Swedish fish - behind the scenes rebuilding a public aquarium

[Sallstrom]

Does the East London Aquarium still exist @najer ?
Found these when we looked through some old aquarium dossiers. Really cool stuff!

 

[Sallstrom]

Here are a couple of photos from the Temporary Aquarium.

 

[najer]

I don't think so.
Tanks look great.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Very nice

 

[Sallstrom]

I don't think so.
Tanks look great.

Very nice

Thanks!
Yes, except for some minor problems with the electricity, the tanks work well right now. It's coming more calcareous algae and they start to look more mature.
And it looks like the more picky coral species are doing better now. So I'm happy

 

[ksed]

The build start is delayed for a couple of week due to an appeal. Not super fun but I guess these things are common

Aquarium wise not much has happened. We're having a bit low pH in one of the coral systems, due to the calcium reactor. We've started dosing Core7 to be able to turn the reactor down a bit and so far the pH has gone up on average 0,1. The corals are doing fine though (that's why we have had to turn the reactor up and up..). The absolutely easiest way would be to pull the plug and connect our two coral systems together, since the other one has really high pH(the pipes is already there, just need to remove two pipes which are not glued).
But then we would leave the idea of having separate systems to ensure not all of the corals would be killed if something happened to the water.. Have to think about that for some time before I change anything

Are your running any Kalk?

 

[Sallstrom]

Are your running any Kalk?

If you mean calcium hydroxide/kalkwasser, we do not use that now. I rather use Core7 to lower the risk of imbalance. But on the other hand, some extra Ca often is needed when running our calcium reactors so adding CaOH could be a good idea.

 

[Sallstrom]

Are your running any Kalk?

The short anwer was above. Here's the long one

When I started at the Aquarium(two other coworkers also started at the same period), we took over a bunch of tanks running with kalcium mixers/stirrers conected to the top off. We still have like 10 old calcium stirrers laying around today. But after several level errors, with the result totally white tanks, we disconnected most of them. Some we left of timers, not ATO. And when discovering other ways was easier keeping KH and Ca up, we stopped using them.
Last years my colleague have used dense kalkwasser to kill Aiptasia in a jellyfish tank
But with that said, Ca(OH)2 is still a great product, I just like other methods right now.

When it comes to low pH, I'm almost sad to say, I haven't seen any corals suffering yet(only in experiments with really low pH). So therefor I'm not that worried. We've had tanks with calcium reactors and low pH for many years now. Perhaps nothing I should recommend, but also nothing I get panic over.
The numbers I talk about is a pH around 7,7-7,9.

 

[Sallstrom]

A very short update from the rebuild.

Everything goes well, just a bit slow, at the moment. Still waiting for the construction company to be elected.
The tanks and animals are doing well. The staff is tired of moving, tearing down old stuff, and cleaning out the old facilities..

We've also started looking at products for the new large tanks. There will be a public procurements for large acrylic windows soon, we will need many tons of dry live rock, and lots of more stuff.
We are also working on sponsors and different "packages" for them. Anyone wants to sponsor the best large reef tank in the world? Or a new coffee machine? We have had an events for some larger companies in Gothenburg for example. Hopefully someting good comes fram that.

So things are moving forward. It'll just be a while before the fun starts, building the new tanks.

 

[Brew12]

Or a new coffee machine?

I've seen the standard you set for your coffee. That may cost more than the acrylic windows!!! ;Wideyed

 

[Sallstrom]

I've seen the standard you set for your coffee. That may cost more than the acrylic windows!!! ;Wideyed

That's my morning coffee at home. The rest of the day I'm stuck with fox poison(direct translation from Swedish ), i.e. regular filter coffee. We really need a proper coffee machine at the Aquarium too!!

Oh, I'm not sure the acrylic windows are something we should joke about.. They might eat up half the aquarium budget;Woot We might need to use Jebao pumps in the 400000L reef tank after paying for those windows;Wacky

 

[Sallstrom]

Forgot to mention, we do have some fun stuff going on at the moment.
Two students wanted to do an experiment for school. After reading about DLI(daily light integral I think ) we talked them into doing a short growth experiment with two different light settings. One with 12 hour of light in a row, then 12 hours off. The other with 3 hours on, 3 hours off all day. So both sides will get 12 hours of the same light intensity, but in different periods.
Test corals were measured today. Species will be Seriatopora hystrix and Montipora sp. Those are the ones doing the best without glue. No glue makes it easier to measure the weight.
I think the experiment will last for two weeks. I'm just watching from the side this time

 

[Hemmdog]

Forgot to mention, we do have some fun stuff going on at the moment.
Two students wanted to do an experiment for school. After reading about DLI(daily light integral I think ) we talked them into doing a short growth experiment with two different light settings. One with 12 hour of light in a row, then 12 hours off. The other with 3 hours on, 3 hours off all day. So both sides will get 12 hours of the same light intensity, but in different periods.
Test corals were measured today. Species will be Seriatopora hystrix and Montipora sp. Those are the ones doing the best without glue. No glue makes it easier to measure the weight.
I think the experiment will last for two weeks. I'm just watching from the side this time

That’s awesome! Keep us updated!

 

[Brew12]

Forgot to mention, we do have some fun stuff going on at the moment.
Two students wanted to do an experiment for school. After reading about DLI(daily light integral I think ) we talked them into doing a short growth experiment with two different light settings. One with 12 hour of light in a row, then 12 hours off. The other with 3 hours on, 3 hours off all day. So both sides will get 12 hours of the same light intensity, but in different periods.
Test corals were measured today. Species will be Seriatopora hystrix and Montipora sp. Those are the ones doing the best without glue. No glue makes it easier to measure the weight.
I think the experiment will last for two weeks. I'm just watching from the side this time

That is awesome. Some people feel that you can grow zoanthids much faster using a 6 hour on, 6 hour off lighting cycle. I'm curious how much truth there is to it.

 

[Sallstrom]

That is awesome. Some people feel that you can grow zoanthids much faster using a 6 hour on, 6 hour off lighting cycle. I'm curious how much truth there is to it.

Yes, I've read a couple of posts about that. But I haven't had time to do much research myself yet. And not my colleague either I think, the colleague who's the supervisor for the students. So this is mostly for fun and for them to have something to write a report on. It's not university students this time
But the experiment setup is done properly, same as if it was a scientific experiment.

 

[Sallstrom]

Coral spawning and settling of Seriatopora caliendrium
Here are some baby colonies

 

[NY_Caveman]

Coral spawning and settling of Seriatopora caliendrium
Here are some baby colonies

That is really cool!

 

[Stigigemla]

Do they all look the same or are there differencies?

 

[Sallstrom]

Seriatopora species are hermaphrodits with internal fertilization, but they can also self-fertilize. So probably this is "clones" from self-fertilization.
What I can see they look the same as the large colonies we have in that same tank.

 

[Sallstrom]

Seriatopora species are hermaphrodits with internal fertilization, but they can also self-fertilize. So probably this is "clones" from self-fertilization.
What I can see they look the same as the large colonies we have in that same tank.

To better explain the above, here's some more info

Seriatopora colonies are hermaphrodits, so the are both male and female at the same time. When reproducing sexually male gamets(sperm) are released into the water column. Those are taken up by other colonies and the fertilisation occurs internal where the eggs are. Then they release an already developed larvae which settle pretty fast on a hard substrate.
Corals doing it this way are called brooders.
And in theory they should be easy to breed sexually in aquariums. But I've only seen it for Seriatopora caliendrium in our tanks. And only 2-3 times over ten years +. So I guess it's not very common. Perhaps that has to with corals not often get to reproductive sizes in aquariums.

That's it for now