Swedish fish - behind the scenes rebuilding a public aquarium

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Do they taste like herring or salmon?


.

Lutefisk? I think.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

I had them as a kid. But forgot about them, till recently I ordered aquarium products and they sent me a sample. Brought back memories, so went to Walmart bought a big bag, didn't taste the same.

I think sample had real sugar. Sample way better taste

 

[blackizzz]

I had them as a kid. But forgot about them, till recently I ordered aquarium products and they sent me a sample. Brought back memories, so went to Walmart bought a big bag, didn't taste the same.

I think sample had real sugar. Sample way better taste

If you guys wanna get ahold of "real swedish fish (produced by "Malaco")", IKEA usually carries them in their food section The "real" ones are also available for order on amazon, if you get a real craving

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

If you guys wanna get ahold of "real swedish fish (produced by "Malaco")", IKEA usually carries them in their food section The "real" ones are also available for order on amazon, if you get a real craving

Thx

 

[Brew12]

Nice! Maybe my new profile picture

You are more than welcome to use it! I had my coffee mug on me and passed a candy bowl with the Swedish Fish. Couldn't help but take it and get a picture!

 

[Sallstrom]

Totally thrilled over the shrimp larvae! So cool, and they're growing fast. Still look like small satellites or aliens. My guess is that most of them are still alive, about 100. 4 days old now. About a month more until settling.
Started a new bucket today for two other L. wurdemanni who's carrying eggs. So there will be more larvae in a week or so. Nice to work with animals who reproduce many times with short time in between. Will give us many chances to improve our husbandry.

Here's my third larvae bucket. Getting better. All ideas for the design are stolen

So simple but at the same time working great for its purpose. Water is lifted by air bubbles, and released in an angle so the water inside the bucket goes around and around. Like stirring a pot slowly. Water goes out through the sand and filter mat in the bottom. So the bucket needs to be in a tank, obviously

My colleague found an article on peppermint shrimps as cleaner shrimps in aquaculture for groupers. They apparently eat eggs from the parasites and improved the health of the fish in their test. Sounds good. Hope they also like eggs from Acropora eating flatworms

Tested the nutrients in the new coral work station/shrimp breeding system(8 x 160L tanks + sumps). No phosphate found(Hanna LR) and 0-0,2 ppm nitrate according to Salifert. Now we can feed even more!
The corals doesn't look great so far, but we haven't got super SPS lights either. The Acropora survives, the LPS looks fine. My guess is they do better when the system gets more bioload. We'll see.

The building of the stands for the temporary propagation tank are standing still. Another museum has taken our carpenter at the moment. Apparently their exhibition building was more urgent than our stands So we will probably build them ourself soon

 

[Sallstrom]

It's a lot of meetings, budgets, invoices and drawings now... So we need this breeding setups to have some fun too! And to get our hands wet and practice our skills.

 

[Stigigemla]

The shrimps are potential cannibals. It is easy to see when it begins because then you an see a few hooked to each other. I used green water to limit it. It keeps the artemia well fed too. I believe it was 28 days to metarmophosis by me at 26 celsius. It is easy to see when they molt because it is the only time they grow and they change in their appaerance too. I believe they are on the way to their second molt now.
I have a nice book (How to raise and train Your peppermint shrimp) with pictures of the different larvae stages.

 

[Barry_Cuda]

Lutefisk? I think.

Lutefisk-flavored candy would qualify as a war crime, I think.

 

[biophilia]

@Sallstrom any thoughts on using L. wurdemanni as a live food source (say for cephalapod breeding) if you can develop a reliable and staggered breeding system for them? I found a reference to the juveniles reaching 30-40mm length in ~3 months.

 

[vetteguy53081]

 

[Sallstrom]

@Sallstrom any thoughts on using L. wurdemanni as a live food source (say for cephalapod breeding) if you can develop a reliable and staggered breeding system for them? I found a reference to the juveniles reaching 30-40mm length in ~3 months.

Yes, that's a part of our plan. We are also trying to breed Paleamoneatas varians just for that reason, to use as live food. I think the L. wurdemanni might be easier, to get more juveniles per adult, but I don't remember exactly the numbers per hatch right now. We've also tried Swedish mysis but that was a lot of work for very few juveniles. But it all depends on how you set up the husbandry. Maybe we could have done it smarter.

 

[Sallstrom]

The shrimps are potential cannibals. It is easy to see when it begins because then you an see a few hooked to each other. I used green water to limit it. It keeps the artemia well fed too. I believe it was 28 days to metarmophosis by me at 26 celsius. It is easy to see when they molt because it is the only time they grow and they change in their appaerance too. I believe they are on the way to their second molt now.
I have a nice book (How to raise and train Your peppermint shrimp) with pictures of the different larvae stages.

