30th OCA Extravaganza
November 22 - 24, 2024
OCA Extravaganza 2024
Registration is open!
Here’s everything you need to know about the 30th Extravaganza, 2024:
The Ohio Cichlid Association would like to invite you to help us celebrate the completion of the third decade of the most popular (and economical) regional aquarist gathering in the U.S., the 30th Extravaganza!
As we have for the past 29 years, the Extravaganza will be held at the Best Western Plus, Strongsville, OH, the weekend before Thanksgiving. This year’s dates are November 22-24, but to get the full experience, many people will arrive on Thursday the 21st. The room rate is an incredible $76/night, which includes the breakfast buffet (see the link below).You must be registered for the event in order to be eligible for this rate.
To celebrate, we have assembled a roster of speakers that include many of our recent favorites: Ad Konings (who will share a retrospective of his career), Rusty Wessel, Adrian Indermaur, Daniel Konn-Vetterlein, and Ohio Fish Rescue owner/YouTube personality Big Rich Price. Watch here for more information about these major contributors to our hobby.
Other features of the Extravaganza (* must be registered):
- Side trips to Ohio Fish Rescue* (see below)
- Vendor Room
- Fish and accessory sales from hotel rooms
- A well-stocked Hospitality Room*
- The nation’s largest Cichlid/Catfish Show
- A Saturday afternoon Swap Meet
- A Saturday night Pizza Party/Awards Presentation*
- A huge cichlid and Catfish Auction on Sunday
You must register to enter fish into the show, to sell from your room, and to attend presentations. The other activities are open to the public, but please consider registering even if you don’t have to, so we can keep this going for another 30 years!
A special feature of this year’s Extravaganza is a series of side trips to Ohio Fish Rescue. OFR (see them on Facebook or YouTube) is a facility located in the home of father/son team Big Rich and Josh Price and is very close to the Extravaganza hotel. At this facility, they house a wide array of fish (including some amazingly large ones) in over 250K gallons of water! Many of them were rescued from aquarists’ tanks that they’ve outgrown, and many of them they keep just because they can. If and when you register, you can purchase seats for any of the scheduled trips for $20 each, with 100% of the proceeds going to OFR for operation expenses. Trips are scheduled for 9AM, 11AM, 1PM, and 3PM, all on Friday. Space on the bus, driven by Big Rich himself, will be limited.
To get you started, here are 3 links:
Registration: https://www.ohiocichlid.com/shop/2019-extravaganza-16721
Sponsorship opportunities: https://www.ohiocichlid.com/shop/sponsor-an-extravaganza-show-class-here-14895
Room Reservations: https://www.bestwestern.com/en_US/book/hotel-rooms.36178.html?groupId=Z69MS7N2
30th OCA Extravaganza Schedule: 2024 Extravaganza Schedule
Click “Edit” in the upper right corner to set the check-in and check-out dates. Link expires after 10/27/24.