Southern California

April 2 - 6, 2008: As soon as I received my invitation to speak at the Marine Aquarium Expo in Orange County, I quickly decided to arrive a few days early to check out what SoCal had to offer. Even with my camera breaking by the end of Day Two, I still found a way to enjoy my trip immensely. Brandishing a borrowed Sony camera for the rest of my trip, I ended up coming home with over 800 images total. Below are links to the various places I visited during my stay, and I hope you will not only enjoy the summation but feel the motivation to make the trip yourself one day.

Friday, April 4

Visit -- Greg Carroll (gcarroll), Richard McKellips (wishntoboutside)

Back on the freeway again, we grabbed a bite to eat on the way to Greg's. I mentioned the fog, which Greg quickly corrected as smog, but it wasn't orange like when I was growing up. Hazy, but better than when I lived in Southern Califonia. Look, mountains!

Here is Greg Carroll (gcarroll), standing proudly in front of his five year old reef.

Now before I continue, let me just say that I worked on these in Photoshop to remove the excess blue the Sony camera captured. Here's a before and after shot. I reduced the blue to 74%. So that is why the colors will appear the way they do, hopefully true to life.

This is a huge stunning piece, very purple in person.

End of Tank, and again zoomed in a bit in the following shot.

From the opposite end of the tank

Greg has lots of clams in his tank. You just have to look for them, but it is kind of fun playing Where's Waldo in his reef for those, as well as some choice frags that are often out of sight or hidden from view.

We also wanted to look down inside the tank to see the corals and clams from above.

Take a look at this picture, and then the next one. Top down shots are really fun.

Again, before and after

From ground level. This is a chalice named Pumpkin Patch. You could see it in the top down shot above as well.

Greg is going to install the new reflectors on this light bracket. It will allow him to flip them up and out of his way as necessary.

The next stop we made was Richard McKellips (wishntoboutside) & his dog Sharkbait. Another entire system that was built into a room in his garage area.

Richard (grey t-shirt) is talking to Rob of Rob's Reef

His reef tank

Chauvet switches to turn on or off any piece of related equipment.

This Montipora has encrusted the powercord to a pump, so the pump isn't being cleaned for now.

This was a junk tank, holding various items that he needed to find a home. Note the lighting - whatever worked, it was in use.

He has a couple frag tanks going. SaraB is looking at the acans and clowns.

Igloo coolers were holding up those lights above. LOL

Bright yellow zoathids.

Look at all the cute little clowns.

Up on the wall, Richard has some fish in cubbies.

All the tanks were plumbed together, or going to be plumbed together. Some tools were nearby, like this wet-saw to cut stony corals into frags.

The acans were beautiful. I'm not caught up in the current craze to possess them, but I do love looking at the variety of colors.

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