ACA 2007
2007 American Cichlid Association Convention
Sacramento, CA - July, 2007
The Sacramento Aquarium Society (SAS) played host to the American Cichlid Association’s 2007 Convention July 19 - 22. What a blast! If you missed out on the convention this year, then you missed a good one. I made a week’s vacation of the trip out to California. My wife and I started in San Francisco for a couple days, and went to see Monterey. She went home on the 17th and I headed inland to get to the show a little early. I was lucky in that I got the chance to help out with the set up for the show. I have not been able to do that at previous conventions, because I always arrived after the set up, and I plan to arrive early from now on to help out. I had a great time working with the members of the SAS, and made some new friendships I know will last a long time. There is no bond like that formed while hooking up airline with someone until 3:00 AM!
The main room of the event held the show tanks and some of the vendor displays. That room was in a large central atrium in the Hilton hotel where the show was held. Ron Coleman (show chair and ACA BOT member) built all the racks at his home, disassembled them for storage and transport, and guided us through reconstruction. The racks he designed and built held over nearly 300 aquariums ranging in size from 10 gallons to 55 gallons. Once they were all up they looked very classy. Here is a picture of the center aisle of the show area.
The racks are 2×4 construction with two stair-step shelves down on either side of the rack. Black plastic is placed behind the tanks and the airline is threaded between the tanks and into the space beneath the rack. The airline connects to a large manifold that is in turn hooked to a blower or linear piston air pump. Attaching all the air line is what took the longest to do, because the airline was a little too narrow for the valves we had to work with. Once we figured out how to make the line fit, however, the task went a lot faster. Here is a look at the airline ‘mess’ under the rack.
The busiest room at the convention was the tank rental room. This is where the majority of the fish for sale could be found. Fish sellers could rent tanks and sell out of them like they would in a store. Buyers could also rent a tank to have a place to hold fish that they buy. Hundreds of fish were donated to the ACA from fish farmers for the Guy Jordan fund and Paul V. Loiselle Conservation fund, and these fish were held in the rental room until the auctions. Here is a shot of the rental room.
One of the ever-present ACA members to be found in the rental room is John Hansen (middle), seen here with Dave Schieltz and Phil Benes (standing). John is the person responsible for soliciting and keeping all of the donated fish for the auctions. If it were not for John there would not be nearly the variety of rare cichlids available at the show.
Steve Lundblad (on the right), the long-time owner of The Cichlid Exchange in Portland, Oregon, is seen here trying hard not to give in to Chuck Rambo’s low-ball negotiation tactics. He is also the show judging chair this year. Steve had the job of securing judges and scoring all of the results.
Anther big seller in the rental room was Jeff Rapps (foreground), the owner of Tangled Up in Cichlids. I think Jeff wins the distance traveled with lots of fish contest to get all of his fish to Sacramento from New Jersey. Just goes to show that the east coast is NOT too far… Thank you Jeff for making the trip (and for bringing those Crenicichla sp. ‘Gaucho’… they are doing great).
Here is a picture of my good friend, the colorful David Soares. Dave is probably the largest producer of tank-raised Apistogramma sp. in the country. His hatchery near Bend, Oregon, has 300+ aquariums, and he specializes in the softwater dwarf cichlids. Dave lists fish for sale a lot on www.aquabid.com as Apistodave, and on the forum at www.apistogramma.com. He and Uwe Romer also maintain a website at Softwater Dwarf Cichlids. If you are ever fortunate enough to be at a show with Dave, take some time to talk with him. He is one of the nicest and most knowledgable aquarists I have ever met.
There were several other fish sellers in the room, but they were not around when I was shooting pictures. Another of the larger sellers was Jim Ellenberger, the owner of Maily Cichlids in San Jose, CA.. Jim is also the Trading Post chair for the ACA. He also shows a lot of fish, and did very well this year. More on that later.
The convention was sponsored by several vendors. Some were located in a vendor room, and the others were out in the show room. One of the ACA’s largest sponsors is ZooMed, who sponsors the ACA Speakers’ Program as well as the convention. They bring a lot of their products to sell at the conventions.
