Dr. Dendrostein
Marine fish monthly
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Swedish fish - behind the scenes rebuilding a public aquarium
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Sallstrom
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Here's some more pictures and story's from the last days.
Yesterday we put in some more rocks and corals in a tank we have at Gothenburg global biodiversity centre(at the Gothenburg University). We don't have a license to exhibit fish outside the museum so this tank is a Upside down jellyfish tank(Cassiopea sp). Low maintenance
Even if the temporary Aquarium isn't up and running I try to "save" some colonies in our existing propagation tanks. This large Stylopora colony was burned by some Lasse nems(BTA) so I wanted to move it since the anemones wasn't possible to remove without moving lots of corals and rocks.
This was one of the heavies corals I've lifted ever, so compact!
It's the green/pink in the middle. Good news is that I discovered a braincoral when I removed the Stylopora, haven't seen it in years
And this is a weekly dose of Triton additives to our soft coral system!
Yesterday we put in some more rocks and corals in a tank we have at Gothenburg global biodiversity centre(at the Gothenburg University). We don't have a license to exhibit fish outside the museum so this tank is a Upside down jellyfish tank(Cassiopea sp). Low maintenance
Even if the temporary Aquarium isn't up and running I try to "save" some colonies in our existing propagation tanks. This large Stylopora colony was burned by some Lasse nems(BTA) so I wanted to move it since the anemones wasn't possible to remove without moving lots of corals and rocks.
This was one of the heavies corals I've lifted ever, so compact!
It's the green/pink in the middle. Good news is that I discovered a braincoral when I removed the Stylopora, haven't seen it in years
And this is a weekly dose of Triton additives to our soft coral system!
dragon99
2500 Club Member
Have tried a potassium dip? I tried this recently and it appears to kill AEFW (or at least knock them off corals). I used a Brightwell Potassion-P powder, but just about any potassium chloride salt should work. Credit to @FarmerTy for the idea.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/b...ra-eating-flatworm.323713/page-3#post-4462442
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Sallstrom
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It's on my list to test! Would be great to use something that doesn't require lots of rinsing. I will definitely try when we start to cut and move Acroporas. And the more gentle it is to the corals the better. Feels really bad when a some corals die by the treatment itself.
How did the corals do after the dip? Thanks!
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Sallstrom
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One things that's new to us is that we probably need to get sponsors. Until now we've managed okey with our current budget plus some extra from our foundation. But having high goals with the new Aquarium money will be an issue and we will need to ask for help to reach our goals.
The only help we (The Aquarium) have gotten the last years is the great help from Triton Lab, which have donated ICP tests and addetives. For us with a quite small budget that does a lot, so I'm really greatful they do this for us! Ehsan Dashti from Triton lab has also done two talks on our Coral Symposiums at no cost for us.
We will investigate what we are allowed to do when it comes to sponsors etc, the City of Gothenburg has a lot of rules we need to follow, but hopefully we will figure out ways to do it correct.
One thing we've discussed is to do different packages, like gold, silver, instead of doing every agreement by itself. We're also of coarse hoping some large Gothenburg based companies would like to support us. One or a couple of large sponsors would save time for us
As you probably notice, I'm totally new at this thing asking for money So any ideas or advices are appreciated!
The only help we (The Aquarium) have gotten the last years is the great help from Triton Lab, which have donated ICP tests and addetives. For us with a quite small budget that does a lot, so I'm really greatful they do this for us! Ehsan Dashti from Triton lab has also done two talks on our Coral Symposiums at no cost for us.
We will investigate what we are allowed to do when it comes to sponsors etc, the City of Gothenburg has a lot of rules we need to follow, but hopefully we will figure out ways to do it correct.
One thing we've discussed is to do different packages, like gold, silver, instead of doing every agreement by itself. We're also of coarse hoping some large Gothenburg based companies would like to support us. One or a couple of large sponsors would save time for us
As you probably notice, I'm totally new at this thing asking for money
So any ideas or advices are appreciated!
NY_Caveman
likes words, fish and arbitrary statistics
My guess is the more you can show off the marine world with photos, videos, eventually tours, etc. the better. Everyone falls in love with the ocean. Everyone.
Dr. Dendrostein
Marine fish monthly
J g t
Dr. Dendrostein
Marine fish monthly
One things that's new to us is that we probably need to get sponsors. Until now we've managed okey with our current budget plus some extra from our foundation. But having high goals with the new Aquarium money will be an issue and we will need to ask for help to reach our goals.
The only help we (The Aquarium) have gotten the last years is the great help from Triton Lab, which have donated ICP tests and addetives. For us with a quite small budget that does a lot, so I'm really greatful they do this for us! Ehsan Dashti from Triton lab has also done two talks on our Coral Symposiums at no cost for us.
