Reef Stock – Denver Colorado – March 13, 2010

Unless you were one of the few dozen captive bred fish brought to ReefStock, chances are you didn’t get to see the show from a fisheye lens. The tight crowds made it difficult to capture how densely packed the floor was with people. corals and exhibits but ReefStock photograper Adam Knudson of Devo Photography brought his trusty fisheye lens so we could all take in the view like a fish. Many more pictures after the break.

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With over 30 aquarium LED products showed off by more than 15 companies at this year’s ReefStock, were going to go ahead a call it: The future is now and LED lighting has truly arrived to the aquarium world. Spotlights, Striplights, moonlights, twilights, power lights and all form of DIY lights used LEDs to light up the ReefStock conference at the Denver Downtown Aquarium last weekend. In addition to the predominantly LED-using coral frag vendors, the LED lighting demonstration featured lights from Japan, Hong Kong, England and especially the United States. Despite some nefarious restrictions there is no way to hold back the floodgates of aquarium LED lighting anymore and the pictures below demonstrate just how much is available now. Follow the break to see what the future of aquarium lighting will look like. Huge thanks to Adam Knudson of Devo Photography for working very hard to get us all these pictures.

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With 60-70 participants and about 400 attendees the third ReefStock was the best show yet. The crowd came early and it stayed late for the ReefScape competition, the talks and the raffle. While we were doing all we could to oil the gears of the show, we had the great fortune to get in touch with avid ReefBuilders reader Adam Knudson who volunteered for extreme photography duty. The images you will see over the next couple days are mostly his and we thank him from the bottom of our tropical saltwater heart for documenting every square inch of this show. Continue reading for the first onslaught of pictorial inundation.

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One of the big attractions at this weekend’s ReefStock is the first public viewing of the production level Seashine lights from Stray Light Optical. As we hustle to finalize all the last minute details of ReefStock, we still had time to fire up the final Beta level Seashine light that we are beginning to review. This post is just about throwing light on a wall but for all the nitty gritty details of this light, see our previous coverage. Hit the read link for our raw first impressions of the Seashine lighting up a wall.

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Unless you’ve been living deep inside a piece of Totoka live rock, by now you should be aware that a huge LED lighting demonstration will be taking place at ReefStock this Saturday, March 13th at the Denver Downtown Aquarium. LED lighting has been a dream on the horizon for almost a decade but this weekend we will all see that this exciting and efficient lighting technology has really arrived to the aquarium hobby, with the reefers being first in line to take advantage of the intensity and coloring options that come from using Light Emitting Diodes. Whether you are into the hot rod or the DIY, spotlights, modular or custom LED lighting, with no less than 10 LED light makers in attendance this weekend we should get a good look at the current state of the art in aquarium LED lighting technology. And if you can’t make it because you don’t live in Colorado or neighboring states, fear not because you can bet your reefing budget that the Reef Builders staff will blogging their hearts out on everything LED at ReefStock so that anyone with internet connection can get front row coverage simply by stopping by the blog. In addition to all these LED lights and the first production LIFI Plasma Arc Seashine lights, we can expect a ton of new products to be announced and we can assure you that you will want to read about all that will unfold in Denver this weekend. With so many high tech lights in one place we may not be able to cause the formation of a ripple in the reefing space-time continuum but at the very least this grand show of LED force should be a great coming out party for the lighting technology which will just about push out all others in the coming years. Follow the break for a rundown of all the future players in the aquarium LED lighting world who will be coming to ReefStock and make sure you tune in to Reef Builders this weekend for all the action.

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Nano Customs might be releasing a new T5/LED light for nano aquariums or at least playing with the idea. This prototype light fixture is milled out of billet 6061 with a integrated passive heatsink & active cooling system for the T5s. The actual T5s are 20 watts each (you’ll get two of them) plus 10 PAR38 (5 on each side) MCPCBs in the fixture which comes out to 12″ x 6.5″ x 1.5″ which is a great size for nano aquariums. “These are built to order, we are planning on making them available in the full range of anodized colors.”  No price or lead time yet so we will have to stay tuned for more although we would love to see these become available in black. We can expect to see this concept fixture demoed at ReefStock where you can be certain that we will get plenty of hands on time with it.

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So the other day I was having a conversation with Jake Adams on the topic of aquascaping as a whole. Obviously we didn’t get too far off into the conversation without being derailed onto some sort of new LED gadgetry. Well over the passing days I came back to the conversation on my own. I find me asking myself what does it  really take to lay down something out of the ordinary, something to leave people in awe.

If you haven’t yet heard, Denver’s ReefStock event will be featuring the greatest diversity of marine and reef aquarium LED lights ever assembled. In addition to Ecoxotic, ReefBrite, NanoCustoms, AquaIlluminations and CoralSky, the Nautilus Ballroom at the Denver Downtown Aquarium will also be displaying the latest LED products from Tropical Marine Centre, Marineland and now also Japan’s most popular LED spotlights, the LeDio lamps by Volx Japan. Pictured above is the small army of gears, err LED spotlights from Volx in every color combination they make including the spanking new 9 watt UV LED lamp which is just starting to make the rounds in the land of the rising sun. How cool is that? Now if we could just find a great little fixture or track light to house these seven spotlights we’ll be all set. Huge thanks to our pal Taka for making the arrangements to display these exotics at ReefStock on behalf of Volx Japan.

Although propeller water pumps have long since taken over the in-tank circulation of reef aquarium water, the OceanProp 15000 is the first such product offering from AquaMedic. On a scale of 1-10 with 1 being the smallest and 10 being the largest prop pump out there, the OceanProp 15K is a 12. This two handed beast weighs in at 1685 grams, over 3.5 lbs! Even the sizeable lever-actuated suction mount is a behemoth that looks like it could support a small flat screen TV. What the OP15K lacks in discreteness it makes up for with a balance of performance and value. Follow the break for more thoughts and pictures.

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If you didn’t already have a hundred reasons to go to ReefStock on March 13th at the Denver Downtown Aquarium, now you have 300 more. AquaticLife has generously donated enough of their Ammonite Hydrometers to equip a small township of reefkeepers with one of the more recently released specific gravity testers. There will only be 300 of these freeby Ammonite Hydrometers available in the ReefStock shwag bags on a first come first serve basis and gauging by last year’s enthusiastic crowd, we expect the supply of Ammonites to be depleted by noon. Huge thanks to AquaticLife for the very generous donation, stay tuned to find out what we’ll hustle next for the ReefStock shwag bag.