Why is this event a one day event ?

One of our main goals in planning this event was to keep costs low and pass these savings onto our vendors and attending aquarists. We also wanted to simplify our planning and managing requirements. As this event grows, we may eventually expand the event to occur over a saturday and sunday, but the logistic problems are much more difficult to solve.

Why is this event on a sunday ?

We needed half the main ballroom to support our anticipated crowd size. The ballroom was 3 times more expensive on saturday because of saturday weddings that occur this time of year. This forced the event to Sunday. Vendors and aquarist travelling from out of town should be able to either arrive saturday night or early sunday. If these travellers return home on Sunday night, no Monday-Friday travel time will be required.

Is the Bay Area Coral Farmers Market competing with speaker orientated conferences ?

Definitly not. One of the factors in choosing the date of our event was that the date should not interfer with other major events within the captive industry. Additionally, MACNA and IMAC West conferences are large speaker orientated conferences. The main attraction of those conferences is the speakers and their presentations. Those conferences have a larger cost structure due to the expense of flying in and accomodating speakers. This is why their booth and ticket charges are much higher then the booth and ticket charges at the BA-CFM. We have kept our costs under strict control and have passed these savings onto our customers. The new BayMAC event has scheduled for June 13th 2009 and that event is a mix of speaker and vendor activities.

Why do you prefer to sell vendor booths to Coral Farming vendors ?

Our primary attraction is exotic farmed coral. Our customers expect that a very good selection of corals will be available for sale. When we contact potential vendors for booths we always place more effort on getting coral farming vendors to reserve booths. There are however many Mariculture companies that support coral farming indirectly. We typically reserve the main ballroom in the Hilton for this BA-CFM event and this gives us plenty of vendor booth space. We are expanding our vendor participation and we will be adding more and more non-coral farming vendors as this event grows.

What is the coral used in the background of this web site ?

The image used in the background of this web site is a photo taken by Steve Tyree of a Purple Monstor Acropora colony grown and maintained by snipersps (Hugo Zuniga). The Purple Monstor coral is a also a Reeffarmers Limited Edition original. The term 'Purple Monstor' was coined by Steve Shvetstoff who was residing in the Bay Area at the time he coined the phrase.