Melevsreef.com - MAX in SoCal

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.

Thursday, April 3

Visit -- Tongs fish store

The next store we visited was Tongs. Again, none of that traffic you always here about.

The place is really large, compared to most LFS. The common drygoods section was in front, and the livestock behind it. That was a 50/50 layout, space-wise. However, this next picture is the other half of the entire store, full of tanks, stands, equipment and more.

The reef display in the rear left corner of the store was a nice surprise.

Need sharks? Got em.

Huge eel? No problem.

$100 lobo? Here you go.

Orange frogfish, in a small container

We easily pay $115 or more in DFW for this salt.

This was odd. The water level in this compartment is marked with arrows, and a pair of snowflake eels (tiny little guys) were moving in and out of those bioballs. The bioballs should give you a sense of scale. I would have liked to see someone rescue these eels and put them in a tank or at least one of those hamster balls.

Tiny Sexy Shrimp - yes, that is its name.

A nudi streching out into the flow, its foot holding onto a turbo snail.

Sponge.

Look at this huge center-overflow acrylic tank, just shoved into a corner. They should put those eels in it. LOL Bill stood in the picture for a sense of scale.