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 -- Sea Dwelling Creatures

After we left this fishstore, we drove north for a while to pick up a pallet full of Reef Hobbyist Magazines for MAX, which was at Sea Dwelling Creatures - a local wholesaler that ships internationally as well.

Walking in from beautiful 70 degree weather into a super humid environment was very surprising. And little did I know it, but my camera decided that its final shots would occur in this place. I got permission to share these images with you, and within 30 minutes the camera was dead. Sad panda, indeed.

Newly arrived fish are quarantined in a green solution. Check out what this skimmer looked like.

These mandarins were being acclimated to normal non-medicated water.

Boxes of LR of all kinds where here.

Livestock is boxed up, ready to ship.

Newly arrived fish are quarantined in a green solution. Check out what this skimmer looked like.

These mandarins were being acclimated to normal non-medicated water.

Boxes of LR of all kinds where here.

Livestock is boxed up, ready to ship.

Filtration for this place is impressive. Two huge sand filters, and seven (or was it nine) massive skimmmers keep the water parameters in check.

Sorry for any blurry shots, this is when the camera decided to stop cooperating.

There was a walkway to access the collection cups and beckett nozzles.

Looking down through the catwalk.

Talk about water moving through a skimmer!

I never asked what these were for, because they were busy talking and I didn't want to interrupt.

Top off float valves - these were pretty big.

Huge filter socks.

Massive pumps. I saw a pile of them, but wasn't sure if they were scrap or if they were repaired and ready as back ups.

One of many power stations.

Tons of brine shrimp were hatching here

Some corals.

Huge angels being acclimated.

The bagging stations as well as the acclimation stations were set up to make it as easy as possible to transfer livestock from bag to container or back into bags. The trough area drains into a common line, more than likely to be filtered again (depending on what water they are dealing with).

Airlines hang down to fill the bags, and water lines hang down to add water to bags, rinse stuff off, or slowly acclimate livestock.

Some of the bins are just styrofoam boxes with screens glued in, very simple but effective.

And that's it. My camera died, never to work again. I took it apart that evening hoping to find a bad gear or something, but had no luck.

The next place I got to visit was another wholesaler associated or owned by Walt Smith. By comparison to the pictures above, it was incredible clean, well lit, and the kind of place you'd love to work at. That is no slight upon Sea Dwelling Creatures, they have a plan that works. The other one was different, and fun to tour. Had my camera worked, I may still not have gotten permission to take any pictures.

Every acrylic tank was super clean, even the tiny cubby tanks that each house one fish. All the coral tanks were lit by suspended AquaSpacelight fixtures. We hung out there for a couple of hours before calling it a night.

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