Swedish fish - behind the scenes rebuilding a public aquarium

[Dr. Dendrostein]

We're waiting for the decision from the politicians. The whole rebuilding will cost a bit more than what the city agreed on the first time. Not our(the Aquarium) fault actually
So we won't close any of the old tanks until we know for sure. But we will start up a system in the cafeteria in a couple of weeks I think. Just to be ready if everything goes according to the first time plan.

Wait till the change orders start coming in during construction, it also increase the cost of construction. Part of doing construction unfortunately.

 

[Sallstrom]

Wait till the change orders start coming in during construction, it also increase the cost of construction. Part of doing construction unfortunately.

Yes, I'm sure it'll be like that. At the moment I only look a couple of weeks ahead. If I start worry about things a year ahead or more my head starts to spinn

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Yes, I'm sure it'll be like that. At the moment I only look a couple of weeks ahead. If I start worry about things a year ahead or more my head starts to spinn

Here in the States, when you have construction done at your home like adding a room with bathroom or large kitchen or even having a house built, they say count on adding 15 % to 20% to the price of the bid

 

[Sallstrom]

Here are my thought on taking notes!

The great benefits of taking notes

Running a reef tank might be a walk in the park for some and for some it’s a real challenge. I’m somewhere in the middle of that scale, but I always want to improve my husbandry skills. Working at a small public aquarium, maintaining, starting up and rebuilding reef tanks, I have had the chance of try many methods and products.

The first years at my job we unfortunately didn’t keep that much record on what we did. We did keep record on the animals and some measurements, but not much else. If we did write anything up it was on paper. Paper and water aren’t the best combination, so often I didn’t take notes when trying something new or changing light bulbs etc. As I see it now, we lost a lot of data and observations those years.

Seven years ago my colleague installed an old computer in our kitchen (which also serves as a lab). At that time we started one excel document for each aquarium system at our Aquarium. Since the computer stood just where we sat and did the water tests, it was easy to write the numbers down while sitting there doing the tests. It’s also nice to listen to music while doing water tests.

I started at the top of my excel documents just writing the date and then the measurements or the observation or any other thing I thought mattered. The next note I took I wrote underneath, so it would be a chronological order. Nothing advanced at all.
After a while we found more things than the water parameters that would be good to mark in the notes, like the dates when we change T5 or MH bulbs, CO2 for the calcium reactor, dosing amounts and many more things.

The advantage with these documents is that you don’t need to rely on your memory solely. For me who has a limited memory, these notes are essential. Specially when it comes to troubleshooting. If the corals one day don’t look happy, you could go back and see what have been done the last couple of weeks. If you see Cyanobacteria starting to grow on the sand, you can go back and check if the parameters have changed or if any changes have been done on light schedules or if any other things have changed. This way we’ve figured out a lot of stuff that we shouldn’t have without the notes.

An example was when we had evening event and changed the light schedule for that evening. A couple of days later it started growing Cyanobacteria on the sand. At that time I tried to vacuum the sand, but the red mat just came back the next day. A week or two later I was looking through the notes and saw the note on the evening event and the temporary change in light time. Somehow we hadn’t changed back to the regular schedule, so the tank got three extra hours of light a day since that event. When discovering this I changed to the regular schedule. Two weeks later the Cyanobacteria was gone.

I also like to keep all notes in the same document, just add more sheets on the excel file. Here are some of my sheets: ”Everything”, ”CO2 and CRx media changes”, ”lights”, ”stocklist”, ”water changes”, ”dosings” and ”recipe and formulas”. I like to keep all the records on the sheet "Everything", just to be able to scroll through it all chronologically. Then add the details in the sheet for fish or bulbs for example.

Sorry, we write in Swedish at work. But I'll translate if anyone wants me to!

My colleague on the other hand likes to order everything on the same sheet.

It's also a good idea to write something when the tank looks it's best, not only when something is wrong. To be able to go back and see all the settings when everything worked well.

I hope you enjoyed this little "article". Have a good weekend!

 

[Sallstrom]

Here in the States, when you have construction done at your home like adding a room with bathroom or large kitchen or even having a house built, they say count on adding 15 % to 20% to the price of the bid

At the moment I know they have 10-15% "extra" in the budget just for those things. But I wouldn't be surprised if that amount will be taken away soon to please the politicians and to get the numbers down just for now

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Here are my thought on taking notes!