The vendor room also was the place to talk to the Dianichi foods representative, and the owner of Florida Exotic Fish Sales / Xtreme Aquatic Foods Rick Biro. In a previous life as a retail fish store owner/manager I bought a lot of fish from Rick, and I was very happy to renew our friendship. Until this week I had not talked with him for nearly 15 years. His food, Xtreme Aquatic Foods, seems to be pretty good. The fish do not hesitate to eat it, and it is the food that Rick has been using on his award-winning fish farm for years.
One of the biggest sponsors of the convention was Monster Aquarium Network, the owners of some of the largest and most active aquarium forums on the net. They sponsored all of the show’s speakers and the Best of Division and Best of Show awards. This is a significant contribution to the ACA. Thank you Li-Wei Chih!
The show room vendors also included Tetra, Tropical Fish Hobbyist, Aquarium Fish International (Bowtie Publications), San Francisco Bay Brand brine shrimp foods, TruView Aquariums, Carib Sea substrates, WaterWolves.com, and Pamela Marsh NatureTees. The show room is also where the Babes In The Cichlid Hobby set up their silent auction tables. The Babes have been responsible for raising thousands of dollars for the ACA’s research granting funds. Without their efforts the ACA would not be able to support as many research projects as they do. This year the ACA awarded 5 grants.
The Babes are led by Pam Chin, Pam Marsh and Caroline Estes, though there are many other people involved in making the Babes auctions a success. If it were not for the donors of the fish, artwork and aquarium supplies, or the work of many volunteers who prep it all for auction, this program would not be happening. Not including this year’s auctions, the Babes have raised in excess of $35K for cichlid research, and this year the auctions broke a record for gross receipts! Way to go Babes!
The ACA Table is where guests could get information about the club. It is also the place to get a piece of chocolate when you need it most. The ACA sells a few products and books at the table also. Here is a picture of the table. The lady is the incomparable Jan Benes, who probably spent more time at the table than the rest of us (meaning those of us in the ACA who SHOULD have been at the table). Thanks Jan!
This year’s speaker line up was excellent. The topics ranged from water chemistry to collecting to how fish are classified into taxons and named. There were speakers on discus, rift lake cichlids, South American cichlids and West African cichlids. I personally attended the talks given by Rainer Stawikowski (South American cichlids), Oliver Lucanus (pike cichlids and West African cichlids), Tim Hovanec (water chemistry) and Ron Coleman (introduction to phylogenics).
One of the BIG changes at the show this year was the inclusion of a commercial discus division with a cash prize of $1000 awarded to the top discus in the show. The division was sponsored by the North American Discus Association (NADA), and the cash prize was provided by well known discus guru Dick Au. This competition was in addition to the ACA’s division system, and the fish were judged on standards provided by the NADA. Several very nice discus were entered in the commercial class. Unfortunately, there were no discus entered in the ACA’s hobbyist division, so there was not an ACA discus division this year. I hope that this does not become a pattern, though I do appreciate the effort and expense put forth by NADA and Dick Au to make this commercial discus event a success. Here is a picture of the top prize-winning discus, followed by a few of the other fish entered in that competition.
The ACA show has an art and phtotography division, and there were a lot of entries this year. One artist entered some incredible paintings featuring stylized frontosas. Several can be seen in this picture. Unfortunately, I had guessed that the large image in the center would be the winner, but another painting by the same artist won the art class. I did not get a picture of that piece.
I am proud to say that I managed to bring home two of the three awards in the photography class. The image on the top (A. cacatuoides) won third place and the image on the bottom (J. transcriptus) won first. I have never done this well showing fish before. I should probably stick to photography.
The fish show had about 150 entries divided into three divisions and several classes in each division. The Best of Show went to a very deserving Tilapia brevimanus that was entered by Jim Ellenberger. Jim also had other fish place in several classed. Another big winner was DanYe-Jennings from Denver, Colorado. She entered many fish, including her well known large pike cichlids that she entered last year in Chicago. They are growing, and I suspect that one of those beautiful pikes will take the top award someday. Here is a picture of the Best of Show fish, followed by several of the fish entered in the event.
This year’s Mike Sheridan TankBuster Award went to Dan Ye’s C. bocourti (top image), and the People’s Choice went to DanYe’s V. argentea. Both of this fantastic fish are still growing and have a bright show future ahead of them. The other pictures are more of Dan-Ye’s fish.
The ACA 2007 was a lot of fun. I am already looking forward to the ACA 2008 convention in Atlanta, GA. Mark your calendars for July 17 - 20, 2008!
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