That Fish Blog – Aquarium Advice and Information

I can’t believe it is mid-September already, and we are just a few weeks away from our Fall TFP/NCPARS frag swap. The Swap is on Saturday October 6th, during our weekend long Customer Appreciation Sale here at TFP.  The Fall Frag Swap, one of the biannual swaps we host with NCPARS, is shaping up to be a great event.  Our joint swaps have been growing and growing with each coming event, and have become one of the largest swap events on the east coast.  Our Winter Frag Swap this past January had over 400 attendees.  With the additional crowd that comes for our Customer Appreciation Sale event, this swap should be a very busy.

The Customer Appreciation Sale weekend includes all the deals we offer in October throughout the store, Plus some great deals that are for the Frag Swap and Sale weekend.  Weekend deals include 25% off all TFP livestock, Buy three get one free select salt bucket deals.  There will also be some sweet coupon deals on our October sale flyer for the sale weekend.  If you are not already on our retail flyer mailing list, you can still sign up for our email notifications from our TFP home page (just make sure you select notifications for our retail store in your preferences)

For the frag swappers, there will be eye candy galore, from some of the best coral hobbyist on the east coast, including NCPARS own Dan Rigle who was recently featured in Coral Magazine.  Jason Fox, will be on hand, showing off some of his rare beauties.  TFP will have a nice stock of our own frags on hand, including a nice selection of ORA and ACI aquaculture coral.  For more information visit NCPARS Website to register for the event, or visit Fragswapper to see or list items for trade or sale.

Our Vendors have donated some nice items for the NCPARS raffle, including a 60 gallon reef ready cube tank, stand and Reef Capable LED light from Marineland and many other great items.

Aquatic Manufacturer Representatives will be on hand from; United Pet Group (Tetra, Marineland, Instant Ocean, Perfecto…….), Two Little Fishies, Seachem, Aquarium Pharmaceuticals, Reed Mariculture, Hagen, Ruby Reef

Pet Product Manufacturer Representatives will be on hand from; Merrick, Nature’s Variety, Blue Buffalo, Nutro, Nutrisource, Answers, Earthborn, Dogswell, Zukes, Marchioro, Pawganics, Multipet, A&E Cages.

There will be a little something for everyone, so bring the family, and join the fun.

Hope to see you here!

Dave

For those of you who weren’t able to attend this year’s TFP/NCPARS Winter Frag Event, you missed a great time! Over a 6 hour period on that frigid Saturday (Jan. 30), our retail store was what can only be described as a reef geek’s dream. What spends most of the year as our pond fish and plant display room, became a sea of people, tables, and tanks. The event had over 400 attendees in the swap area, thousands of coral frags of all kinds, great deals from our manufacturers, and a whole lot of smiles. A big thanks and congratulations to everyone at NCPARS and the TFP staff who was involved organizing and working the event, even though it got a little crazy for a while, things went smoothly and we all had a great time. Read More »

Hello everyone! We are only ten days away from the second annual TFP/NCPARS Winter Frag Event, being held here at our retail store in Lancaster, PA .  On Saturday January 30^th our store will be invaded by coral reef enthusiast from all over the northeast, we are looking forward to having a great time, and a great turn out.  Last years event was a blast, everyone had a great time, we think this year will be even better.  The event is open to anyone who wants to attend, there will be an admission charge to enter the frag swap market area, and have access to the special speaker presentations, and Raffles.  Visit Fragswapper.com to pre-register and get more information.  Pre-registration is not required.  Whether your just starting out in the reef hobby or you’ve been collecting for years, you may find something awesome to take home to your tank.  There should be in excess of 1,000 frags available between the swap and TFP’s own stock! Read More »

That’s right! The NCPARS/That Fish Place Winter Frag Event will be back again in just a few short weeks! On Saturday January 30th from 11 pm-5 pm, we’ll be hosting NCPARS (North Central PA Aquarium Reef Society) members and  coral fraggers and collectors from near and far for the biggest fragging event of the season. Industry experts and vendors will be here to help you with reefing and fragging needs, there will be fragging demos, and LOTS of frags, fish, inverts and other goods. Save the date for this fun and frag-filled event!

Last year’s event was a big success and hundreds of beautiful coral frags found new homes. For more details and to register visit fragswapper.com. and watch for more updates at ThatFishPlace.com closer to the big day!  Admission will be 5.00 for members and 10.oo for non-members, and there will be bargins galore. 

