Pat Kelly
CCA Member
I just sent this out to the membership. If you did not get one tell me. Anyway, here is a copy for the forum. Remember that you do not need to belong to the club to check out one of our meetings. Please come. Please join.
Hello CCA members, and honored guests.
I figured it was time for a little update.
Please remember that there are no meetings in July or August but the club still goes on.
Your Board of Directors will likely meet sometime during the summer and I will keep you posted when it is. The Board of Directors are the 5 persons that you elect to the Pres, VP, Corresponding Secretary, Recording Secretary, and Treasurer positions. We meet several times per year to discuss the business of the club. We vote on important issues like dues, speakers, forum, web site, and operations issues. Having these meetings makes our monthly meetings more fun since we do not have to take care of business at that time.
On the 2nd Saturday of August, a bunch of us are taking a road trip to FryBabies in PA. Keep an eye on the Forum and here for further details. Some people will car pool and others will just meet us up there. Right now, the plan is to meet at FryBabies at 11am.
The address is
562 Ebelhare Road
Pottstown PA 19465
They are only open by appointment. http://www.frybabies.com/
September will, I hope, be a big month for the club. We have Ad Konings coming in to talk. He is one of the biggest names in the hobby right now for Cichlids. You can check out his bio on this site. http://www.cichlidpress.com/biography/index.htm He is not cheap to bring in so I hope you all show up.
I think this will be our biggest meeting yet and I have several items coming for the auction. Including a Fluval 205, an Eclipse set up, and a new MarineLand C220 canister filter. Bring your money or checkbook for some great deals.
The raffle will have the usual goodie bags, at least 1 Aqua Clear 50, and I am working on another item. We will see. Sarah is working on a box exchange to happen at that meeting also. She will be putting the word out when we need donations from you breeders and if it works out there will be some fish from the club in Minnesota in the auction for you to bid on. I will keep you up to date on this meeting.
The forum has been in lock down for months now because of porn spammers. That means that only people that we let in were allowed to post on it. Most people could not even see most of the forum. With the assistance of Li, one of our newest members, we plan on opening this back up. He feels we can over come the Spam problem and maybe draw more people in, if it is open. There will still be a CCA member's only section that is not open to the public. Li, for those of you who do not know, brings with him, a lot of forum experience to our club. His three forums are gigantic in size.
http://aquatic-photography.com/forum/
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/
Last week when I started typing this, between the 3 forums there are 100,308 members and 997,655 posts. I also hope to change the appearance of the forum by dressing it up some. Maybe some new banners and pictures. I will get Cristy to put links in for Li's forums.
Since October is normally election month and we will be at the Aquafest 2007 we will change things a little bit. At the September meeting there will be a call for nominations. Anyone wishing to run for an elected position may speak up at that time. We will then vote on the forum or possibly by mail. That part has not been worked out yet. If there is only one person running for a position then there will be no reason for a vote. We will see how the nominations go at the September meeting first.
It is getting close to time for another Biotope issue. We always need the same thing. Articles. I think we have 2 so far. If you look at most clubs publications, you will find that they just reprint most of the stuff from exchange articles from more clubs. We try not to do that so we need your help. Anyone can write an article. Everyone got into the hobby some how. Everyone has a favorite fish or product. Please no product bashing. </SPAN>An article can be a 1 or 2 paragraph, or a monster like the one I just got. Draw a cartoon. Just do something please. We are attempting to sell some advertising space in the Biotope to help offset the costs. Our money is starting to get a little low and we need to help offset the printing costs to keep the club going.
Remember that we are having a catfish/cichlid show in October so start getting your show fish ready. Everyone should be able to enter at least one fish. We want a minimum of 100 fish in the show so start thinking what you are going to bring. We want our first attempt to be a good one. Volunteers will be sought soon. Keep an eye out for the request from Francine. Also as part of that show, there will be a Sunday Auction. Remember to bring fish for the auction. See the PVAS web site for rule on the auction. Remember only fish bags. No zip lock bags.
In November, our good friend Discus Hans will be coming to show us his presentation of Discus. Hans has been here before and also has supported our club.
December is the Holiday Party at Francine's house (I know, Its only June)
Remember to support the companies and dealers that support your club. You can find the latest list on the club website.
Have a safe summer and don't neglect those tanks.
Pat
