Ok final managed to get pictures off the camera, it wasn't my camera I was using, it was a nice simple slim camera, as a result quite a few came out crappy
apparently a few times I accidentally moved the mode to movie mode and took "pictures" that way... yes I feel stupid.
There were quite a few coral vendors and what not, but I had no realistic way of bringing corals back so I didn't spend much time at those booths, plus most of them were just using blue lights over the tank, and I really farking hate that, gee thanks for showing me that they fluoresce with a ton of 460nm on them... how about you show them under white lights... yanno when I'll mostly see them. And to be perfectly honest, the places I did peek in on, I didn't see anything that blew my socks off, or to be honest impressed me to the point that I wish I did have the ability to bring corals back. Just one of those things growing up on RC you hear stories about all the "cherry" stuff that comes out of LA wholesalers... well unless we're just so full of good stuff up here, or its not coming in anymore because... yeah... and one of the vendors there (online, has Cherry in the name) didn't impress me either.
Overall I was there for the hardware side of things, I wanted to see what some of the products had in mind, unfortunately not everything was picture worthy, so I didn't take too many pictures. Had some nice long talks with the Ushio guy, the PE Mysis guy, the Hamiliton guy, and the UVL guy. Briefly spoke with Fin's Reef (see below) and ReefGeek which both were showcasing LEDs, the Aqua Illumination one was really sexy looking, mostly because it had active cooling that was hooked to a thermal couple so the fan wasn't on all the time. The ChemiPure people were quite diplomatic with me when I mentioned I didn't use carbon at all they "respected my choice" and didn't really want to spend much time with me
The Portal was a great product (that I forgot to take pictures of!!!) magnifying glass/algae cleaning magnet combo! The ReefBuilders booth was disappointing as they had a bunch of chairs set up, but no one was there, especially disappointing since they had a post "come by and say hi at our booth"... well just as I gave up Brian Blank came back with a box full of stuff and we shot the chit for a while, so that saved them. However Jake Adams gets a waggle of the finger!
This was one of the few coral pictures I took, mostly because it was under LEDs, I can't remember the booth this was at, but they weren't selling corals
Fin's Reef had this neat LED fixture, the neat part is the LEDs are swappable. They simply unplug and you can swap others in. Now how available the other LEDs are in these plug in format I don't know, also not sure how they're thermally bonded to the fixture.
Here's with all the covering and lenses on, so it doesn't look like a DIY jobber
Different colors that are available, camera probably screwed up some of the colors, but as you can see Cree ones are significantly brighter than the SemiLED, so not all "3 watt" LEDs are made the same.
This was the Ecoxotic booth, and I took pictures of this because the theme was cute, however it was one of the more disappointing booths. Because instead of show casing their products, and allowing me as an end user to get information, or want to buy them, they decided to take a jab at the rest of the other lighting industry, and don't feel their products really are so great that other industries need to worry right now. Kind of bad form too because the UVL T5 guy was right across from this booth.
Again, cute, nice Halloween feel, but overall this is belongs on someone's law for Halloween, but hey, their booth, they can do what they want.
Finally found some products... however no literature, no one from Ecoxotic to "sell" them, nothing... I did hear they had a product at the Marine Depot booth but if it was there I didn't know it was an Ecoxotic fixture.
This was a CPR(I think) Skimmer/fuge combo hang on kit. Kind of neat, not sure of the effectiveness of it however, but then again not something I would use on my larger tanks
This was a cool product that popped out at me, Brightwell had a TON of different products, this is the salt-less salt mix
Literally everything you need in the salt except the salt. You can buy the salt bulk at any pool supply store, and simply mix your own. A little more hands on with getting your mix right initially, but seems like a good product. He also said the owner uses it in lieu of a two part solution, and simply adds it to the tank
Digital Aquatics had booth, I didn't see Neptune though, although I don't think they were showing off any new items, simply their other ones. The wavy front tank looks cool though
And finally a couple of random tanks at various vendor booths, showing off nothing in particular. Tanks are always nice like this when they're freshly set up. Before any algae can grow, everything is clear, clean and white
