Swedish fish - behind the scenes rebuilding a public aquarium

[GBRsouth]

Found a new creature when looking for eggs in an Acropora under the magnifying glass. Put it under the microscope to see what it was. It was really tiny. Couldn’t see it with my bare eyes. So perhaps 0,1-0,5mm.

Is it just bad or a total catastrophe ? Looks like what is known as red bugs when I’ve searched the web. The “eye“ is red(center front), but the microscope won’t show those colours.

@KJ might know!

 

[Sallstrom]

Today two “models” in 1:10 scale were ready! The large one is the future reef tank and the smaller one is a North Sea tank.
We will use these for creating the aquascapes dry first. Then we can fill them up and investigate where to put the pumps and pipes so they won’t be visible from the windows.
We will cover up the sides and only leave the future windows open.

The small tank looks tiny, but it’ll be 40 000 litre

 

[dragon99]

Poor @Sallstrom, doesn't have a real reef tank so he has to play with toys instead

 

[Sallstrom]

Poor @Sallstrom, doesn't have a real reef tank so he has to play with toys instead

I finally have a tank in the correct scale for my diver!!

 

[Pascal89]

Just took a look at the work site. Now we see the sump!! The sump everyone!!! Hello!! And also the RO-tank and the saltmixing tank! Yes, I'm a bit excited ;Happy

For those who's not been working with this project for 5+ years, here's the drawing Tank to the left, sump with the three compartments, RO tank and tanks for backwashing etc up to the right. The circles are just for example(skimmers and sand pressure filters), we don't know where they will be yet and how they will look.

Looks great David! Might have overlooked this but how is the aquarium being sealed? There are all sorts of concrete of course but are you also using a coating for the inside of the tank as well? Good to see things moving forward. Long way to go but this looks very promising already.

Regards, Pascal

 

[MabuyaQ]

I finally have a tank in the correct scale for my diver!!

And we will all be jealous once you are diving in 'your' reef, than ours will feel like a toy.

 

[Sallstrom]

Looks great David! Might have overlooked this but how is the aquarium being sealed? There are all sorts of concrete of course but are you also using a coating for the inside of the tank as well? Good to see things moving forward. Long way to go but this looks very promising already.

Regards, Pascal

Thanks Pascal!
The seal/coating will be epoxi. So the same company that delivers the large acrylic windows will also do the coating. That tender is out now, so I don’t know the details yet.
This is just for the three larger tanks, plus a couple of tanks for RO, saltmixing etch. The rest of the tanks will be “ordinary” aquariums.

 

[Sallstrom]

And we will all be jealous once you are diving in 'your' reef, than ours will feel like a toy.

That will really be something But it’s a long way to go!

 

[Sallstrom]

Time to grow some eelgrass! Today me and my colleague collected some sand, shrimps and eelgrass out at a harbour. So they are all cold water organisms, even though the eelgrass, Zostera marina, could be found in warmer waters too, all around the northern hemisphere. We only collect plants washed up on the beaches, so no harvesting.

The tank half full.

The plan was to get more eelgrass, but we forgot one bucket at the harbour...
Anyway! This tank is connected to the small cold water system, so there’re plenty of nutrients and around 11 degrees. Light is a Hydra 26.

 

[d.fast]

Nice! Really cool look. Those shrimps are nice. Is your experience that eel grass is usually nutrient limited and does better in a nutrient rich water? I've never tested eel grass but I think Silver Dollar had problems keeping them.

 

[Stigigemla]

I had an Zostera forest I used to visit at Tjuvkil near Kungälv. It was low circulation and a muddy bottom.
Wonder if it looks the same now 40 to 50 years later?
Maybe they are taking up nutrition with the roots. (Most fresh water underwater plants dont)

 

[Sallstrom]

@d.fast we haven’t experimented that much with Z. marina yet. We have had it in mixed cold water tanks a couple of times, but usually with too little sand/mud/substrate for the roots to thrive. And with lots of nutrients and probably not the best clean up crews. So we’ve had lots of algae growing on the leafs.
We will probably run into the same problem with algae in this tank, but at least it’s a small tank easier to control. And we do try some ways to get the nutrient levels down. So we’ll see. Cold water tanks are fun in that way, not many have figured it all out, If any. So there’s lots of trialand errors.
Reef tanks are easy nowadays..

@Stigigemla I think the eelgrass is doing okay the west coast. At least from what I’ve seen from the boat during the summer. But I think the sea grass meadows might “move” to new locations over the years.
There are a couple of investigations on Swedish eelgrass meadows that says it has declined a lot since 1980, but I don’t remember if they just compared certain locations or the total coverage.

I have to look into how they take up nutrients. I was certain they used their roots (they grow pretty large root systems), but now I need to check that up!

 

[Sallstrom]

Sorry for not updating for a while. Everything is fine. Outside they are putting up some of the walls and floor of the new Aquarium building, and in the temporary Aquarium it’s a bit chaos as usual

Today I’m trying out and improving a coral dip station my colleague built to me on my birthday That’s why it has a name on it..
I did two cages out of egg crate yesterday and today was the first try. This is for dipping lots of frags and small colonies at once.

Since the water start to cool down as soon as we take it from the tank, we run a heater in the dip bucket. And a stream pump for circulation. Controlled by GHL.
My addition was the cages.

And other buckets before and after the dip, large enough for the cages.

Today I tried Reef Prime from Polyp lab for the first time. We’ve also used The Dip from Fauna marine and Reef Dip from Seachem the weeks before. They all seems okay. Hard to say how much flatworms they remove, but the corals have done fine at least.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

I finally have a tank in the correct scale for my diver!!

Your diver looks just like Lasse

 

[Stigigemla]

I have tried potassium chloride to raise the potassium level in the dip water to 800 mg/l.

 

[najer]

I have tried potassium chloride to raise the potassium level in the dip water to 800 mg/l.

I also use this as my pest dip, the corals seem to like it.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Do you guys have stereonephthya?

 

[Sallstrom]

I have tried potassium chloride to raise the potassium level in the dip water to 800 mg/l.

I remember now that we’ve tested potassium chloride! I think we got a lot of it in the fridge somewhere. Thanks. I’ll check our notes tomorrow.
My memory is short

 

[Sallstrom]

Do you guys have stereonephthya?

No, unfortunately. I would like to start up a smaller tank with some NPS but I have force myself not to. Too much to do now and probably will be for some time.
But there will be NPS corals in the new Aquarium!

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

No, unfortunately. I would like to start up a smaller tank with some NPS but I have force myself not to. Too much to do now and probably will be for some time.
But there will be NPS corals in the new Aquarium!

Its a blessing with a contact, he's on the board of directors of a museum affiliated with the Smithsonian and unfortunately with the virus issues. It's affected us over here with museums and such. We were planning or coordinating after doing a go fund to start adding a display tank full of NPS soft corals and of course other NPS corals to one museum and then do another go fund to fund the second Aquarium to the next museum and so forth. Right now we're in the waiting stage, because of the virus.
God willing.