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The UKAPS massive, invade Holland! Vivarium 2011

Mark Evans

Mark Evans

Member
Joined
13 Jun 2008
Messages
6,483
Location
newark notts.
I guess like me, you've wondered how cool it would be to be jollying off around Europe doing shows?...

I can tell you, it's HARD! Firstly my hat now goes off to the guys, Dan, George & co. It's just relentless, tiresome and just generally hard work, mentally and physically. More on that later.

The trip started with a few of us arriving at Dans hows late Thursday evening, where we stayed the night getting ready for the weekend.

Myself, John Starkey, Sam (Themuleous ) and stevey boy (steve UK) had nothing but admiration for Dan's new set up which is rather swish.

Sam took it to the next level, by staring at it for some considerable time :lol:

Deep in thought...

sam.jpg

After a ridiculous 3 hours kip, we then set off to pick the London gang up.

I'll add pics later on, and also, some other guys will be adding pics to.

I'll be making a short but sweet vid, with a special little segment for all the shrimp lovers 😉 (interview with thee top guy)

Rory, feel free to post your images over here to. :thumbup:
 
There should be plenty of images posted.

Ferry trips are always fun. They remind me of my band days, travelling in and out of Europe on a regular basis, but to do it for Aquascaping is great.

Here's Paulo (londondragon) taking in some of Dans humour.

paulo.jpg

and here's the great DC himself.

dan-4.jpg
 
Hey,

I'm sorry to have not been there this year.

Doing these shows are truly punishing. Lack of sleep, hangovers, traveling. It's a killer, but great fun. Respect to Dan for organising this him self. I'm so caught up in studying I can't help my best mate out. So Dan deserves all the credit for the ukaps endeavours.

Good work on flying the ukaps flag.

Sorry I couldn't take part.

Look forward to seeing the show pics.
 
I've never really seen a Vivarium in real life, but there were plenty on show. This one in particular.

For me, extremely inspiring, and realistic in appearance

viv-pic-2.jpg
 
If thats only one pic. I look forward to the rest. Come on and upload em 🙂

Stop teasing us....
 
Thanks guys!

Well, what can I say, the UKAPS members who attended did us proud, relentless workers and a great team!

I've had three and a hlaf hours sleep and i've been at work since 8, I've managed to pop in a cheeky 30 minute snooze but I have work experience kids in which means I can't do the usual - pop the TV on, hit the sofa and have a proper sleep, FURIOUS :lol:

Well done to everyone and thanks for making the effort. I'll write some more once i've got my awake head on.
 
Mark Evans said:
I guess like me, you've wondered how cool it would be to be jollying off around Europe doing shows?...

I can tell you, it's HARD! Firstly my hat now goes off to the guys, Dan, George & co. It's just relentless, tiresome and just generally hard work, mentally and physically. More on that later.
Click to expand...

and then some!
But well worth it 🙂

Dan Crawford said:
Well, what can I say, the UKAPS members who attended did us proud, relentless workers and a great team!
Click to expand...

Thanks Dan. Hats off to you too. No doubt it was a huge whack of work preparing stuff before you even got up in the middle of the night on the Fri morning to start the road trip.

Dan Crawford said:
I'll write some more once i've got my awake head on.
Click to expand...

I know that feeling, I'm also half asleep still.


mlgt said:
If thats only one pic. I look forward to the rest. Come on and upload em 🙂

Stop teasing us....
Click to expand...

Seeing as I have no pics to contribute, and the day off work, I feel I should carry on in the vein of Marks first post by saying how the Southern side of the trip got started 🙂


Around lunchtime on the Thursday Gerard (frothhelmet) and Rik (mlgt) came over to mine and whiled the afternoon away scaping up one of my pico tanks in preparation for the show. The guys came up with a simple but cracking little layout for UKAPS, nice one fellas :clap:

This overlapped a bit with Ed (Piece-of-fish) and Lisa (Lisa_Perry75) who turned up in the evening and stayed over for the night.

Ed also brought a tank along, which I was chomping at the bit to see, but it was all under wraps until the show. Quite literally. Covered in cling film and you could not see in it at all. I was already impressed though because it was not just a tank but the whole package (fantastic DIY cabinet, all top notch glassware, etc).

We all got a bit carried away chatting into the night (no surprise there) and also ended up with just a few hours sleep.
We still managed to make it up bright and early ready for Dan and the others to pick us up @6:30am on the Friday.

Paulo (London Dragon) got to mine early on the Friday.

Dan was also ahead of schedule, and even more surprisingly we were ready for him 🙂

We loaded up, all 9 of us squeezed into our 8 seater mini bus (lucky it was only a short drive down the road 😵 :lol: ) and off we went.

UKAPS road trip baby 😀
 
All I can say is UKAPS BABYYY!!!! this was an amazing experience and really shows that doing this kind of event is not easy work, although the team worked well and we got the stand up and running in no time, taking it down was also military precision. I can also now appreciate all the work and effort that goes into these events.

Was not sure what to expect from the event as this was my first, but this really blew my mind away, was great just to be on the UKAPS stand and chatting to people, explaining how all the equipment in a planted tank works, chatting about the scapes on show, etc... on the second day also managed to catch a couple of talks by Chris Lukhap and Claus Christensen, essential if you like planted tanks and shrimp, really amazing how these guys also interacted with us, great atmosphere and was great to chat to these guys in person and not just read about them on-line.

Got home this morning at 6:30am and was just knackered, haven't had a chance to look at the photos I took with my little compact, I will have a look later and upload any decent shots.

