Any Interest?

[BeachBum843]

If anyone has any interest in starting a reef aquarium society in Horry County, S.C., please post here. Drop me a PM and check back from time to time.

If we can generate enough interest, maybe we can start a club.

[Ed Ricketts]

BB843,
you have a PM

[BeachBum843]

Thanks Ed. Always nice to meet a new person.

[Ed Ricketts]

BB843
Pm reply already, but you're on to something there.

It would be great to accomplish a couple of things with a local club (and pardon me for reiterating what might be objectives/dreams/desires or even accomplishments of other clubs already on RC)

Draw on experienced individuals in the community to provide even basic direction to newcomers and experienced indivduals alike.

Short educational activities/lectures/hands on workshops on a more or less regular basis.

Provide feedback and experiences to group members beyond what is possible from just reading books, reading posts,...

A brief thought or two and you could easily come up with the agenda for the first 12-18 months. I've had contact with local marine biologists who are studying coastal ecology/geologic changes over the last several thousand years (I know a guy), we could certainly parlay club status into visits to aquariums in Charleston, Ripley's in MB, and even others. Depending on how much interest is generated, over a period of months to years actual economic benefit can be reaped by a group of individuals acting together, whether it's simply buying live rock in quantity, fragging acro, or production of desirable species with the intent of wholesale/retailing to the general public. (though I'll admit, not a casual endeavor).

Let's just get some smart, optimistic reefkeepres (or "non-keepers") together and see what happens.

just a thought. post count up to t-h-reee.

[BeachBum843]

Yeah Ed, i'd agree with all that. I'd rather participate in a club with some sense of purpose, interesting topics, maybe some hands on lectures or activities rather than just meet up for a social hour. I mean, there's nothing wrong with hanging out, it's just i'd rather learn something.

The Charleston reef club has the right idea. I've been to a few of their meetings. They usually hold their meetings in a neutral location (restaurant, library, etc.) or one of the LFS's will sponsor them, and they always have at least one topic with a presentation by one of their members. The last time I went to one, the topic was fragging SPS corals, and everyone got to try their hands at fragging a coral head (in this case, pink bird's nest) with shears, cyanoacrylate glue and a reef plug.

They also raise money for the club's treasury by raffling off freebies from LFS's (gift certificates, donated dry goods, etc.) and then sum the whole thing up at the end with a member frag swap/social time.

See, something like that would be fun.

I'm not sure you really need to plan out an agenda that far in advance other than picking meeting places/times a month or two ahead of schedule, and selecting who would be presenting what topics, etc. It might be easier to see if we can get participants and just see how it evolves.

I also know a few professors out at Coastal and down at the Clemson extension marine research institute, as well as a few students in the Marine Science program out at CCU. I'm sure I could talk Don Ferguson out there into participating to some degree, as well as Dr. Doran Houser when he's in town (my old college room-mate at Coker). Dorian graduated from Scripps Institute in San Diego and now owns his own company called Biomimetica, which studies the psychological and physiological impact of sound on marine life.

In the little freebie website connected to this forum, I have a tentative date of Labor Day weekend planned for a day at Ripleys Aquarium. I threw that up there as a target date where we could maybe pick a day and arrange a behind-the-scenes tour at Ripleys followed by a Q&A session. I'm a forum moderator over at www.petfish.net and I have a few friends from that website driving down to stay with me that weekend (right now it's five people not including yours truely) and I figured on one day it'd be something fun to do. Do the behind-the-scenes thing and then see the rest of the displays, and then everyone could break up and do their own thing over at Broaway ATB.

They also have that "sleep with the sharks" overnight program in which everyone participating pays a fee to unroll a sleeping bag or air mattress to crash for the night in the shark display. I know it's mostly for kids, but there's no age limit. It might be fun if we had enough people to stretch out for the night in the shark tube.

[BS]

I'd be interested... I'm up in the Calabash area.... I would like to get involved as a way to increase the diversity of my coral collection... mainly zoa's... I've talked with Bruce @ SCD about splitting a coral order with him...... maybe others would be interested also?

[Rpierce]

BS- Check us out here!

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=338

I'm in Little River.

Rick

[Ed Ricketts]

Rick, who maintains (pays for) the myrtle beach reefers website? Is there already a society lurking out there, fragging and educating people in Horry?

[Rpierce]

I honestly don't know who pays for that website. We only use the forums on RC. We are a pretty active group. We meet once a month at someone's house and talk "REEF".

Check us out here: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=338

What about you? Are you in Horry?

[H2OLUVSME]

Ed, BB843, BS, did you guys ever check out RKoMB forum here on RC? Id really like to know about you guys tanks.

BS, I was also a big zoa guy and plan to be again with my next tank. Id love to see what types you have. Maybe I can make sure i buy a differnt variety so Ive got something to trade. At the very least when I start buying we can get in on some group buys. Im just getting started again though, so Ill be a while. Im just a forward thinker :D

[BS]

H2OLUVSME..... YGPM