We will investigate what we are allowed to do when it comes to sponsors etc, the City of Gothenburg has a lot of rules we need to follow, but hopefully we will figure out ways to do it correct.
One thing we've discussed is to do different packages, like gold, silver, instead of doing every agreement by itself. We're also of coarse hoping some large Gothenburg based companies would like to support us. One or a couple of large sponsors would save time for us
As you probably notice, I'm totally new at this thing asking for money
O boy, Sallstrom going to be ambassador of the sea, not only a Marine Biologists, but also business man. Welcome to the real world.
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Sallstrom
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Hehe, thanksO boy, Sallstrom going to be ambassador of the sea, not only a Marine Biologists, but also business man. Welcome to the real world.
Not really my dream.. But you do what you have to. So, how does this Youtubing work? Yes, I think you are right. You'll have to give a lot back if you want sponsors. I'm not really a fan of talking on videos, just might have to figure out a way around that
We'll see, maybe we will open the new Aquarium with a Volvo Reef and IKEA kelp forrest
Dr. Dendrostein
Marine fish monthly
There you go , your getting the hang of it. Volvo Reef, I like.Hehe, thanks
Yes, I think you are right. You'll have to give a lot back if you want sponsors. I'm not really a fan of talking on videos, just might have to figure out a way around that
We'll see, maybe we will open the new Aquarium with a Volvo Reef and IKEA kelp forrest
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Sallstrom
2500 Club Member
Another update on our test with the NPS corals Scleronephthya and Dendronephthya. What I wanted to test was to run them in water good enough for Acropora, and to feed them with mostly phytoplankton.
That didn't work out too well I'm sorry to say. Out of seven colonies, three of them are alive today. Only one of them looks okey(no shrinkage or loss of polyps).
Here's the healthiest one, bought as a Dendronephthya, but I'm really not sure on precisely what species it is. Anyone knows?
Since I wanted to try my idea all the way I haven't changed the feeding until recently, when I was sure it wasn't good enough. So first months we dosed many small doses of live and concentrated phytoplankton to keep the concentration steady. Last month I've changed so there are three larger dosings during the day, you see the water in the tank turn a bit green. Plus many small doses. Also added rotifers to the dosings. Can't say it has improved, but that one colony is still around and must take up some kind of food.
We have some Coral Sprint from Fauna Marine, which should be some kind of bacteria, that I've started to add. No results so far. Too soon to say.
Nutrients are low, nitrate around 1-2 ppm and phosphate around 0,05 ppm. We're dosing nitrate at the moment. We started up this experiment dosing a carbon source to maybe get some extra bacteria for the corals to eat, but nutrients decreased so we had to lower the dosage to very low to not get too low nitrate.
All the Acropora, Montipora, Stylopora etc are doing great, even those who doesn't get much light. So at least they seems to like the feeding
That didn't work out too well I'm sorry to say. Out of seven colonies, three of them are alive today. Only one of them looks okey(no shrinkage or loss of polyps).
Here's the healthiest one, bought as a Dendronephthya, but I'm really not sure on precisely what species it is. Anyone knows?
Since I wanted to try my idea all the way I haven't changed the feeding until recently, when I was sure it wasn't good enough. So first months we dosed many small doses of live and concentrated phytoplankton to keep the concentration steady. Last month I've changed so there are three larger dosings during the day, you see the water in the tank turn a bit green. Plus many small doses. Also added rotifers to the dosings. Can't say it has improved, but that one colony is still around and must take up some kind of food.
We have some Coral Sprint from Fauna Marine, which should be some kind of bacteria, that I've started to add. No results so far. Too soon to say.
Nutrients are low, nitrate around 1-2 ppm and phosphate around 0,05 ppm. We're dosing nitrate at the moment. We started up this experiment dosing a carbon source to maybe get some extra bacteria for the corals to eat, but nutrients decreased so we had to lower the dosage to very low to not get too low nitrate.
All the Acropora, Montipora, Stylopora etc are doing great, even those who doesn't get much light. So at least they seems to like the feeding
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Dr. Dendrostein
Marine fish monthly
The coral sprint mix in h2o and let sit two days build up bacteria. Now the time move them small tank if possible. One above looking good. If you mail it to me. I'll let you know what it is.Another update on our test with the NPS corals Scleronephthya and Dendronephthya. What I wanted to test was to run them in water good enough for Acropora, and to feed them with mostly phytoplankton.
That didn't work out too well I'm sorry to say. Out of seven colonies, three of them are alive today. Only one of them looks okey(no shrinkage or loss of polyps).
Here's the healthiest one, bought as a Dendronephthya, but I'm really not sure on precisely what species it is. Anyone knows?
Since I wanted to try my idea all the way I haven't changed the feeding until recently, when I was sure it wasn't good enough. So first months we dosed many small doses of live and concentrated phytoplankton to keep the concentration steady. Last month I've changed so there are three larger dosings during the day, you see the water in the tank turn a bit green. Plus many small doses. Also added rotifers to the dosings. Can't say it has improved, but that one colony is still around and must take up some kind of food.