See you then!

Hi, Dave here, It has been a while since I have posted a blog entry, I have busy working on some renovations and remodeling of our fish room here in our store.  The bulk of the work is now complete, and wow what a change we have made, the fish room seems HUGE now.  Anyone who has not visited the store in the last couple months is in for a surprise when they visit the fish room.   Walls are missing, systems have moved, systems have expanded, and we are not done yet!

One of the objectives of the remodel was to create a bigger, better open space in what was our “pond room” for hosting events and having a flexible area for whatever we want to use it for.  The first event to take advantage of this new space will be the TFP/NCPARS winter frag swap extravaganza on January 31st, 2009.

I wanted to add some more details about the event, which we had announced a while back, and had a previous blog entry for.

The Frag Swap is being run by NCPARS (the North Central Pennsylvania Reef aquarium Society) and all proceeds from the event will go to benefit the club.  Information about the club can be found on their website http://www.ncpars.org/.  Entrance to the event is $5 for members and $10 for non members.  Attendees and sellers can pre-register on http://www.fragswapper.com/

The event has morphed into much more  than just a frag swap, and will be of interest to any marine aquarium hobbyist, from beginner to expert.  Through TFP’s assosiation with industry leading manufacturer’s and experts, we have put together a show that will include some great seminars, as well as on-hand manufacturers representatives to answer questions about their products.

Seminars for the event include:

Anthony Calfo: Anthony is a well known reef aquarium expert, Authored  “The Book of Coral Propagation” and is the publisher of “C the Journal“.  Anthony has spent years traveling the world and working in many phases of the industry, his seminar for this event is “Interesting facilities of the world” a showcase of places he has visited through the years in all areas of the hobby.

Steven Pro: Steven has worked in the industry for many years in many capacaties, including retail, wholesale, maintenance, and now manufacturing.  Steven’s presentation “You Touched it, Now What? Poisonous, Venomous, and Contagious things in your aquarium” puts together many things that he has seen and learned about dangerous things in your reef aquarium, and how to deal with them.

Randy Reed: Founder of Reed Mariculture, a manufacturer of specialty reef foods, that includes Phytoplankton and Zooplankton diets.  Randy will do a presentation about the “Fundamentals of Feeding Your Reef”

Dave Troop and Mike Elliot:  Dave and Mike are the founders of a new company in the hobby, Aquatic Life.  Dave and Mike have been integral members of a number of industry leading companies through the years, and have now joined forces to start a new company, that strives to bring truly innovative lighting and products to the hobby.  As a former TFP employee, Dave is returning home, to provide a presentation about ” Understanding light Output”

Ike Eigenbrode: Ike is a long time hobbyist, and is now the vice president of sales and marketing of Current USA, an industry leader in aquarium lighting and chiller manufacturing. Ike is going to do a presentation on “Aquariums and Energy Efficiency”

Along with these Seminars, manufacturer Representatives from Brightwell Aquatics, Kent Marine, Seachem, EcoTech Marine, Ice Cap, Coralife, Red Sea, and others will be present throughout the show to answer questions and showcase some of their products.

Last but not least THE DEALS!  TFP will give every paid attendee a 20% off one item coupon, good for use after the sale (restrictions apply).  In cooperation with our manufacturers, both attending and non attending, we will have a selection of over 300 additional products on sale the day of the event ranging from 10% – 25% off our already low prices.  These sale items will only be available to frag swap attendees.

Also benefiting NCPARS, the show will end with a raffle of some really great items that have been donated by our manufacturers.  A sample of some of the items in the raffle include:

Complete Solana and Cardiff aquarium setups from Current USA, these are beautiful high end nano aquarium, valued at over $700 dollars each!  These aquariums will be set up as displays during the show, so you can see them in all their beauty!

EcoTech Marine Vortec WMP 20 wave pump

Sunlight Supply  400watt Blue Wave Metal Halide ballast

Red Sea C-Skim 1200 Protein Skimmer

Aquatic Life pH Controller

Two Little Fishes Phosban Reactor

And Many more items………

Come Join us January 31st from 11-5 for our first frag swap, there is alot of buzz about the show, and we are looking forward to seeing everyone there.

Schedule of Events:

Hope to see you there,

Dave