my understanding is that any other lot on campus should be fine that day, as long as the particular spot is not specifically designated as being for some particular purpose.
 
I'll be there with Nori Vossen Art. We'll have artwork, inverts, cleanup crews, mangroves, pinned butterflies and beetles, and more.
 
We have 40+ vendors signed up so far for the swap, tons of raffle and silent auction items, a Kids Corner with games, prizes, juice boxes... Attracted local TV coverage so we should get a good turnout. Look for MAS flags marking the parking lots for EXPO attendees. All details at www.aquarium.mn.
 
Thanks to everyone that organized and competed/showed at the Expo yesterday, and especially the esteemed hosts at Augsburg! Fantastic idea to have various marine life under an array of microscopes in the lab as well, I will definitely have to add that to the future equipment list.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Back
Top