We have some Coral Sprint from Fauna Marine, which should be some kind of bacteria, that I've started to add. No results so far. Too soon to say.
All the Acropora, Montipora, Stylopora etc are doing great, even those who doesn't get much light. So at least they seems to like the feeding
BigJohnny
2500 Club Member
Have you considered dosing yeast?Another update on our test with the NPS corals Scleronephthya and Dendronephthya. What I wanted to test was to run them in water good enough for Acropora, and to feed them with mostly phytoplankton.
That didn't work out too well I'm sorry to say. Out of seven colonies, three of them are alive today. Only one of them looks okey(no shrinkage or loss of polyps).
Here's the healthiest one, bought as a Dendronephthya, but I'm really not sure on precisely what species it is. Anyone knows?
Since I wanted to try my idea all the way I haven't changed the feeding until recently, when I was sure it wasn't good enough. So first months we dosed many small doses of live and concentrated phytoplankton to keep the concentration steady. Last month I've changed so there are three larger dosings during the day, you see the water in the tank turn a bit green. Plus many small doses. Also added rotifers to the dosings. Can't say it has improved, but that one colony is still around and must take up some kind of food.
We have some Coral Sprint from Fauna Marine, which should be some kind of bacteria, that I've started to add. No results so far. Too soon to say.
Nutrients are low, nitrate around 1-2 ppm and phosphate around 0,05 ppm. We're dosing nitrate at the moment. We started up this experiment dosing a carbon source to maybe get some extra bacteria for the corals to eat, but nutrients decreased so we had to lower the dosage to very low to not get too low nitrate.
All the Acropora, Montipora, Stylopora etc are doing great, even those who doesn't get much light. So at least they seems to like the feeding
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Sallstrom
2500 Club Member
Yes, I've read a lot of threads about yeast and have some notes on them. They are about the same size as Nannochlopsis salina/many phytoplankton, so they might be a good food source for corals that prey on mostly phytoplankton. But so far I haven't tested yeast. It's on my list(I have a long list of what I want to try out
). One thing is breeding sea urchins, so right now I will watch Martin Moe's talk on MACNA! One reason I haven't tested yet is that I don't want to mix too many food sources at once. It would be harder to figure out what worked if the test worked. If you understand what I mean
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Sallstrom
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Here's a part of my show off tank at work, the 2000L room devider. In this tank my goal was to add as many species of SPS as I could, and to cover all rocks with live corals. Not really a natural reef look, more an ego trip for me when I finally got the corals to survive and grow #honestreefing
And the butterflyfish C. rafflesii is still in the tank, can't get it out.. But it's only the Galaxea sp that seems to do bad with the nipping from that fish.
#honestreefingAnd the butterflyfish C. rafflesii is still in the tank, can't get it out.. But it's only the Galaxea sp that seems to do bad with the nipping from that fish.
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NY_Caveman
likes words, fish and arbitrary statistics
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Sallstrom
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Thank you! This part was redone about two years ago, removed a very large S. hystrix colony and some M. digitata and removed some rocks to get more space up to the surface. And placed a lot of small to medium size corals from our propagation tanks. After that work I've hardly touched this part, just removed some corals when they grew too much
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Sallstrom
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Thank you @najer !
I found these pictures on my computer now. To show the development of this part of the tank the last two years. First pictures are me trying to remove a large Seriatopora hystrix, that was two years ago. I probably had some LARS syndrome before that, letting that colony grow way too big. On the other hand, there were a great cryptic zone amongst the dead branches in the bottom!
These are when I rescaped a bit and put in some more species of corals, also two years ago, or a little less.
And then the picture from yesterday again, just to compare.
Unfortunately the cave/swim trough is almost gone now, so my initial idea isn't working too well. But all the corals will be harvested sometime during the winter so it is what it is. I'm proud of the tank
Oh, and it hasn't gotten any water changes in four, close to five, years now. Still looks okey to me!
I found these pictures on my computer now. To show the development of this part of the tank the last two years. First pictures are me trying to remove a large Seriatopora hystrix, that was two years ago. I probably had some LARS syndrome before that, letting that colony grow way too big.
On the other hand, there were a great cryptic zone amongst the dead branches in the bottom! These are when I rescaped a bit and put in some more species of corals, also two years ago, or a little less.
And then the picture from yesterday again, just to compare.
Unfortunately the cave/swim trough is almost gone now, so my initial idea isn't working too well. But all the corals will be harvested sometime during the winter so it is what it is. I'm proud of the tank
Oh, and it hasn't gotten any water changes in four, close to five, years now. Still looks okey to me!
