CDAS MONTHLY NOTICE – December 16th, 2008

Monthly Meeting

Date: Tuesday 16th December 2008
Time: Meeting room doors open for members at 7:50pm for an 8pm sharp start
Place: The Harmonie German Club - 49 Jerrabomberra Avenue, Narrabundah

Last month is the president Alex did a talk on the all important quarantine tank and touched on common fish diseases and how to treat them. While some people don't have the ability to quarantine new fish due to have limited tank space, it is an important thing to do as it could affect the well being of your existing fish. So thanks heaps for that more than informative talk.

This month is our now traditional Christmas party/trivia night, so bring your piscatorial brains with you for a fun packed evening. This year we will be ordering some hot finger food from the club, so that will also be available on the night so help us support our new sponsor. Instead of our usual raffle we will be substituting it with a fish raffle of fish that have kindly been donated by club members. So far we have cichlids, catfish, killifish, rainbows etc, so if you would like to donate some plants and/or fish for the raffle please contact the committee (or respond to this email), all donations would be gratefully accepted.

With membership fees continuing to come in, we have finally gotten enough in the kitty to subscribe to two Australian fish keeping magazines, Australian Aquarium Keepers and Australian Aquarium Magazine. We have also purchased the “Back to Nature Guide on Keeping L number Catfish” publication. This book is an excellent book on keeping the increasingly popular L number catfish. These have arrived and are now available to be borrowed by anyone with a valid 08/09 membership and will be available at the next meeting. We are also aiming to hand out the 08/09 membership cards.

Due to popular demand the CDAS trade table also has obtained more Aqua-Pics buffers and conditioners for purchase for members only. This along with a limited amount of decapsulated brine shrimp eggs (for use with tiny fry and baby catfish) and containers of freeze dried brine shrimp that the fish just lap up.

The normal auction will take place again this month, so if you have excess healthy fish or a surplus of plants here is your opportunity to pass them on to other enthusiasts.

We will be taking a very exciting step for our conservation program this month, with the first of the CDAS breeding program fish being handed out to the volunteers who put their hands up last month. It is good to see that a good CDAS initiative/member benefit finally off the ground.

So with all these benefits for members, why wouldn’t you want to be a member? So we can still offer member services like the trade table, library books purchases, magazine subscriptions and conservation program, please renew your membership or try to encourage your friends to join.

If you have any suggestions about what you would like to see the club do, get involved in, how you would like to see the meetings structured etc, or even fish to be added to the conservation list, please approach one of the committee members and tell us, after all it is your club. If you don’t tell us what you want, then the committee needs to decide what is best for the members.

We would also like take this opportunity to thank our sponsors, Alex and Rene from Redtree Aquariums and Ben from Age of Aquariums. Without their continued support and donations of raffle prizes this year I have no doubt that CDAS would almost have disappeared which would have been an awful shame given it has been around for over 30 years.

I was speaking with Rene today at Redtree and he mentioned that there will be a BBQ at Redtree Aquariums from 5-7 on Friday the 19th and you are all invited.

I hope you all keep on with the club. Exciting changes have and will continue to occur and you get out what you put. So let’s get this club more like a society and get involved.

Keep those fish a swimming dancing

If you have items for the auction you will need to fill out an Auction Form. You can pick one up on the night of the next meeting or you can download it here and fill it in beforehand. Just don't forget to bring it along! Auction Form (17kb)