Looking forward to Vivarium 2012!!! 😉
 
Well, it was great to see you guys again! Although it was way to short and way to busy to really talk for a longer period of time and share info.

Hopefully we will see you again next year! I'll try to visit the UK in fall and surely will offer more UK rare plants on the forum when available. I was happy to share some with you this fair. There's lots more!

I've no pics yet but if I have them I'll post them here also!

Dan, thanks for bringing the Ukaps posse to the fair. It was great fun to have you all. Next year an even bigger invasion???
 
I must be one of the lucky ones - I got in at 3:30am and woke up at 11am 😀

I had a fantastic weekend and I'm completely knackered! Very hard work over the weekend, running around with crates of sand, buckets of water, moving hardscape about, carrying things too and from the minibus etc etc. It was a logistical nightmare but it all worked out well.

I'd like to thank everyone for all their efforts, but especially Dan for all the organisation, and coping with us all asking him a thousand questions during the setup and breakdown process!

The demonstrations attracted a good number of people who all seemed really interested, and with the legend Mr Starkey on the microphone talking people through things as Dan and Mark prepped and planted the demo tanks it proved to be awesome 🙂

I think the star of the stand was Ed's nano. It drew in so many people who had a lot of questions about it. All of the other nanos were awesome too (except my hastily thrown together tank which I bought on the Friday night from the stand next door!), and the line-up would catch the eye of passing people and pull them in for a closer look.

I spoke to several people who were either registered on the forum (but lurkers) or were promising to come over and take a look, and hopefully share in this amazing hobby with other like minded people.

I got into quite a deep conversation over Ed's nano about the aesthetics and artistry of it all with a chap who looked to be in his 60's. He went away appreciating why we use glassware and all of the "jewellery" as I called it :lol:

I got to look around the show several times, but I really didn't take too much in! There was a lot to see. I would have liked to get to one or two of the lectures but at those particular times the UKAPS stand was busy, with the demos etc. I will almost certainly go to Denmark in October!

Also, the two nights spent either in the bar at the hotel or out in the town getting food were great fun. Socialising with UKAPS friends, and the likes of Lars Green (Tropica MD) and Chris Lukhaup was amazing. Interesting conversation about the hobby, plants, shrimps and wider subjects was fantastic.

I came away from the show re-inspired, re-invigorated and ready to put together another scape. I also came home significantly poorer and with two new nano tanks!

Thanks again to everyone, it was truly one to remember 🙂
 
Thank for all for taking me into the team. It was amazing weekend. I have been to the event like that for the first time.
Great thanks to Dan for organizing everything. I can only imagine how much work he has put into this.
It was nice to meet new members and make more friends.
Hope we can breed some nice shrimp obtained from Chris Lukhaup and offer to ukaps members later.
Looking forward for more photos.
 
Piece-of-fish said:
Hope we can breed some nice shrimp obtained from Chris Lukhaup and offer to ukaps members later..
Click to expand...
So true, I got from Chris the Sulawesi Blues (have a couple of shrimplets already), Neocaridina heteropoda (var. Yellow) (they bred while in the bag during the trip, now have around 15-20 shrimplets), and also got some Sakuras. Let me just say Chris Lukhaup is one great guy, so cool and laid back and just happy to share his experiences with all of us as if we are part of his team already, we managed to obtain some photos from his trips to Hong Kong, Brazil, Papua New Guinea, etc... that he is happy for us to post at a later date, still need to confirm with him what we can post.

Got some really nice looking Blue Tiger shrimp with Orange eyes from a German seller (Fisch & Heim), he had some of the best looking shrimps I have ever seen.

I will try and post some photos later on 😉
 
Ditto what everyone has said 🙂 was a quality weekend and one I'm definitely going to repeat. I know a few others are already planning next year's trip! I'm already thinking, my estate, plenty of boot room and a shed load of money! Just sooo much awesome stuff. Proper quality event.

The frogs were amazing as well, will ahve to work on being allowed to how one of those as well 😉

Don't feel to bad today, but will have to see how long I last this eve!

Nice one to Dan for organising.

Sam
 
Piece-of-fish said:
Hope we can breed some nice shrimp obtained from Chris Lukhaup and offer to ukaps members later..
Click to expand...

Me too 😀

It is going to be long hard work though as mine are wild shrimp so will require a number of generations breeding before they are hardy enough for the average planted tank (50 µ siemens conductivity anyone? :shock: )

Wish me luck!

LondonDragon said:
Let me just say Chris Lukhaup is one great guy, so cool and laid back and just happy to share his experiences with all of us as if we are part of his team already
Click to expand...

:text-+1:

Same for Stefan Hummel too :thumbup:
 
It was fun to see ukaps again, to bad graeme and stu weren't there. just got home after 5 days vivarium, and still need to go back tomorow to get all my stuff home.
so for now: tnx for the beer 😉 and i will see if i get edited out of the "movie"
see you guys and girls! next year
Mark from vivarium.
 
Hi guys,thanks for a great weekend in great company,i loved the show it was very enjoyable but very tiring especially at my age :lol: ,i roomed with me old mucker Sam (aka themuleous),which is good really as i snore for england,and sleeps through anything :lol: ,thanks to me little mate Crawford for getting this on this year,love ya dude :thumbup: ,and thanks for all the other guys for making this a great trip,also thanks to all our Dutch friends for being so helpful and very kind,i will get some pics up over the next few days,i am off to bed now i am knackered ,

john.
 
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