lattehiatus
Past President
We invite you to join Bay Area Reefers for our 2nd Annual Breeding and Propagation Workshop! BAR is dedicated to promoting, fostering, and encouraging education and appreciation for the ethical husbandry and propagation of marine life. This event is intended to rally the reefkeeping community behind these goals and elevate our collective knowledge and ability to provide the best possible husbandry for the animals in our care.
Schedule of Events
10:30 - 11:00 Registration
10:30 - 3:00 Silent Auction
11:00 - 12:30 Todd Gardner: Factors Affecting Larval Survivorship in Marine Fish Culture
12:30 - 1:30 Lunch
12:30 - 3:00 Sponsors and BAR Frag Tank Open
12:30 - 3:00 Gear Swap
1:30 - 2:15 Jim Welsh: Culturing Live Feeds
2:00 - 2:30 DBTC (Don't Break the Chain) Seminar with Piper
2:15 - 3:00 Robin Bittner: Captive Breeding Basics
2:30 - 3:00 Captive Breeding Clams with Eric Armstrong
3:00 Silent Auction & Kessil Raffle Winners Announced
3:00 - 4:30 Joe Yaiullo: Challenges Encountered Over 13+ Years at the Long Island Aquarium Relevant to Home Aquariums
How do I register to attend?
- BAR Supporting Members: Please register by selecting "Yes" at the top of this page.
- Non-BAR Members: Please register through the Eventzilla ticket system below. As a 501(d) non-profit organization, we are requesting you to consider a non-mandatory $10 donation to help BAR defray the costs and overhead for hosting this event, either through Eventzilla or PayPal. You are also eligible to become a BAR member to support our goals.
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[/parsehtml]Speakers:
Soak up the experience and knowledge these experts will be presenting, and ask them your burning questions!
- Joe Yaiullo: Challenges Encountered Over 13+ Years at the Long Island Aquarium Relevant to Home Aquariums
- Todd Gardner: Factors Affecting Larval Survivorship in Marine Fish Culture
- Jim Welsh: Culturing Live Feeds
- Robin Bittner: Clownfish Breeding Basics
Workshops:
Get your hands wet with seasoned guides as they walk you through seemingly daunting tasks!
- Piper: DBTC (Don't Break the Chain) Seminar
- Eric Armstrong: Captive Breeding Clams
Onsite LFS Sponsor:
Propagated corals and captive bred livestock in the spirit of the event will be available for sale, courtesy of these esteemed LFS sponsors and partners:
- Diablo Corals
Gear Swap
Are your closets and garages filled to the brim with aquarium equipment? Chances are good someone could put them to good use!
- List what you have for sale through this Item Submission Form. This is optional to help potential buyers find you.
- View the items available and peruse the results here.
Silent Auction:
Bid on goods and products donated by AlgaGen, Boston Aqua Farms, Reef Nutrition, Rod's Food, and many more! We will also be showcasing propagated corals from Aquatic Collection and Neptune Aquatics (available for bidding).
Speaker Bios:
Joe Yaiullo
As a kid, Joe Yaiullo spent much of his childhood maintaining home aquariums and exploring the marine life surrounding Long Island, New York. Now he gets paid to basically do what he did as a kid and has been keeping reef tanks for over 26 years.
Joe Yaiullo has a B.S. in Marine Science from LIU Southampton College's marine science program, and worked for 8 years at the NY Aquarium in Brooklyn, New York as Senior Aquarist. In 1992, he began to shape his plan for a world-class aquarium on Long Island's East End and in 2000, after toiling for eight long years, his plans and vision became a reality with the opening of Atlantis Marine World Aquarium, now known as The Long Island Aquarium and Exhibition Center in Riverhead, NY.
In 2003, Joe was awarded The Distinguished Alumni Award from Southampton College and is currently president of the Long Island Reef Association, LIRA. Joe, an admitted “Coralaholic”, currently feeds his ever increasing addiction with a 20,000 gallon live coral reef display.
Joe has been featured in many reef keeping magazines and books, and has presented lectures throughout the USA including several MACNA’s and in Canada, Germany, Sweden, Finland, England, Monaco, France and The Netherlands. The best recent addition to his reef tank though is a water proof iPod case so Joe can rock out while diving in his tank. Atlantis Marine World has quadrupled in size since it opened, with future exhibits in the works. So even though it’s on a larger scale, Curator and Cofounder Joe Yaiullo still considers it all his “DIY” project."
