Swedish fish - behind the scenes rebuilding a public aquarium

mort · Oct 2, 2020

Education and inspiration for nature shouldn't need to make a profit!

Sallstrom · Oct 6, 2020

This is what the building site looks like today!

And this is what one of the holding tanks looks like today

MabuyaQ · Oct 6, 2020

Soon you need to get some coralivors for trimming that back.

Sallstrom · Oct 6, 2020

MabuyaQ said:
Soon you need to get some coralivors for trimming that back.

Or the construction workers needs to finish the new 400000L tank faster..

We actually still have 2-3 m2 space free for corals in one holding tank, just need some more lights first. So we can grow some more corals before we have to start giving them away!

About corallivores, I like the idea and it'll be some in the new large tank (if the corals do well). At the moment I don't want to risk anything since our holding tanks are a bit small. In a tank like our old 10000 litre reef it was fine to have two small corallivores, but in 1000 litre I think the corals would be more stressed. And now we are more in the "grow as much corals as possible" phase

Pny · Oct 7, 2020

Is it standard Heliospectra lights or a different LED setup? Must be a very rare setup for a reef tank!

Sallstrom · Oct 7, 2020

Pny said:
Is it standard Heliospectra lights or a different LED setup? Must be a very rare setup for a reef tank!

Long story short. We wanted to do a “coral version”, but they didn’t. The Heliospectra fixtures we use now is the green house setups. So blue, white and red(lots of red) diods. We run them quite low now(they are 600W).
We use them now because we can borrow them for some more time. New reef LEDs are expensive for us too

With another diod setup they would should be great for aquariums though.

Rare, yes. But the corals doesn’t care that it doesn’t says “reef” on the fixtures

NY_Caveman · Oct 8, 2020

I just love this thread. Thanks for sharing the whole process brother Sallstrom. I have this reefing friend I may just kidnap to come for the 2023 centennial.

Sallstrom · Oct 14, 2020

Sorry for not posting that much at the moment. Lots of meetings and we are going into a more intense phase now. But the temporary Aquarium is going fine!

Today we will go to a dive tank to test LEDs for deeper reef tanks. This is to get data and to be able to calculate on how many lights we need, what lenses they need and how close together they need to be.
Testing lights before we go:

Sallstrom · Oct 14, 2020

A great afternoon at the dive company Poseidon! We tested two types of light fixtures. Measured PAR down to 4 meters deep, from the middle outwards to be able to get a “light cone”.
Now I feel a little bit better about growing corals all the way down to the bottom in the new reef tank

The tank was ten meters, and it felt like these LEDs gave pretty good light all the way down(for a fish only tank).

Sallstrom · Oct 16, 2020

Christmas came early this year

As usual, thank you Triton lab for supporting our work!

Edit. Triton didn't get us the Philips LEDs

Sallstrom · Oct 16, 2020

Nice to finally phase out some very old lights and get new lights in.

Sallstrom · Oct 16, 2020

Seems like you could run Coral Care Gen2 without a controller!

First impression: so nice to not have external power supplies. Okay coverage, but I was hoping for even better. Nice to be able to run them just on/off. Without programming! Just like my old metal halides

So @Lasse , you don’t need to plug in the controller on Monday. GHL is already turning them on/off.

Lasse · Oct 16, 2020

Sallstrom said:
So @Lasse , you don’t need to plug in the controller on Monday. GHL is already turning them on/off.

Dream on

Sincerely Lasse

Lasse · Oct 16, 2020

Did you keep the experimental fixture?- it was also on of

Sincerely Lasse

dragon99 · Oct 16, 2020

Sallstrom said:
Seems like you could run Coral Care Gen2 without a controller!

First impression: so nice to not have external power supplies. Okay coverage, but I was hoping for even better. Nice to be able to run them just on/off. Without programming! Just like my old metal halides
So @Lasse , you don’t need to plug in the controller on Monday. GHL is already turning them on/off.

Can you elaborate on that? How did you wire it directly to GHL?
Is it just 100% on/off or can you control the intensity via 1-10v maybe?

Sallstrom · Oct 16, 2020

dragon99 said:
Can you elaborate on that? How did you wire it directly to GHL?
Is it just 100% on/off or can you control the intensity via 1-10v maybe?

I just put the electric connection in a GHL socket on a timer

So now I can only go on/off and I think it’s on 100%.
Otherwise you need to put a 1-10V(I think) cable into a controller box, then you can connect that controller to GHL. Perhaps you can put the control cable from light directly to a GHL device, but that you will have to ask @Lasse about.