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Sallstrom
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I'm getting so inspired watching MACNA talk on Youtube, I just want start trying out breeding more species
So far we've tried and had good or at least okey succes with Seahorses(many times), Clownfish(one time), 4 species of jellyfish, Banggai cardinals(in tank, just catched the fry and gone from there) and Cuttlefish(S. bandensis). Not the most demanding animals to breed, but still need some special food etc. And we got all material we need to build breeding tanks, so the big issues for us to figure out are ways to grow or breed the right food source and to find rutines that's not too time consuming.
In a dream world we would have all kinds of live food going all the time. This is not the case right now But we've got a pretty good and simple algea culture going giving us about 8 liters of phytoplankton every day. Unfortunately just one species(Nannochloropsis I think), but it still work well for rotifers and artemia. Our rotifers have been up and running a couple of years now and are also in our rutines and are working well. Artemia we've hatched daily for almost ten years so that too is working well.
When it comes to larger food like live mysis and river shrimps we have tried to breed them. But so far not so much. During the summers we can collect a lot of mysis shrimps outside Gothenburg and buy river shrimps from Polen. During the winters we have no source to any of them. So getting a culture going would make it so much easier breeding Seahorses and Cuttlefish for example. And not just to breed, also to feed the adults with live food. Our Seahorses really enjoy chasing live food and are great hunters. And my guess is that the nutrients are better in live food as well.
Another live food we use is Gammarus, an amphipod crustacean. We can find them in both our cold water systems and tropical systems. They are possible to breed quite easy in small cups, but we mostly catch them from our refugiums. They are from 2mm up to 10mm. At least the ones we have, I know it's possible to buy Gammarus atlanticus in Europe and they are a bit bigger. Gammarus has been our first food for newly hatched Cuttlefish for example.
So where am I going with this post? I don't know, maybe just needed to go over our possibilities and challanges
On my wishlist are:
-a well working phytoplankton culture(or three, Nannochloripsis, Isocryssis and Synechococcus)
-upgraded kreisels - for fry or larvae or jellyfish
-a copepod culture, Parvocalanus would be great!
-a well working and not too time consuming culture of mysis or some kind of small shrimp species
When I write about our rutines, I mean stuff that goes into our daily to-do-list. So to add something that takes an hour a day is not possible. But 5 or 15 minutes a day might work, if you write a list for the coworkers thats not too complicated. If the new rutine works out it'll be a permanent task on our daily list, like hatching artemia or harvest phytoplankton have been.
Now I will watch some more talks on youtube!
So far we've tried and had good or at least okey succes with Seahorses(many times), Clownfish(one time), 4 species of jellyfish, Banggai cardinals(in tank, just catched the fry and gone from there) and Cuttlefish(S. bandensis). Not the most demanding animals to breed, but still need some special food etc. And we got all material we need to build breeding tanks, so the big issues for us to figure out are ways to grow or breed the right food source and to find rutines that's not too time consuming.
In a dream world we would have all kinds of live food going all the time. This is not the case right now
But we've got a pretty good and simple algea culture going giving us about 8 liters of phytoplankton every day. Unfortunately just one species(Nannochloropsis I think), but it still work well for rotifers and artemia. Our rotifers have been up and running a couple of years now and are also in our rutines and are working well. Artemia we've hatched daily for almost ten years so that too is working well. When it comes to larger food like live mysis and river shrimps we have tried to breed them. But so far not so much. During the summers we can collect a lot of mysis shrimps outside Gothenburg and buy river shrimps from Polen. During the winters we have no source to any of them. So getting a culture going would make it so much easier breeding Seahorses and Cuttlefish for example. And not just to breed, also to feed the adults with live food. Our Seahorses really enjoy chasing live food and are great hunters. And my guess is that the nutrients are better in live food as well.
Another live food we use is Gammarus, an amphipod crustacean. We can find them in both our cold water systems and tropical systems. They are possible to breed quite easy in small cups, but we mostly catch them from our refugiums. They are from 2mm up to 10mm. At least the ones we have, I know it's possible to buy Gammarus atlanticus in Europe and they are a bit bigger. Gammarus has been our first food for newly hatched Cuttlefish for example.
So where am I going with this post? I don't know, maybe just needed to go over our possibilities and challanges
On my wishlist are:
-a well working phytoplankton culture(or three, Nannochloripsis, Isocryssis and Synechococcus)
-upgraded kreisels - for fry or larvae or jellyfish
-a copepod culture, Parvocalanus would be great!
-a well working and not too time consuming culture of mysis or some kind of small shrimp species
When I write about our rutines, I mean stuff that goes into our daily to-do-list. So to add something that takes an hour a day is not possible. But 5 or 15 minutes a day might work, if you write a list for the coworkers thats not too complicated. If the new rutine works out it'll be a permanent task on our daily list, like hatching artemia or harvest phytoplankton have been.
Now I will watch some more talks on youtube!
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