10000L Coral reef at The Maritime Museum & Aquarium Sweden

[Sallstrom]

Thanks very much!
I need to learn more about the chemistry you are doing. After a fast search I found out that the ocean has only about 0.0015 ppm of vanadium. I would think that percentage would vary from place to place too. What are the number found in coral reefs?
Please tell me more about this...
How do you dose?
How often?
What are the tests for it?
Why vanadium?
For corals?
Do you dose any other unusual elements?
Very interesting indeed. The only chemicals I knew were important for coral growth and health were the basics: calcium, alkalinity, strontium, potassium and magnesium. People nowadays are dosing iron and such, for colors... I like to dose amino acids and see good results. I need to spend some more time learning that new stuff.
I appreciate your writing. It's a pleasure to read and see the pictures too. Good thread!

I'm glad you'll post the halide graphs. I really appreciate. Thanks again. Have a good Sunday!

Easiest way to explain how we run our stony coral tanks nowadays is that we follow the idea of Triton lab. We don't follow their methods all the way, but we send in water samples to their ICP test and use a lot of their additives to correct the parameters. Triton lab has helped us a lot the last years and I'm very greatful for that.
The idea is to get close to the numbers Triton lab recommends. Those numbers are based on test from different reefs.


Here's the routine for the 2000L and 1000L tanks:
We use calcium reactors as a base. The last six months also Core7(balling), due to the large biomass of corals.
The parameters we try to correct is Ca, Mg, B, Br, I, Mn, Mo, V, Zn, Sr, K, Ni, and probably some more that I don't remember right now
It might sound a lot, but usually we don't need to add them all. And if we need to correct say potassium, it's often not that much.

We send ICP test and when we get the results I calculate, together with Tritons recommendations, a dose for the coming month. Then we send a new test -> new results -> new list of additives.

The things we dose daily or weekly are iodine, manganese and iron. Manganese and iron is usually zero on the tests, but the test can't measure very low concentrations(as it is in seawater). So we add daily and if we get over zero on the test, we lower the dosage for those two. This way we know at least that there's refill of those substances. And we can see if our doses are too much.
Iodine needs to be added a lot if we want to stay at the recommended level.
Zinc and Vanadium is also something we add, same way as iron, very low doses. Usually the tests say zero, so we know that they are used up or are disappearing in some way.

If we had unlimited numbers of dosing pumps(and they were calibrated automatically), I would like to dose everything with dosing pumps But now we dose most of these substances manually, daily or weekly.

I have no idea if all those parameters are necessary to keep up, but since it seems like Vanadium for example doesn't increase even though we add. So my guess is that something is using it(or it disappears in some way). Therefor I like to add it to the aquariums.

We do not change a lot of water in these tanks, that is also a reason I want to add stuff and keep track of many parameters. Maybe that's not necessary if you would change a lot of water.

About additives we try to avoid those mixes, we try to adjust every parameter by itself.

Long answer, I hope it makes at least some sense Now it's time for lunch!

 

[Sallstrom]

Easiest way to explain how we run our stony coral tanks nowadays is that we follow the idea of Triton lab. We don't follow their methods all the way, but we send in water samples to their ICP test and use a lot of their additives to correct the parameters. Triton lab has helped us a lot the last years and I'm very greatful for that.
The idea is to get close to the numbers Triton lab recommends. Those numbers are based on test from different reefs.


Here's the routine for the 2000L and 1000L tanks:
We use calcium reactors as a base. The last six months also Core7(balling), due to the large biomass of corals.
The parameters we try to correct is Ca, Mg, B, Br, I, Mn, Mo, V, Zn, Sr, K, Ni, and probably some more that I don't remember right now
It might sound a lot, but usually we don't need to add them all. And if we need to correct say potassium, it's often not that much.

We send ICP test and when we get the results I calculate, together with Tritons recommendations, a dose for the coming month. Then we send a new test -> new results -> new list of additives.

The things we dose daily or weekly are iodine, manganese and iron. Manganese and iron is usually zero on the tests, but the test can't measure very low concentrations(as it is in seawater). So we add daily and if we get over zero on the test, we lower the dosage for those two. This way we know at least that there's refill of those substances. And we can see if our doses are too much.
Iodine needs to be added a lot if we want to stay at the recommended level.
Zinc and Vanadium is also something we add, same way as iron, very low doses. Usually the tests say zero, so we know that they are used up or are disappearing in some way.

If we had unlimited numbers of dosing pumps(and they were calibrated automatically), I would like to dose everything with dosing pumps But now we dose most of these substances manually, daily or weekly.

I have no idea if all those parameters are necessary to keep up, but since it seems like Vanadium for example doesn't increase even though we add. So my guess is that something is using it(or it disappears in some way). Therefor I like to add it to the aquariums.

We do not change a lot of water in these tanks, that is also a reason I want to add stuff and keep track of many parameters. Maybe that's not necessary if you would change a lot of water.

