10000L Coral reef at The Maritime Museum & Aquarium Sweden

[Sallstrom]

Fts and more photos from this tank, dimensions, circulation, filtration, lighting and of course photos of the sharks , will definitely interested most of us

Part 3 - Bamboo shark tank

Here you go! Just took some pics from the sumps and a FTS

Two sumps. Connected by two 50mm pipes.
Two old skimmers. And a lot of cables!
We won't win sump of the year, but it work and it's easy to move and easy to drill new holes into.

More cables in the ceiling..

And our budget wave maker

And the FTS..

There you go, the whole system. Yes, and we use Core7 other method in this tank. But we have recently put in a calcium reactor as well, so it's both right now.
Nutrients are low, lower than I like. So we feed a lot and also add both N and P when it's needed.

That was our "shark tank"

/ David

 

[Sallstrom]

Back to the 10000L reef. Time to make room somewhere to a couple of nice Acropora frags

 

[larangcon]

David you should sell the frags that you trimmed to reefers in your area, so you can use the money to fund your equipment and might entice more people to reefing.

 

[tacosricos]

This is incredible!

 

[Sallstrom]

David you should sell the frags that you trimmed to reefers in your area, so you can use the money to fund your equipment and might entice more people to reefing.

I know. We could probably sell a lot of corals but since we are a non profit museum selling things are not that easy. I don't know exactly what the rules are, but we have decided to not sell any animals. And in a way it feels good, to not be a "business ". We give away to public aquariums and we sometimes trade with hobbyists.
It's actually a relief to not think of what corals cost to buy(we don't buy corals that often. They are crazy expensive!! )

We try to encourage hobbyists by putting together meetings at the museum. We call them Korallträff(Coral Meeting) and we have had it twice a year for the last 4-5 year. We put together a couple of talks and arrange tables for hobbyists to swop frags. And also open up behind the scenes in the Aquarium. The speakers have been scientist, hobbyists and people from the business and public aquariums. Me and my coworkers have talked about jelly-tanks, cuttlefish and the 10000L coral tank for example.
Unfortunately most of the talks are in Swedish, but we have three talks in English on YouTube. Check out the channel called Vattenplaneten. The English ones are from Ehsan Dashti and Lemon TYK.

That was a long answer

/ David

 

[larangcon]

I agree about being a business, I used to work for a non-profit and you do need to be careful about income status. I will surely check your talk on Youtube, sounds great David

 

[Sallstrom]

Here are two Acropora humilis frags from the same mother colony. One has had PAR 165 and the other one PAR 550. Can you guess which is which?
Both are doing fine and are growing at the same speed as far as I can see. Both live in the same water system.
Water today:
KH - 6,7 (Salifert)
NO3 - 1 (Salifert)
PO4 - 0 (Hanna LR)

 

[larangcon]

I'm guessing the red one is getting the higher par

 

[Sallstrom]

I'm guessing the red one is getting the higher par

It's the other way around. The darker one has been under PAR 165 in our propagation tank(same system as the coral tank). The other one is close to the surface under MH lights.
Fun to see how much light intensity can influence the colour of the coral.

 

[larangcon]

Yes big difference in color, how long did you have these two in the tank to change colors like that. I will need to try that in my tank, I want to see if I can get two different colors from the same coral.

 

[BigJohnny]

Here are two Acropora humilis frags from the same mother colony. One has had PAR 165 and the other one PAR 550. Can you guess which is which?
Both are doing fine and are growing at the same speed as far as I can see. Both live in the same water system.
Water today:
KH - 6,7 (Salifert)
NO3 - 1 (Salifert)
PO4 - 0 (Hanna LR)

Interesting that the one in lower lighting has its polyps out, maybe in attempt to make up for less light possibly? Either that or its healthier even though the color isn't as pretty and that's why it's polyps are out. Or completely unrelated and just happened that way for the pictures ; )

 

[larangcon]

Interesting that the one in lower lighting has its polyps out, maybe in attempt to make up for less light possibly? Either that or its healthier even though the color isn't as pretty and that's why it's polyps are out. Or completely unrelated and just happened that way for the pictures ; )

That's why I thought it was the other way around, the less par coral is actually looking more healthy than the frag that's getting higher par, it might be bleached because of the intensity of the light and the polyps are not out due to the high light. I noticed this on my corals that does not want the high light, polyps retracted and I need to relocate to a lower area. I might be wrong in this case because David said they are both growing at the same speed.

