January 2011: Ozark Angels Hatchery Tour!

[mewickham]

January 2011 Special Event
Ozark Angels Hatchery Tour
Saturday, January 8, 2011, 3:00 PM
Come see over a million fish!

We've got something extra special planned for January 8th.
The folks at Ozark Angels hatchery have graciously offered to give us a tour of their facility! Ozark Angels is a 20,000 square foot indoor hatchery breeding angelfish, oscars, and fancy guppies. With approximately 400 breeding pairs of angelfish, 150 breeding oscars, and too many guppy moms to count, there are over a million fish to see!

You will have a chance to see a real commercial tropical fish breeding operation in action. It will be a great opportunity to ask questions and learn. Everyone is invited. There is no charge for the tour.

Meet at the hatchery!
Best of all, the hatchery is in Rogers, Arkansas, just a few blocks away from the site of our monthly meeting. We will meet at the hatchery. Directions are below. The tour starts at 3:00 PM. So arrive a few minutes early to avoid being left out.

Click this link to get a map.

Click here, then fill in your starting location, for driving directions to Ozark Angels hatchery.

OZARK ANGELS
1228 Stratton Rd.
Rogers, AR 72756
479-636-7746
http://www.ozarkangels.com/

But, Wait! There's More!
After the tour, those who are interested will be meeting up at Hibachi Grill Supreme Buffet to grab a bite. Everyone is welcome to join us and we hope that you will! (You will be responsible for your own meal check, which is around $10 for buffet and drink.) The restaurant is a new and very large Chinese/American buffet (largest in the area). They even have a Mongolian-style grill where you can pick your raw ingredients for cooking. There is also some good sushi!

The restaurant address is listed below, but for those familiar with the area, the restaurant is located right in front of Walmart #1 on Walnut St. (Rt. 12) in Rogers-- in the former Ryan's Steakhouse building. An exact time is not set for dinner. It depends on when the tour ends, but we estimate that we will leave the tour site by 5:00 PM.

Restaurant location:
Hibachi Grill Supreme Buffet
102 South 21st Street
Rogers, AR 72758-1120
(479) 636-8888

Possible extra bonus: There may be a short amount of time between dinner and the meeting. If so, we can pop across the street from the restaurant for a quick visit to Exotic Tropicals aquarium store!

Don't Forget: It's Also Our NWAAS Meeting Day
After supper, it will be time to head to our usual meeting location for the monthly club meeting. Denny Rogers will be giving a short talk on Making Your Own Fish Foods, followed by a short talk on Fish Anatomy by Michael Gaines. As usual, there will be refreshment, door prizes for new faces, and a mini-auction. It is free to attend! Details can be found in a separate message in this message section. The meeting begins at 6:30 PM, with the programs starting promptly at 7:00 PM.
Click HERE for full details.

We hope to see you there! We've got a half-day of activities planned. It's just another way that NWAAS makes fish-keeping fun for everyone!

[mewickham]

Please note that the tour is THIS weekend! I had 2010 listed as the date-- now fixed!

[mewickham]

We have a poster that can be downloaded and printed to help advertise the Ozark Angels Tour (and club monthly meeting). Please distribute it wherever you can-- to local stores, community bulletin boards, at work, at school. Help us make this a great event!

Find it here: https://nwaas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1884

Poster has already been distributed to Petco (Rogers and Fayetteville), Petsmart (Rogers and Fayetteville), Exotic Tropicals (Rogers), and Worlds Under Water (Fayetteville).

[Jackielee]

Do you need a head count to give the people at Ozark? I have heard several HAAS members comment about going. That might impact the meal and the meeting if they stick around for the whole show. i know Laura and i plan to if the weather forecast stays positive for the weekend. We will stay for it all and stay overnight.

Any parking concerns if we all come separately? Lots of questions, sorry.

Thanks,
Jack

[mewickham]

Jack, we don't need a head count for the tour itself. However, once everyone arrives at the tour location, we need to take a quick head count so that we can call ahead to the restaurant to reserve tables. If anyone is planning to arrive too late for the tour, but planning for dinner, they should let us know so that we can count them in.

Note that Ozark Angels is actually two buildings in two locations. After touring the first building, we will load up the vehicles and travel to the second which, I believe, is a few blocks away. So everyone should try to arrive on time. Otherwise, we might already be off to the second location and unable to receive them for the tour.

[mewickham]

Wow! My sympathies to those who missed this tour because you missed the chance of a lifetime. It was phenomenal! The hatchery was way bigger than I expected. There were two huge buildings filled with an uncountable number (probably in the thousands) of vats and tubs full of fish of all sizes. Angelfish, guppies, plecos, cory catfish, oscars, and platies were everywhere. The operation is immense! They hatch five of the commercial size (5-gallon?) brine shrimp cones per day just to feed out nauplii to baby fishes. I'll post some pictures when I get a chance.

Many thanks to Gary and Jan of Ozark Angels for the fantastic tour!

And our Super Saturday event was a real record setter for us. We had approximately 40 show up for the tour, 25 for the dinner, and 30 for the meeting. It was awesome!

[mofunnyfarm]

Thanks for inviting HAAS. I agree it was more than I expected. It was awesome.
Walter