Swedish fish - behind the scenes rebuilding a public aquarium

[Sallstrom]

Bleach cleans everything!

Speaking of dead corals.... do you feel there is positive value to trimming out the dead coral branchefrom under a colony when it dies from self shading? Are there drawbacks to doing it?

But don't you need to clean the coral gravel a lot afterwards using bleach?!
I've always been scared of chemicals coming into the tanks so I mostly clean with tap water

It depends, you could get better flow and the live part of the coral might do better if you remove those dead parts. But it's usually hard to reach them.
On the other hand you're growing live rock So the shaded parts of a colony could become a great area for sponges and other cryptic organisms.

 

[Brew12]

But don't you need to clean the coral gravel a lot afterwards using bleach?!
I've always been scared of chemicals coming into the tanks so I mostly clean with tap water

It depends, you could get better flow and the live part of the coral might do better if you remove those dead parts. But it's usually hard to reach them.
On the other hand you're growing live rock So the shaded parts of a colony could become a great area for sponges and other cryptic organisms.

Bleach is just sodium hypochlorite. I'm good with both sodium and chloride in my aquarium. Once the free radical oxygen is released either by attaching to an organic or decomposition (drying for a few days is an easy way to do it) I have no concerns at all. If you monitor ORP you can tell if trace amounts of the oxidizer made it through but that impact normally lasts only a few minutes. I see this on occasion if I don't let my filter socks dry after washing them in bleach.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Bleach is just sodium hypochlorite. I'm good with both sodium and chloride in my aquarium. Once the free radical oxygen is released either by attaching to an organic or decomposition (drying for a few days is an easy way to do it) I have no concerns at all. If you monitor ORP you can tell if trace amounts of the oxidizer made it through but that impact normally lasts only a few minutes. I see this on occasion if I don't let my filter socks dry after washing them in bleach.

Correct me if wrong but also sun uv will help to whiten coral. When using bleach, if set in sun and agitate at times. Good one Brew12.

 

[Brew12]

Correct me if wrong but also sun uv will help to whiten coral. When using bleach, if set in sun and agitate at times. Good one Brew12.

I'm sure it can whiten them, but not sure it would do much "cleaning". I feel that sun bleaching would only change the appearance.

 

[Sallstrom]

Bleach is just sodium hypochlorite. I'm good with both sodium and chloride in my aquarium. Once the free radical oxygen is released either by attaching to an organic or decomposition (drying for a few days is an easy way to do it) I have no concerns at all. If you monitor ORP you can tell if trace amounts of the oxidizer made it through but that impact normally lasts only a few minutes. I see this on occasion if I don't let my filter socks dry after washing them in bleach.

Yes I did a search and read some about it. Realising it's probably not the same as the Chlorine we use for other stuff at work.
I should know all this but there's too much in my head.. Memory isn't my best game
Thanks!

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

My ex-wife would fill china cups stained with bleach and let sun shine on them, stains gone. Super white.

 

[Brew12]

Yes I did I search and read some about it. Realising it's probably not the same as the Chlorine we use for other stuff at work.
I should know all this but there's too much in my head.. Memory isn't my best game
Thanks!

It is likely very similar. The chlorine tablets you use in a pool break down as they combat organics and in the sunshine. Once its done its job, it is completely reef safe. Not sure what you use at work so there may be other reasons not to let it in a reef tank.

 

[Stigigemla]

Chlorine is not without problems.
One exampel is that the paper mills has been forced to stop using it to bleach paper.
Organic chlorides are poisonous and very slow to break down in nature.

 

[Sallstrom]

Here's one more from our Bamboo shark reef tank. My colleague cleaned the windows this week so it was a good time for taking pictures. The same tank as in Lasse's long picture. This tank looked empty one and a half year ago

BTW, do you see the Acropora which is bleached at the base? dang those flatworms.

 

[Sallstrom]

The spiny sea stars had a good day today, been spawning like crazy
We collected some eggs and sperm and put up an experiment just for fun. No idea if they are possible to breed.
This is a common sea star along the Swedish west coast.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

The spiny sea stars had a good day today, been spawning like crazy
We collected some eggs and sperm and put up an experiment just for fun. No idea if they are possible to breed.
This is a common sea star along the Swedish west coast.
View attachment 960206 View attachment 960207 View attachment 960208

What's the water temp? To star fish

 

[Sallstrom]

What's the water temp? To star fish

Temperature 4 on the picture. So 10,8 C.

Temperature was the first thing I checked. Urchins usually spawn when there's changes, so I was worried the chillers were off. Thought it was the same for sea stars perhaps. But everything looked the same, temp is stable. Maybe they just liked the music I played..

 

[Brew12]

View attachment 960306
Temperature 4 on the picture. So 10,8 C.