The great benefits of taking notes

Running a reef tank might be a walk in the park for some and for some it’s a real challenge. I’m somewhere in the middle of that scale, but I always want to improve my husbandry skills. Working at a small public aquarium, maintaining, starting up and rebuilding reef tanks, I have had the chance of try many methods and products.

The first years at my job we unfortunately didn’t keep that much record on what we did. We did keep record on the animals and some measurements, but not much else. If we did write anything up it was on paper. Paper and water aren’t the best combination, so often I didn’t take notes when trying something new or changing light bulbs etc. As I see it now, we lost a lot of data and observations those years.

Seven years ago my colleague installed an old computer in our kitchen (which also serves as a lab). At that time we started one excel document for each aquarium system at our Aquarium. Since the computer stood just where we sat and did the water tests, it was easy to write the numbers down while sitting there doing the tests. It’s also nice to listen to music while doing water tests.

I started at the top of my excel documents just writing the date and then the measurements or the observation or any other thing I thought mattered. The next note I took I wrote underneath, so it would be a chronological order. Nothing advanced at all.
After a while we found more things than the water parameters that would be good to mark in the notes, like the dates when we change T5 or MH bulbs, CO2 for the calcium reactor, dosing amounts and many more things.

The advantage with these documents is that you don’t need to rely on your memory solely. For me who has a limited memory, these notes are essential. Specially when it comes to troubleshooting. If the corals one day don’t look happy, you could go back and see what have been done the last couple of weeks. If you see Cyanobacteria starting to grow on the sand, you can go back and check if the parameters have changed or if any changes have been done on light schedules or if any other things have changed. This way we’ve figured out a lot of stuff that we shouldn’t have without the notes.

An example was when we had evening event and changed the light schedule for that evening. A couple of days later it started growing Cyanobacteria on the sand. At that time I tried to vacuum the sand, but the red mat just came back the next day. A week or two later I was looking through the notes and saw the note on the evening event and the temporary change in light time. Somehow we hadn’t changed back to the regular schedule, so the tank got three extra hours of light a day since that event. When discovering this I changed to the regular schedule. Two weeks later the Cyanobacteria was gone.

I also like to keep all notes in the same document, just add more sheets on the excel file. Here are some of my sheets: ”Everything”, ”CO2 and CRx media changes”, ”lights”, ”stocklist”, ”water changes”, ”dosings” and ”recipe and formulas”. I like to keep all the records on the sheet "Everything", just to be able to scroll through it all chronologically. Then add the details in the sheet for fish or bulbs for example.
View attachment 979378
Sorry, we write in Swedish at work. But I'll translate if anyone wants me to!

My colleague on the other hand likes to order everything on the same sheet.
View attachment 979379


It's also a good idea to write something when the tank looks it's best, not only when something is wrong. To be able to go back and see all the settings when everything worked well.

I hope you enjoyed this little "article". Have a good weekend!

I better take a note of this, hold on, I'm writing this down. Okay, got it

 

[crusso1993]

I better take a note of this, hold on, I'm writing this down. Okay, got it

Just don't forget where you put the note!

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

here's my computer to take some notes. this is just some notes

 

[Sallstrom]

here's my computer to take some notes. this is just some notes

View attachment 981398

That is great! But how do you archive the notes?

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

That is great! But how do you archive the notes?

I have more notes on a note book, also the notes on refrigerator go on the note book.

 

[Brew12]

Here are my thought on taking notes!

The great benefits of taking notes

Running a reef tank might be a walk in the park for some and for some it’s a real challenge. I’m somewhere in the middle of that scale, but I always want to improve my husbandry skills. Working at a small public aquarium, maintaining, starting up and rebuilding reef tanks, I have had the chance of try many methods and products.

The first years at my job we unfortunately didn’t keep that much record on what we did. We did keep record on the animals and some measurements, but not much else. If we did write anything up it was on paper. Paper and water aren’t the best combination, so often I didn’t take notes when trying something new or changing light bulbs etc. As I see it now, we lost a lot of data and observations those years.

