Swedish fish - behind the scenes rebuilding a public aquarium

[Sallstrom]

Have you looked into the Rainbow Bottom Anemone as something to add to your cold water tanks?

I had to look them up. Noticed I haven't read the "reef aquarium news" lately. Not good

They look amazing! But displaying an animal with unknown origin is hard when we try to recreate biotops from specific parts of the ocean. On the other hand we could take a DNA-sample if we got one, and perhaps get a match and figure out the origin.

 

[Lasse]

We’ll see if it gets Lasse approved

As long as it works - it is approved But i would turn both skimmer pumps of. I know that you do not like turning of skimmer pumps - but this is DC pumps - it should work - at least the first year

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Sallstrom]

Time to be brave enough to try some of the more mature colonies in the experiment system. At the moment Acropora hyacinthus is the only Acropora species we have with several genotypes and, hopefully, large enough colonies for sexual reproduction. So the other Acropora colonies are just in there for testing if they start to produce gamets and spawn.
There will be more species soon.

Edit. They don't look that big in the picture. The Acropora at the back is about 30 cm in diameter

 

[najer]

Nice, at what point are you going to set their "daytime" schedule?

 

[Sallstrom]

Nice, at what point are you going to set their "daytime" schedule?

I'm reading up on it today. Both the programming and data from a known location. Profilux has some good tables for seasons, so hopefully much of the calculation is done by the program when just adding longest day and brightest day etc.
So I hope we can start it soon. I haven't looked into the moon cycle yet, but I think it's also programmed in profilux.
Of course, Lasse knows this stuff.. But I'm trying to learn too!

 

[mort]

Have you considered making "mother" colonies by taking frags from a donor coral and place them on a substrate a few inches apart, letting them grow into each other. I've seen it done with a lot of caribbean corals and if my memory is correct, they were at a reproductive stage much quicker than if you left a colony to grow. Might be fun to try if nothing else.

 

[Sallstrom]

Have you considered making "mother" colonies by taking frags from a donor coral and place them on a substrate a few inches apart, letting them grow into each other. I've seen it done with a lot of caribbean corals and if my memory is correct, they were at a reproductive stage much quicker than if you left a colony to grow. Might be fun to try if nothing else.

Yes. I’ve saw Jaime Craggs talk about it and I’ve done it with a couple of coral. Easiest was Acropora nana which grow a lot and is easy to frag.
Here’s some of them now. I will move in one of those tomorrow.

 

[mort]

Is it just sps you are trying? Think one of the best growing (for this method in the wild) corals was a brain and I've heard of favites and platygyra spawning in tanks. Those two might need more space than you have given their aggression but any of the smaller fungia/cycloseris plates may fit in. I have fungia spawn in my tank on more than one occasion.

 

[Sallstrom]

Is it just sps you are trying? Think one of the best growing (for this method in the wild) corals was a brain and I've heard of favites and platygyra spawning in tanks. Those two might need more space than you have given their aggression but any of the smaller fungia/cycloseris plates may fit in. I have fungia spawn in my tank on more than one occasion.

I don't know yet. We have some quite large LPS colonies so I'm pretty sure they are sexually mature.

The great thing with branching corals is that it's possible to cut a branch and search for gamets and see what development stage there're in. That's for knowning when it getting close to spawning. Perhaps it's possible to see on some brain coral species polyps that there are getting closer to spawning, without cutting. Not sure. Have to look that up too

 

[Sallstrom]

Started programming the seasons for the experiment tank. Pretty easy so far. Both intensity and day length are in %, just to add the data available online. Still waiting for some info on the moon program in GHL. I have all the data, so it’s possible to set the light we use as a moon as a regular light channel and program it. But it’s a bit more work

It’ll be more coral colonies soon.

My plan with the program is to add all data for lights, moon and temp into the program. Use the real dates for everything. And then change the time in the GHL computer to the time a year we choose to start at. Hopefully that’ll work!
The reason is now in nature (or Great Barrier Reef) it’s just a couple of month after spawning. It’s fall and I want it to be spring

 

[Brew12]

I have all the data, so it’s possible to set the light we use as a moon as a regular light channel and program it. But it’s a bit more work

What, is Lasse too busy doing something else?

Wait.. you weren't considering doing some work yourself, were you?

 

[mort]

Make sure you set the lights out to a sensible hour. You don't want to be waiting for a spawn at 3 o'clock in the morning. I had a friend who used to do that with his clownfish spawns before I told him to black the tank out at 3pm and they'd probably hatch by 4pm. He was much happier the next day after he'd caught the larvae and then had some sleep but I'm guessing you guys don't need much sleep with all the coffee you drink.

 

[NowGlazeIT]

Hi

I thought I might start a new thread writing about our journey building a new public aquarium. I work as a marine biologist and aquarist at The Maritime Museum & Aquarium in Gothenburg, Sweden. I think I've been here about a decade now. Time flies


The Aquarium was founded in 1923, and moved into the museum 1933 when the museum building was completed. Over the years the Aquarium has housed lots of different animals, from Galapagos turtles to monkeys. But since 2001 there's only aquariums. And since 2009 only marine tanks and animals.