Temperature was the first thing I checked. Urchins usually spawn when there's changes, so I was worried the chillers were off. Thought it was the same for sea stars perhaps. But everything looked the same, temp is stable. Maybe they just liked the music I played..

You were rocking the ABBA last night, weren't you!?!?!?

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

T

View attachment 960306
Temperature 4 on the picture. So 10,8 C.

Temperature was the first thing I checked. Urchins usually spawn when there's changes, so I was worried the chillers were off. Thought it was the same for sea stars perhaps. But everything looked the same, temp is stable. Maybe they just liked the music I played..

This is new to me. I was always more interested in NPS corals.
Info from Delbeek,
The past
Perhaps the earliest work on coral propagation was done at the Noumea Aquarium
in New Caledonia. As far back as 1956 this aquarium has displayed live field-
collected corals that were maintained ex-situ in open systems exposed to direct
sunlight (Carlson, 1999). Its director, Dr. Rene Catala, developed techniques in
the early 1960s for propagating Acropora and other stony corals (Catala, 1964).
Elsewhere, the Waikiki Aquarium and the Monaco Aquarium began displaying
live corals in the mid- to late-1970s. These aquarium systems were dependent on a
continuous supply of natural seawater and thus the aquarium seawater conditions
were not much different from the adjacent ocean (Carlson, 1999). In the early
1980s the Waikiki Aquarium began fragmenting its branching stony corals and
became the first public aquarium in the United States to propagate coral for use
in its exhibits and to supply other public aquaria in North America with coral
fragments. Today this aquarium has over 170 species of stony and soft corals in its
Collection.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Ope

You were rocking the ABBA last night, weren't you!?!?!?

Open can of worms. He probably played "dancing queen"

 

[Sallstrom]

Here's our little shrimp larvae setup. Air driven.

Today we could count to 4 Lysmata wurdemanni that had settled. Still 10-20 larvae swimming around, so hopefully it'll be a couple more tomorrow.

There's newly hatched glass shrimps in bucket number two. They're more developed when they hatch so they already look like small shrimps from day one.

And since we had some time this week, we rearranged this area and prepared it for coming cultures of phytoplankton and copepods. I hope we can get a hold of Parvocalanus copepods and some more species of algae soon.

New buckets With lids!

 

[Sallstrom]

Morning in the bamboo shark tank

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Here's our little shrimp larvae setup. Air driven.
View attachment 962076
View attachment 962077
Today we could count to 4 Lysmata wurdemanni that had settled. Still 10-20 larvae swimming around, so hopefully it'll be a couple more tomorrow.

There's newly hatched glass shrimps in bucket number two. They're more developed when they hatch so they already look like small shrimps from day one.

And since we had some time this week, we rearranged this area and prepared it for coming cultures of phytoplankton and copepods. I hope we can get a hold of Parvocalanus copepods and some more species of algae soon.
View attachment 962084

New buckets With lids!
View attachment 962086

Just reminded me, I need to pickup some glass shrimp.

 

[Sallstrom]

Just got our lastest ICP and N-DOC test results back. These three tanks had all green except one (just Ca, I, B that were off, so easy parameters to adjust): the 10000L reef, the 1500L roomdevider and the bambo shark reef. Yes, chasing numbers is fun!

Still looking through the N-DOC results and trying to get something out of them. But I guess we need a couple of more tests to see if we can figure out any trends. We are a little low in DOC and DIC in most tanks, even if we dose some carbon source(which we didn't do in the reef tanks when we sent in the first test).
We're at 2-4 ppm nitrate in the reef tanks at the moment, but I'll try to lower it a bit to get closer to Triton's setpoint. But, this is just for fun. The corals are doing great and so is the whole tanks, so this is just an experiment on my side. My guess is that it'll start coming cyanobacteria if the nitrate gets below 1ppm in these tanks, but that'll usually disappear if we just raise the nitrate again.

 

[Sallstrom]

We started fixing two old plastic tanks today. We got 8 tanks from the university of Gothenburg seven something years ago, they were about to throw them away. They have been outside since, so they are a bit cracked due to rainwater and ice.
We redid two of these five years ago, made propagation tanks out of them. In that case we needed to shorten them from 6 to 4 meter. We even made one less wide. It took some work.. But they are still up and running, and we will use them in the temporary Aquarium. So it was worth the job.
This time we will just make sure they will stay together and not leak. We won't repaint them, just fix the holes and the cracked corners.
So today we started off with the first layer of epoxy and fiber glass mat. Both me and my colleague had forgotten all about how we did it the last time
So this might not become the prettiest epoxy work, but this won't been anything else than just temporary tanks. On Monday we will polish it and do another layer.