Seven years ago my colleague installed an old computer in our kitchen (which also serves as a lab). At that time we started one excel document for each aquarium system at our Aquarium. Since the computer stood just where we sat and did the water tests, it was easy to write the numbers down while sitting there doing the tests. It’s also nice to listen to music while doing water tests.

I started at the top of my excel documents just writing the date and then the measurements or the observation or any other thing I thought mattered. The next note I took I wrote underneath, so it would be a chronological order. Nothing advanced at all.
After a while we found more things than the water parameters that would be good to mark in the notes, like the dates when we change T5 or MH bulbs, CO2 for the calcium reactor, dosing amounts and many more things.

The advantage with these documents is that you don’t need to rely on your memory solely. For me who has a limited memory, these notes are essential. Specially when it comes to troubleshooting. If the corals one day don’t look happy, you could go back and see what have been done the last couple of weeks. If you see Cyanobacteria starting to grow on the sand, you can go back and check if the parameters have changed or if any changes have been done on light schedules or if any other things have changed. This way we’ve figured out a lot of stuff that we shouldn’t have without the notes.

An example was when we had evening event and changed the light schedule for that evening. A couple of days later it started growing Cyanobacteria on the sand. At that time I tried to vacuum the sand, but the red mat just came back the next day. A week or two later I was looking through the notes and saw the note on the evening event and the temporary change in light time. Somehow we hadn’t changed back to the regular schedule, so the tank got three extra hours of light a day since that event. When discovering this I changed to the regular schedule. Two weeks later the Cyanobacteria was gone.

I also like to keep all notes in the same document, just add more sheets on the excel file. Here are some of my sheets: ”Everything”, ”CO2 and CRx media changes”, ”lights”, ”stocklist”, ”water changes”, ”dosings” and ”recipe and formulas”. I like to keep all the records on the sheet "Everything", just to be able to scroll through it all chronologically. Then add the details in the sheet for fish or bulbs for example.
View attachment 979378
Sorry, we write in Swedish at work. But I'll translate if anyone wants me to!

My colleague on the other hand likes to order everything on the same sheet.
View attachment 979379


It's also a good idea to write something when the tank looks it's best, not only when something is wrong. To be able to go back and see all the settings when everything worked well.

I hope you enjoyed this little "article". Have a good weekend!

I was so good about documenting things when I started. Not sure what happened, but I don't document anything anymore. I need to fix that.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

That is great! But how do you archive the notes?

Don't forget I've only been back reefkeeping for a year and 4 months, so not many notes for now to Archive.

 

[crusso1993]

here's my computer to take some notes. this is just some notes

View attachment 981398

Well, that will certainly help with not forgetting where you put the notes!

 

[Sallstrom]

Don't forget I've only been back reefkeeping for a year and 4 months, so not many notes for now to Archive.

How do you keep track of all the different feeding schedules and the observations? Start a document and write it all down! It's fun to go back and see what has been done and how the results came out. Our memory is selective, so we only remember some of the things

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Well, that will certainly help with not forgetting where you put the notes!

Right by tank easy and quick

 

[Sallstrom]

Well, that will certainly help with not forgetting where you put the notes!

This is how my colleague takes notes when doing scientific experiments(but then all the numbers goes into excel later .. )

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

How do you keep track of all the different feeding schedules and the observations? Start a document and write it all down! It's fun to go back and see what has been done and how the results came out. Our memory is selective, so we only remember some of the things

Everything from quantities to make their food to time schedules are noted. Dosing pump are programmable too. The stream pump on\off times in notebook. I'm on it.

 

[Sallstrom]

Everything from quantities to make their food to time schedules are noted. Dosing pump are programmable too. The stream pump on\off times in notebook. I'm on it.

You'll need all that when you write the book "How to keep and breed Dendronephthya corals"!

 

[Brew12]

You'll need all that when you write the book "How to keep and breed Dendronephthya corals"!

That is gonna take a LOT of refrigerators!

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

You'll need all that when you write the book "How to keep and breed Dendronephthya corals"!

One day, hopefully. At this time Im designing an oval tank for them. Wish bottom was funnel shape for detritus. To expensive out of acrylic $5000+, so plywood till afford acrylic, plywood tank good for experimenting at first