Melevsreef.com - Cincinnati, Ohio

Cincinnati, Ohio

May 23-25 , 2008: The Cincinnati club invited me to fly out and speak to their membership...

Everything was so lush and green!

Yes, gas prices are horrible here as well.

Saturday morning, we drove to Marine Solutions (MarineSolutionsInc.com) to visit Joe’s business as well as pick up livestock for the club’s “power buy”. Joe told me that his business was four years old, but perhaps he was referring specifically to his green house section. We ended up staying there about 3 hours as we located and bagged the various critters the club members had ordered.

This is Joe, bagging some livestock as Ed watched.

Seeing cats and dogs walking around in a LFS was an interesting experience for me. The sailfin seemed to agree.

Imagine Reef Crystals using this image as their new ad campaign. hehehe

Did I mention there were dogs too?

Outside, stables were nearby with horses too!

Here is the green house section, which you access by walking through the store area. The greenhouse was warm, probably in the upper 80s and that was with nice cool weather (low 70s) and 60% shade cloth. He opened some vents on one side and turned on the water cooler system the ran along one wall, and the cool air blew in and made a huge difference. The various vats were filled with corals, inverts, and a large variety of frags. Shopping there is easy, just perusing the various tanks to find what you want. Prices were very reasonable with frags varying from $8 to $10 a frag. It is a little tricky determining those special corals when they are lit with natural sunlight. The colors tend to be more brown and drab, but if you take your time and look closely, you’ll find those gems easily. Once all the power buy stuff was bagged up, I found several beautiful frags off zoanthids and a couple of SPS that I forced Ed to buy for his new tank. I think he’ll be very happy with those corals.

Here are two pictures in a row, to show you what it looks like to your eye, versus what it would look like in normal reeftank lighting. Using Photoshop, I clean up all the haze. The reason for this comparison is because it is quite similar to shopping there. You may not immediately see those special items until you look very closely.

Quite a difference, right?

I even learned a trick pertaining to lettuce nudibranchs. Joe had placed these in a seal cup that had a few holes drilled through to avoid oxygen depravation. When you pulled the cup out of the water, water would flow out of those holes and the nudibranchs would also come out somewhat, seemingly stuck. I wasn’t sure how to get the nudibranch back into the container without hurting it. After a couple of minutes, I decided to just leave it alone and let the animal do what it wanted on its own. In the process, I noticed a couple more got stuck and quickly realized that by lifting that cup out of the water, I was causing the effect rather than the nudis trying to escape on their own. Following that logic, it seemed that if I pressed the cup into the water, water would jet into each hole and thus force the nudibranch out of the orifice and back into the cup. Impressed with my discovery and that fact that all of them were now safely inside the container, I sealed it with the lid and left it floating in the tank. Hopefully this little tidbit will help someone else in the future dealing with similar circumstances.