We are a non profit museum, funded mostly by the the city of Gothenburg and a foundation. But we also need to get some sponsors, so if you....

Here a picture just to lighten up amongst all this text..

Here comes some info on the Aquarium today. We got about 20 tanks running in the exhibition, from 50L to 25 000L. The total water volume now is around 50 000L. We've focused on tropical reef habitats and Swedish temperate coastal waters.

We are five people working full time in the Aquarium, but mostly three of us are responsible for the aquariums.

And another picture to get people to read the rest of this long post..

I've written some about our 10 000L reef tank in my build thread in my profile, so there you can find a lot of pictures of that tank and some of the others.

In this thread I will try to share our work from today until we open the new Aquarium in the fall of 2021.

We closed the museum this Sunday, and our first step is the build a temporary Aquarium in the room where the museum restaurant used to be. Unfortunately we need to clear the old Aquarium facilities before we can move into the new Aquarium, therefor this temporary solution. Our aim is to start up the new tanks with as much "homegrown " corals as possible. And since we're planning on a reef tank with 400 000L water, we will need a lot of corals


Corals corals..

I hope you would like to follow our journey from a small public aquarium to a medium size. Please feel free to ask any questions you want(or tell me I'm stupid if you think I'm stupid ).


So, here's some pictures from this week, the week after closing.

This is where the temporary Aquarium will be located

Okey, that was the startup of a new thread. More will come!

Best regards
David

As I read I just can’t help but say out load “wow” over and over again hah

 

[Sallstrom]

What, is Lasse too busy doing something else?

Wait.. you weren't considering doing some work yourself, were you?

Lasse needs a break. He had some busy weeks switching all electrics to the temporary power(but I made him fix the Sms alarm for the experiment this week ). He’s going away for a well deserved holiday now for ten days.

The small challenge in this experiment/project is to sexually reproduce corals. The main challenge is for me to learn GHL computers

 

[Sallstrom]

Make sure you set the lights out to a sensible hour. You don't want to be waiting for a spawn at 3 o'clock in the morning. I had a friend who used to do that with his clownfish spawns before I told him to black the tank out at 3pm and they'd probably hatch by 4pm. He was much happier the next day after he'd caught the larvae and then had some sleep but I'm guessing you guys don't need much sleep with all the coffee you drink.

You are right about the coffee! And the timing of the spawning!
My plan is to have the sunset around 15:00. Which means midday will be nine in the morning. And hopefully spawning at 16:00.

 

[najer]

I so want my hands on this project, love it!

 

[Sallstrom]

Programming updates for the spawning experiment

Now I've changed UTC from +1 to +4, so the sunset will be at 15:00 instead of 18:00.

I've changed the coordinates to the Great Barrier Reef(GBR).

I've change the date to June 6, three month ahead from today. This is to get an easy change from current temp to the simulation. We run our tanks around 25,5 degrees, and in June it's the start of the coldest period at the GBR. So the next months our tank will go down to 23,7 degrees, then start to raise up to eventually 29 degrees in January(our October, in the real world ). We can't program the temp to change over time(what I know now), so I think we will change the nominal value each week manually.

I've changed light brightness according to data from GBR.

I've changed light duration according to data from GBR.

Hmmm, now I just have to check so we don't get the spawning at Christmas day..

@Lasse keep your phone close! I'm about to set all light channels on seasons now!

 

[Lasse]

What, is Lasse too busy doing something else?

Wait.. you weren't considering doing some work yourself, were you?

Lasse needs a break. He had some busy weeks switching all electrics to the temporary power(but I made him fix the Sms alarm for the experiment this week ). He’s going away for a well deserved holiday now for ten days.

The small challenge in this experiment/project is to sexually reproduce corals. The main challenge is for me to learn GHL computers

He does not like me I have promise to be her until the open of the aquaria - but after that I will probably not be there until they can spread my ashes in the big tank - after that - I can be present for all time,

This time (in front of the big opening) must be period of transforming of knowledge to those that will be there for a long period. The best transforming method is to let them do their own mistakes/ develop the knowledge together. I´m doing the basic configurations, do some workarounds but the daily management must be done by others. I serve as hilly ball wall (sometime like a humpy wall ) - the balls they throw at me bounce back but not always in the way they expected

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Sallstrom]

Now it’s no more a display tank

Time for the corals in the experiment to stick to their own time and light zone.
Next week we will fill all gaps that could leak light. Not sure on how sensitive the corals are for other light, but don’t want to take the chance. Between 08 and 13 we can roll up the cover without disturbing too much I think.

It’ll be one more curtain outside this black one. So it’ll be like a room to get to first, before we roll up this smaller one(when checking the corals when the tank is dark).

 

[crusso1993]

Now it’s no more a display tank

Time for the corals in the experiment to stick to their own time and light zone.
Next week we will fill all gaps that could leak light. Not sure on how sensitive the corals are for other light, but don’t want to take the chance. Between 08 and 13 we can roll up the cover without disturbing too much I think.

It’ll be one more curtain outside this black one. So it’ll be like a room to get to first, before we roll up this smaller one(when checking the corals when the tank is dark).

Being that the tank is bare bottom, do you have a plan for blocking light from coming in through the bottom? Maybe a simple plan to paint it black?