Todd Gardner
Todd Gardner grew up on Long Island where his aquarium-keeping habit, which started around age 6, was encouraged by his parents and an abundance of local marine life.
In 1988, Todd began attending East Stroudsburg University where he founded the ESU Marine Science Club. In 1991, while working as an intern at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Todd became acquainted with the techniques of algae and rotifer culture, two skills that would open up a whole new world to him. In 1993 he graduated from East Stroudsburg University with a Bachelor of Science degree in biology and marine science. After graduation he spent a year working for Blue Earth Films, assisting in the production of a National Geographic Explorer feature film about coastal marine life. His job was to collect and maintain as many interesting creatures as possible for filming in aquaria. It was in those tanks that Todd experienced his first successes in the spawning and rearing of marine fishes. He found fish culture to be so addictive, and such a worthy cause, that he felt he had little choice but to devote his life to it.
Todd spent the next 3 years working for Bill Addison at C-quest, the world’s largest marine ornamental fish hatchery, where he worked on developing technology for the production of new marine species. His most important contribution was the development of a technique for commercial scale production of the Pseudochromids (dottybacks), allowing for the first widespread availability of several species including Pseudochromis fridmani, P. aldabrensis, P. flavivertex, and P. springeri.
In September 1998, Todd decided it was time to get more serious about aquaculture research and with some regret, left C-quest behind to pursue a Master of Science degree in biology at New York’s Hofstra University where he completed a thesis on the early nutrition of the lined seahorse, Hippocampus erectus.
Todd currently lives in Calverton, NY with his wife, Ashleigh and son, Finn. He works at The Long Island Aquarium, a small but highly regarded public aquarium on the east end of Long Island where he cares for a number of exhibit tanks, leads collecting excursions, and continues his aquaculture research behind the scenes. To date, he has raised 50 species of marine fish. In his spare time, Todd dives, photographs marine life, writes about marine life, competes in triathlons, and plays music.
Jim Welsh
Jim has been in the Saltwater hobby for seven years (never did fresh water) and an esteemed a member of the MBI Council (Marine Breeding Initiative). His interest in marine fish breeding started early, when his first pair of seahorses spawned immediately upon arrival. Since then he has worked with clownfishes, dottybacks, dragonettes, cardinals, seahorses and pipefish. He has maintained various live food cultures for several years without interruption. Jim's fish room has numerous tanks ranging in size from a 210 gallon display down to 10 gallons. In his "day job" Jim works as the IT Director for ETS Laboratories, a wine testing laboratory in Napa Valley, where he resides with his extremely tolerant and supportive wife and three somewhat understanding dogs.
Robin Bittner
Robin Bittner is a hobbyist based in the San Francisco bay area who has participated in all levels of the industry over the past 35 years. His fascination with all things aquatic was kick started when his grandfather, an avid fisherman, took Robin fishing in the local golf course pond where he caught his first fish (a bluegill, of course) when he was just a few years old. From that point on, Robin decided he wanted to become an ichthyologist and enjoyed exploring the local streams, lakes, and tide pools (when the rare opportunity presented itself). He finally was able to convince (aka “wear down”) his parents to let him have an aquarium when the goldfish from his freshman high school science class needed a home for the summer. First was a 10 gallon freshwater tank, then shortly thereafter came a 20 gallon saltwater tank back when Cost Plus sold those sorts of things. From that point we all can easily guess where the story went in terms of number and sizes of tanks!
After moving to Seattle for his junior year of high school, Robin secured a job with a local aquatics importer who specialized in freshwater fish but shared their facility with an angelfish breeder. Around this time the first shipments of saltwater fish began appearing in stores, and he left the importer side of the business for a retail shop where he ended up managing stores through his college years. Robin attended the University of Washington where he earned degrees in Aquaculture and Marine Resources Management, and later Masters of Marine Affairs. Through his jobs with steamship and supply chain companies, Robin has had the rare fortune to travel to many of the foreign locations where marine livestock originates, visited several catcher and importer facilities, and captured and brought home wild specimens for his tanks. For a few years he also had his own importer business, but now participates in the industry just as a breeder and hobbyist. Robin’s current interests focus on the culture of a. percula and a. ocellaris strains, but he has in the past bred and raised other species of fish and marine organisms.
Directions to Room 722 at Chabot College. Parking permits are enforced, and the permit machines do not provide change - please prepare $2 in small bills or coins.
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