Swedish fish - behind the scenes rebuilding a public aquarium

[Sallstrom]

Shrimp larvae invasion 13 days past hatching.

 

[Sallstrom]

Project mass production of Acropora humilis, spathulata, microclades and some more is slow but ongoing
Started with one colony of each about a half year ago, we're now up on about 5-10 colonies of each. Maybe it's mostly meditation for me, cutting and gluing small pieces of coral. But it feels so much better knowing that we got ten or more healthy colonies of each species in case something bad happens.
I'm using the experiment tank in which we tried NPS corals. Only one left now. But the Acropora seems to really appreciate the phytoplankton, so they feeding is still going.
I put up an extra Hydra 52 today as well.
So, in 2021 these corals will hopefully be nice sized colonies to move into the new large reef tank
Here are some of the frags

Edit. I'll be working alone at the Aquarium this weekend so I'll probably be posting a lot on R2R. Sorry in advance

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Project mass production of Acropora humilis, spathulata, microclades and some more is slow but ongoing
Started with one colony of each about a half year ago, we're now up on about 5-10 colonies of each. Maybe it's mostly meditation for me, cutting and gluing small pieces of coral. But it feels so much better knowing that we got ten or more healthy colonies of each species in case something bad happens.
I'm using the experiment tank in which we tried NPS corals. Only one left now. But the Acropora seems to really appreciate the phytoplankton, so they feeding is still going.
I put up an extra Hydra 52 today as well.
So, in 2021 these corals will hopefully be nice sized colonies to move into the new large reef tank
Here are some of the frags
View attachment 928615 View attachment 928616

Edit. I'll be working alone at the Aquarium this weekend so I'll probably be posting a lot on R2R. Sorry in advance

Thanks for the warning, about posting.

 

[Sallstrom]

Working alone on the weekend isn't that bad Lots of winter sports this weekend!

 

[Sallstrom]

Since I'm not sure I'm allow to post drawings from the architect or engineers, I'll post my own drawings of the sump for the 400 000L reef tank
Here the sump from above.

The water from the overflow will go to the left part of the sump, where the intakes for the skimmers and sand pressure filters are.
Water out from skimmers etc flow back into the sump in the middle(three blue dots). And the under and over a couple of baffles to get rid of bubbles.
Intakes for return pumps down on the right on the pictures.
Footprint of the sump is about 6 x 3 meters. Height about 1,7 meters(water level will be about 1 meter).

There are a lot of things not visible on this drawing, like heat exchanger, water to refugiums etc. This drawing is mostly for the walls of the sump.

So it's kind of a simple sump. No filters are in line. Everything should be possible to remove without turning off return pumps or anything else.

The big blue rectangle is a "trickle" filter(but high flow). Not decided on the size yet, so it's just my suggestion. It'll be on top of the sump, not inside. Hopefully some of the water from the overflow will fall into the trickle filter.

Oh, and happy New Years!

 

[bluewill]

I find your posts fascinating!
quick question , in a lot of your top down photo's of your main SPS tank i can see the reflections of your halide's and led's in the water.
In all the reflections the halide light looks white as it should and all the led lights look mostly red . Is the red light lights Im seeing an Phot anomoly? or are they mostly in the red spectrum's ?
thanks

 

[Sallstrom]

I find your posts fascinating!
quick question , in a lot of your top down photo's of your main SPS tank i can see the reflections of your halide's and led's in the water.
In all the reflections the halide light looks white as it should and all the led lights look mostly red . Is the red light lights Im seeing an Phot anomoly? or are they mostly in the red spectrum's ?
thanks

Thanks!!
That's just one green house LED you see above that tank(the 10000L reef). We've borrowed a couple of 600W green house LEDs from the company Heliospectra. I would guess about 40-50% of the diods are red(660nm).

So running these 100% on all channels will give you a lot of red. Probably too much if you don't add any blue light from another light source. So since we got a lot of metal halides over the 10000L tank we can run that Heliospectra LED on 100%. I put the lamp up there on a test and since all the corals looks fine we've kept it there for three years now. Large LEDs are expensive, so I'm glad we could borrow these ones

We run six of them over our largest reef tank, the bambo shark reef. But since we don't have any other light sources with a lot of blue mixing up the light, we need to turn down the red channel in this case. I don't have any proof other than my own observations on this. But I think the ratio between red and blue is important(or at least important that the red isn't too much compared to blue). So don't buy a green house LED with a lot of red unless you have some other light fixture with a lot of blue to mix up the light with

That was the long answer. The short one is, yes there's a lot of red light you see in the reflection!