Yes, we might need to buy that book! I've seen people mention it a lot when looking around for Peppermint shrimps.

Thanks for the tips! So the larvae can also start to eat each other? At what age did you see that? We might need a larger bucket or set up more buckets to get lower density when the get bigger.

 

[Stigigemla]

I had around 100 that I fed rotifers in the first stage. Second stage was rotifers + artemia and then just artemia. I had a continous water change of about a drip per second in a 5 gallon tank. I added artemia and conserved algae twice a day. A little to much in the beginnig because a few artemia grew away. But when the shrimps metarmophized all were gone. That was the point i stopped adding algae to the water. And then I had 3 small shrimps. I had about 2 to 4 inches sight in the water so I didnt know when the most of the larvae died.
But the first sign of cannibalism was directly when the first few did molt the first time.
The light was a 25 w incandescent lamp 6 inches over the surface dimmed about halfway down to keep the larvae in most of the water column. With full light they were at the bottom. All sides exept the front wa painted black. When I didnt inspect the room light was blocked with a black sheet at the front.

 

[Sallstrom]

I had around 100 that I fed rotifers in the first stage. Second stage was rotifers + artemia and then just artemia. I had a continous water change of about a drip per second in a 5 gallon tank. I added artemia and conserved algae twice a day. A little to much in the beginnig because a few artemia grew away. But when the shrimps metarmophized all were gone. That was the point i stopped adding algae to the water. And then I had 3 small shrimps. I had about 2 to 4 inches sight in the water so I didnt know when the most of the larvae died.
But the first sign of cannibalism was directly when the first few did molt the first time.
The light was a 25 w incandescent lamp 6 inches over the surface dimmed about halfway down to keep the larvae in most of the water column. With full light they were at the bottom. All sides exept the front wa painted black. When I didnt inspect the room light was blocked with a black sheet at the front.

Thanks Stig!

Me and Jens estimated the number to around 200 larvae today. There's a lot of them in there!
We've a half automatic feeding now. A 2 litre container (with air bubbles) with an overflow that leads to the larvae bucket. We fill it with newly hatched artemia and a mix of live Nannochoropsis and Isochryssis twice a day. Then aquarium water is pumped with a dosing pump to the artemia/algae container -> artemia and algae flows over to the larvae bucket. So now they get food 18 hours per day. Hopefully they won't eat each other that much if we keep them well fed
I think there's a couple of metamorphoses in which they are very sensitive. It'll be interesting to see. I guess we can try live copepods and gammarus as food later on also. To get some more variation in the food.

 

[Sallstrom]

Okey, Christmas again. Here's Noel Gallagher on Christmas

Back at work tomorrow. That'll be nice.

Oh, and merry Christmas to all who celebrate it. I will too, but I like it most when it's all over

 

[Sallstrom]

Merry Christmas to everybody that celebrates on the 25th too. In Sweden it's 24th, but we are a bit ahead sometimes..

My turn to work on Christmas Day, so right now I'm having a Christmas coffee behind the 10000L reef tank

It's a mess along the backside of the tank

Wanted to try some frags in really good flow and light.

And here's some more

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Merry Christmas to everybody that celebrates on the 25th too. In Sweden it's 24th, but we are a bit ahead sometimes..

My turn to work on Christmas Day, so right now I'm having a Christmas coffee behind the 10000L reef tank

View attachment 926476

It's a mess along the backside of the tank
View attachment 926477

Wanted to try some frags in really good flow and light.
View attachment 926478

And here's some more
View attachment 926479

I think I'll go skiing today. 18 minutes away.

 

[Brew12]

Merry Christmas to everybody that celebrates on the 25th too. In Sweden it's 24th, but we are a bit ahead sometimes..

My turn to work on Christmas Day, so right now I'm having a Christmas coffee behind the 10000L reef tank

View attachment 926476

It's a mess along the backside of the tank
View attachment 926477

Wanted to try some frags in really good flow and light.
View attachment 926478

And here's some more
View attachment 926479

Merry Christmas! I come from a very German family so we did most of the celebration on the 24th, also. If you have to be at work on Christmas, that does make a fantastic place for a cup of Christmas coffee!

 

[Sallstrom]

Things to do in 2019:
Close down 8 saltwater systems, about 45000 litre coral tanks.
Move all the animals and rock to temporary tanks.
Build the stands for the temporary tanks!
Get all the corals to survive.
Finish the drawings for the new Aquarium building.
Upgrade our cultures, add at least one more species of phytoplankton and hopefully get a hold of the copepod Parvocalanus.
Breed at least one new species of fish (new for us).
Not get burned out ;Doctor
Figure out what type of lights to use and how to aquascape(materials etc) the new large tanks.
Start planning the exhibition halls, things like texts, monitors, films.
Get sponsors
Succesfully reproduce Acropora sexually

This list will probably change a lot of times..