About additives we try to avoid those mixes, we try to adjust every parameter by itself.

Long answer, I hope it makes at least some sense Now it's time for lunch!

I think water chemistry is fun..

 

[Sallstrom]

Looks like posts from the section "Monster tanks 400g+" are not among the threads showing on the first page at R2R

 

[Brew12]

I have no idea if all those parameters are necessary to keep up, but since it seems like Vanadium for example doesn't increase even though we add. So my guess is that something is using it(or it disappears in some way). Therefor I like to add it to the aquariums.

Have you ever considered testing your macro algae to see if it could be consuming the vanadium?

 

[Sallstrom]

Have you ever considered testing your macro algae to see if it could be consuming the vanadium?

The macroalgaes are highly suspects for the uptake of many of the substances
But haven't thought of testing it. We talked a bit on testing corals, small containers, take samples before and after. But never tried, because of the slow growth of corals. So macroalgae would be a better experimental organism I guess.

 

[najer]

The macroalgaes are highly suspects for the uptake of many of the substances
But haven't thought of testing it. We talked a bit on testing corals, small containers, take samples before and after. But never tried, because of the slow growth of corals. So macroalgae would be a better experimental organism I guess.

Seeing as I run on a skimmer and macros and sponges that would be very interesting!

 

[Sallstrom]

No news. Just planning, meetings and more planning. And some window cleaning and measuring KH.
Here's a picture from the bamboo shark tank. It's getting better and better. And my favourite type of tang, A. triostegus!

Now I've adjusted some light and stuff. Better @najer ?

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Ok, what coral is this.

 

[Sallstrom]

Ok, what coral is this.

Some green mushroom corals. I should know the name but my memory is crap when it comes to these types of corals.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Some green mushroom corals. I should know the name but my memory is crap when it comes to these types of corals.

Any other soft corals in main tanks

 

[Sallstrom]

Any other soft corals in main tanks

We got a lot of Sinularia, both beige and green. I really like them! But I need to improve my frag skills when it comes to soft corals. Sinularia is a corals I really want in a large reef tank. Something that moves with the current, to get some movement among all stiff stony corals
We got a couple of Sacrophytons and some Kenya trees as well.
And a lot of mushroom corals like Ricordea etc.

 

[Sallstrom]

Ten days until we're closing!
Will be a fun last week I think. Free entrance and a lot of extra talks and activities. Specially the last weekend(15-16th of September).
But the aquariums will still be up and running for some time, so there will be more updates on them. We still don't have any temporary tanks to move all the corals to. I hope they will be delivered in a month or so. Also waiting for Orphek OR bars for some smaller frag tanks.
Our problem now is that we're using almost every tank and lamp we got, so to be able to start move any live stock we need some more tanks etc

Not much wet hands this week, mostly meetings, invoices and planning the new Aquarium. Haven't glued a coral for a couple of weeks now! That's really bad

This is what we're working on now. Not the final thing, but we are getting closer bit by bit. Pipes and pumps, and more pipes.. ;Wacky

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Having a background on building electronic schematics., almost looks like one. Pretty.

One more, anyway to run activated carbon on start up? I've connected some pvc for my tank with solvent and it's strong vapors.
They'll let it dry before water introduced . Hopefully

 

[Sallstrom]

Having a background on building electronic schematics., almost looks like one. Pretty.

One more, anyway to run activated carbon on start up? I've connected some pvc for my tank with solvent and it's strong vapors.
They'll let it dry before water introduced . Hopefully

Yes, we will install some multiuse filters which could be used for active carbon or GFO if needed. I don't know how they'll look yet. I like to build them myself, but the engineers wants some kind of warranty and quality assurance.. New stuff for us, we who likes to redo most of the filters.

 

[Brew12]

I like to build them myself, but the engineers wants some kind of warranty and quality assurance.

And politicians want stuff purchased from their cousins filtration business!

 

[Sallstrom]

And politicians want stuff purchased from their cousins filtration business!

We've had our shares of politicians in the city making those kind of deals, so nowadays our rules in the city is really strict. People call Gothenburg Bribe-burg (sounds better in Swedish..) for a reason
So we who are working under the city, we need to do everything by the book when it comes to purchases. It sometimes feels a bit tiring to go through all that extra work just to buy some aquarium equipment, but it's for a good reason

 

[najer]

I love a nice eld, ... make it so!

 

[najer]

Oops, ... Electronic line diagram!

 

[Sallstrom]

Oops, ... Electronic line diagram!

I was a bit confused, in Swedish "eld" is fire
Thanks for the explanation!

 

[Sallstrom]

Friday full tank shot

And one from the top

Next weeks is our last last week before closing for the rebuild. Some parts of the museum really looks old and ready to fall apart... But the animals are healthy and the tanks look okey(from the exhibit at least) that's our priority now.

Have a great weekend!