CherylR

Many heartfelt thanks to Rift2Reef and Jeff Senske of Aquarium Design group for a great meeting. The new store looks fabulous and it's so nice to have a store in Lewisville that "gets" the hobby and works with the plant-heads. Dane told me that they intend to be a Seachem platinum store as well as carrying all the ADA products via ADG.

Kudos to Jeff for a great demo, as usual. I remember the HC aquascape in the meeting room at ADG and this will be just as fabulous when it fills in. Maybe in a couple of weeks someone will go down there and take more photos. Jeff's motto seems to be KISS!

I planted my HC in a couple of different tanks (just in case ) and Wowie Zowie they are still planted this morning! Jeff is right, these plugs from Florida Aquatic Nurseries are easier to keep down in the gravel.

Thanks again, guys, for all you do for the hobby.

jsenske

Thanks Cheryl.

I hope that some of the more advanced hobbyists (uh-hmm, Niko, etc.) were'nt too disappointed having seen/been familiar with much of what I talked about concerning substrate, etc.

And as for the scape itself, I wanted to do something that fit the store, and was realistic for Dane to easily maintain. To spend 5 hours on an ultra-groundbreaking, never-before-seen hardscape would not have made sense on a number of levels. So my apologies if some of felt like you stood around for 2+ hours to see me put three rocks in a tank. The goal was to establish an introductory-level aquascape/display and to establish a presence with ADA products. Hopefully to those ends it was a success! I really enjoyed it myself, and Dane and his Dad and staff are some really cool people that I look forward to working with.

CherylR

LOL! Yes, but HOW do you put the three rocks in the tank? That is the real question.

A simple aquascape is ideal, because it looks doable to the average person. That will invite more people into the hobby, more customers for Dane, more members for us, more customers for you, win-win all around.

And I learned something about the ADA substrates. Just wish I could afford them!

Kjm

This was a great meeting...Thanks Jeff! I just wish that I could have stayed for the complete setup. Unfortunately, I had a husband that needed picking up at the airport. I seriously thought about calling him and getting him to take Super Shuttle.

I hope that those of you that took pictures will post them somewhere. I left when the plugs were going in and would love to see the rest.

Kathy

TAM

Many thanks to Rift2Reef and Jeff Senske, I'm sorry I couldn't stay for the entire process. I'll be back to check and inspect in a few weeks.

TAM

Rift2Reef

Thanks to all of you for coming. We really appreciate everyone taking time out of their day to come to the store.

It was very nice meeting everyone. We are working very hard to try to seperate ourselves from the other stores in the metroplex by embracing things such as the ADA line and the planted aquarium aspect of the hobby.

I appreciate everyone's support and I look forward to our future encounters. Thanks again to everyone for attending and thank you Jeff for taking time out of your busy schedule to come to Dallas and do the presentation.

Thanks again.

Dane Myers
Rift 2 Reef Aquatics

niko

I felt that the meeting was a big succes in promoting the local planted tank hobby because quite a bit of people from other local clubs or web sites came to the store. The store itself does feel like a different kind of store - not the standard DAS "I've seen it a 100 times already" type of layout and stock. These 1 inch cichlids that like to dwell in itsy bitsy caves did catch my attention. Dane told me that he had done an Anubias tank with them and I think there is a lot of potential in such a combination of fish, rocks, wood, and plants.

Following up with pictures of the tank development will be the best thing to do to keep the interest. I will be visiting the store again soon and will probably take pictures, but I believe some folk from dallasfishbox.com will take and post pictures too.

The only thing we should have done was to wear name tags and the names of the club or website. The dallasfishbox people talked about that on their forum and I agree with them - that's a great idea when you mix people like that.

Thank you Dane for hosting!

Thank you Jeff for "placing rocks"! My is hope that when the tank develops and people see how it looks it will become clear that the hardscape is very much the most important part of the initial set up and it's not something that can be rushed.

--Nikolay

Ben Belton

So where are some pics Nikolay?