 

[Sallstrom]

Interesting that the one in lower lighting has its polyps out, maybe in attempt to make up for less light possibly? Either that or its healthier even though the color isn't as pretty and that's why it's polyps are out. Or completely unrelated and just happened that way for the pictures ; )

That's why I thought it was the other way around, the less par coral is actually looking more healthy than the frag that's getting higher par, it might be bleached because of the intensity of the light and the polyps are not out due to the high light. I noticed this on my corals that does not want the high light, polyps retracted and I need to relocate to a lower area. I might be wrong in this case because David said they are both growing at the same speed.

I can't say for sure why the polyps are as they are, but the one in higher PAR is in a tank with two Orange spotted filefish, and they eat Acropora polyps The other one has been in our propagation tank, with the same water but with no filefish.
Which one is the most healthy I can't say either. I'm happy both are alive and growing

The thing I think is most interesting is that the colour of a coral can be so different depending on the light intensity. Maybe very high PAR doesn't mean higher growth(maybe the coral turn the photosynthesis off at some point), but it seems to do things with the colour. And if that so, maybe the light intensity has more to do with the colour of the coral than some additives(-"buy this super mega X fluid to get pink corals" ).

But just to be clear, I don't recommend super high PAR i every tank. Corals do fine in PAR 100-300. We need this strong light to get the light down 1,8 meters in this tank. That is why we get high par at the surface. And what I think is important is that we have high flow at the surface where the PAR is high. Otherwise the corals would surely suffer/get burned.

Some thought

/ David

 

[Sallstrom]

We have some nice looking corals in our cold water tanks as well!
This is a Alcyonium digitatum:

These like cold waters, around 10 degrees Celsius, and a constant supply of phytoplankton.

And some Metridium senile and the stony coral Caryophyllia smithii.

All these are non photosynthetic and can be hard to get to grow. My colleague Jens is working hard to get the water good and to feed them enough every day. It seems like all of them doing better after we started dosing EasyBooster(phyto-mix) 24/7.

Hope everyone have a nice Friday!


/ David

 

[Sallstrom]

Some top down close ups, with a little extra colour from the green house LED..

 

[Sallstrom]

Another fts

This week I'm preparing a 150L tank with small sump and skimmer to threat Acropora against AEFW(flatworms). I think we have these flatworms in most of our tanks, but it's only now and then we can see corals really struggling. So most of the time it doesn't matter. And to treat all Acropora in say this tank means turning half of the tank upside down(and xx hours of work ).
But we will try to find a way to get rid off them when we move all corals in fall this year(rebuilding the whole Aquarium, see earlier posts). Therefore I want to try fenbendazol which some aquarist in Sweden used as treatment. I will not treat the whole tank, never... I want to do the treatment on smaller colonies from our propagation tanks for a couple of hours (have not decided exactly time and dose yet). I'll use water from their tank and after treatment shake them and then put them back. This is mostly to see how the corals react to the treatment. If they do okey I'll do all Acropora in our propagation tanks three times 7 days in between.
This will be a test. If this works well we can do this treatment on all Acropora when we move all corals from this tank and others.

The new Aquarium will open summer 2021, and hopefully the coral tank will be ready 6 month before that. So we have some time to figure out how to avoid getting them into the new large tank

I anyone have experience with AEFW and fenbendazol please share your experience!

Oh, and we will not expose any other animals but Acropora to the medicine. And I know Xenia don't like either

/ David

 

[Sallstrom]

When everybody here were ready for spring we get another batch of snow..#swedishweather

 

[Sallstrom]

The propagation tank and sump room at night. The refugium with macro algae is above one of the propagation tanks. No leaks so far

 

[Sallstrom]

The morning routine

 

[Sallstrom]

An Acropora florida and a Amakusaplana acroporae(AEFW)