 

[bluewill]

Understand ,
this year I had some brief conversations with Lasse, who along with myself questioning that as the hobby and industry has obviously been shifting concentration of our lighting towards the lower end of the spectrum ,whether we were all missing something with our minimal use of wavelengths between 650-700nm. I believe at that time lasse was looking at some t5 bulbs that were peaking at 450nm and 660nm.
Ive played around with some of these higher red wavelength bulbs this past year , but have not noticed any direct advantage to SPS in my my display tank. Although I did not have any controlled experiments . and removed the bulbs to early to really see , It makes sense to me logically that Corals , and particularly some of the Pigments would get elevated excitement from the red wavelengths. I wonder if Lasse continued to pursue this investigation ?

 

[Sallstrom]

Understand ,
this year I had some brief conversations with Lasse, who along with myself questioning that as the hobby and industry has obviously been shifting concentration of our lighting towards the lower end of the spectrum ,whether we were all missing something with our minimal use of wavelengths between 650-700nm. I believe at that time lasse was looking at some t5 bulbs that were peaking at 450nm and 660nm.
Ive played around with some of these higher red wavelength bulbs this past year , but have not noticed any direct advantage to SPS in my my display tank. Although I did not have any controlled experiments . and removed the bulbs to early to really see , It makes sense to me logically that Corals , and particularly some of the Pigments would get elevated excitement from the red wavelengths. I wonder if Lasse continued to pursue this investigation ?

@Lasse can give you his answer himself. I think he had some shipment problems with the T5 bulbs. But I know he got lots of theories on the red light!

Corals can use red light, that we've tested in experiments on oxygen production. But corals can also survive without.
I've even kept some corals alive under just red light for four month(until I ended the experiment). They didn't look or grew great, but they grew

I think most of the new LEDs for coral aquariums are fine when it comes to the spectrum. The challenge is to improve the lenses or diffusers to get good coverage I think.

 

[Lasse]

I have been interested of the wave lengths around 740 - 750 - far red. In plants - it have a huge importance. The bulbs I try to import from US had a lot of wavelengths in this span. But they was in atoms when they reach me and I can´t find them in Europe. I did a try with LED´s in the wavelengths of 735 - 745. It was no disaster but I run them to short time and can´t say that they did what I want. I had some birds nest that was very solid - like balls - in my aquaria - but in the aquaria they come from - very slender. They did get more slender after adding these LED´s but not fully what I expected. I change my main light and took away the array with 735-745 nm LED´s. However - I plan to add it again this spring and continue my test.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Sallstrom]

My coworker Jens posted some pics and clips from the peppermint shrimp larvae setup today. Not sure if it's possible to link to Instagram but I'll give it a try.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BsDLH7UBDUf/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Edit. It worked for me at least
BTW, thats our official Instagram account. Follow it!!

 

[Sallstrom]

First time we're sending both ICP and N-DOC samples to Triton for testing. Lots of vials. Home I didn't get them mixed them up ;Nailbiting

 

[Sallstrom]

Sometimes this happens after you cut of a branch of a Acropora Looks like it recovers well!

 

[Brew12]

Sometimes this happens after you cut of a branch of a Acropora Looks like it recovers well!
View attachment 939109

Was it purple when you started or is this a new color for that specimen?

 

[Sallstrom]

Was it purple when you started or is this a new color for that specimen?

Yes, the tips of this species is a bit purple. But usually it's only one tip on every branch, so this new growth showed much more purple than what it is on the other branches.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

I leave for awhile and missed alot.
Bummer.

 

[biophilia]

The new growth on that acro is beautiful!

Any update on the shrimp larvae?

 

[Sallstrom]

The new growth on that acro is beautiful!

Any update on the shrimp larvae?

I'm away this week skiing, back at work on Monday. So I haven't seen them for a couple of days.
But I hope they have settled when I get back

 

[Sallstrom]

#TBT
A picture from the 10000L reef tank when it was at its best IMO. Back in spring 2017. Before some of the colonies got too big and had to be moved.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

#TBT
A picture from the 10000L reef tank when it was at its best IMO. Back in spring 2017. Before some of the colonies got too big and had to be moved.

View attachment 940965

Looks like a Monet. Gorgeous.
On this phone of mine.