Aquatics Live 2011 review (part 2)

You can read part 1 of the Aquatics Live 2011 review here.

Seneye

One of the most amazing little aquarium gadgets to have hit the market recently is UK based aquarium controller/monitor company, Seneye. Everything about their range of products screams style. Their branding is hands down one of the most modern to be seen from a UK based company, and arguably from any aquarium brand in the world. Being somewhat of the new kid on the block, it was understandable that they didn’t have an entire booth to themselves, but it was sad to seem them wedged into the ALF stand. None the less, Seneye stood out. With a nice big computer screen showing live read outs from the number of sleek units sitting in water, everybody could get a glimpse of these smart controllers/monitors in action. They are most certainly a company to watch for the future – I can imagine other aquarium equipment they could produce following on from their current design style. LED lighting? We can only hope.

Marine Mad

Making it’s public debut at Aquatics Live, Marine Mad, is a new aquarium focused social networking website. Their booth provided a backdrop highlighting the websites’ features – some of which are very impressive. A full review of this new website will follow in a few days right here on nanoreefblog.com. but for those visitors that were signing up at the show, time will tell whether the site will work. I’m pretty sure many hobbyists simply signed up due to pressure from the mermaid babes…

ITC (EcoTechMarine, ZEOvit, Aquatronica, Grotech)

ITC are the UK distributors for a number of high end reefkeeping products including the likes of EcotechMarine (the company behind the Vortech flow pumps and most recently the Radion LED lighting unit), Korallenzucht (makers of ZEOvit), Aquatronica and GroTech. Out of all the booths at the show, I must say that ITC got it right. They had 3 tanks, 1 ‘reef’, 1 freshwater and one ‘flow’ tank. The two aquariums on the ends showed exactly how the Ecotechmarine Radion LED looks over a tank full of livestock. In addition, they had a touch screen system showing you how the 6 lighting channels were controlled. It was impressive. Now if that wasn’t enough, the central tank, the flow tank, was home to a large wave being produced by a MP40 Vortech pump. It’s impressive no matter which way you look it seeing the full EcotechMarine range of products working together. Well done to ITC for showing their products in a ‘normal’ environment.

Sublime Acquario (Vitrea)

Vitrea is a high end aquarium brand out of Italy, the same country that is home to Elos. It was really good to see these aquariums on display, and again, there was focus on their beautiful LED units. The Vitrea lighting controller is impressive, even if it is somewhat bulky, the easy to use touch screen interface made up for it. Sublime Acquario were the only vendor that had a PAR meter on hand so you could see exactly what numbers their units were putting out. All you other lighting exhibitors, take note.

General overview of Aquatic Live 2011

Over the last two posts, I’ve highlighted what I feel were some of the better booths, especially aimed at the reef hobbyist, but there were many other great displays and stands. Enjoy the pictorial tour below.

Final thoughts

I must say as great as the event was, I kept finding myself asking where certain companies were. I know that many companies might not want to have jumped onboard for a debut event, but even still, why wouldn’t you exhibit to your target audience. Hopefully next year will see the likes of D-D Aquarium Solutions (Deltec), Tunze, local lighting company Iquatics and many others support an event that has loads of potential. To all those exhibitors who were present at the show – thank you very much for being there, without you the show could have been a pretty boring affair… imagine all those fish geeks milling around the Olympia2 with nothing to do…

Did you attend the event? What did you think of it? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.