Swedish fish - behind the scenes rebuilding a public aquarium

[Sallstrom]

I bet there’s a bristleworm or two in that pile of acro skeletons! Lol. Keep up the good work !

Gloves on!
Thanks!!

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Yesterday we emptied the 10000 litre reef tank. Now the bamboo shark reef is the only display tank still up and running.
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Here's how we attached rock to our home made background. Didn't remember that so many rocks were drilled and attached
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With this background we didn't need that much rocks actually. I think there were more rocks in the 2500L soft coral tank.

Now we need to clean up... And sort corals. The bamboo shark tank will have to wait until September

Thats a Lotta work. When I setup my swimming pool size reef, one day, I now know how to fasten the rocks with no glue or little glue. Thanks for the tip. Comrade.

 

[Brew12]

It's impressive how fast you guys got that done!

I have to say... it looked much better before you guys started doing all that work.

 

[Sallstrom]

Thats a Lotta work. When I setup my swimming pool size reef, one day, I now know how to fasten the rocks with no glue or little glue. Thanks for the tip. Comrade.

Hehe, I know. Hard to do in a small tank. But you never know, someone might have plans for a swimming pool sized tank

It's impressive how fast you guys got that done!

I have to say... it looked much better before you guys started doing all that work.

Thanks! Some days we are more productive than others
We do like to do things fast. But it's a lot of things left. I've been emptying the sump and refugium today, not done yet..

And this is what it look like behind the tank today

But the home made background is in the trash already! My colleague cut it up in small pieces yesterday.

I know, it's not the most uplifting work, to break down well working reef tanks. Luckily we have the new Aquarium to fantasies about
And at the moment we just want to be done, to get all animals are in the temporary Aquarium. Now all the tropical ones are moved(except the shark tank which will be closed in September). Next move, and the last before the summer, is the cold water animals. After that at least the aquarium maintenance will be a little less, and all in the same room.
Right now for example we need to pump RO water 50 meters, from our RO storage tank, to the temporary Aquarium. The plan is to have the RO unit, RO storage tank and saltwater mix moved into the temporary Aquarium soon. And pretty much everything else we need to run the tanks.
Looking forward to not walk 10km at work every day!

 

[Sallstrom]

This is what the temporary Aquarium looks like at the moment.

Right now the "white system" is in the lead, followed by the "acrylic system". 300ml Triton Core7 a day verses 250ml. So the ugly green house lamps must be doing something right

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

The sand filter, are you using coral sand? I'm going to set up a 1/4 hp filter. In planning stages.

 

[Sallstrom]

The sand filter, are you using coral sand? I'm going to set up a 1/4 hp filter. In planning stages.

View attachment 1078810

No, we've used silica sand. The "regular" type, I think.

 

[Hemmdog]

The sand filter, are you using coral sand? I'm going to set up a 1/4 hp filter. In planning stages.

View attachment 1078810

That was a great question. Excited to see your set up, that’s big league stuff, orca tank stuff.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

That was a great question. Excited to see your set up, that’s big league stuff, orca tank stuff.

1/4 hp is smallest I can find on the net. Have tank running at Backwoods Lab(metal shipping container) in the boonies. Need to make stand, decide where chiller, food, dosing pumps, etc.... nothing like Sallstrom, but is time consuming.
Just came to check on the children of the sea. At the "Backwoods Lab"

Got sick for 4 1/2 weeks, (3mo. ago)effected my children.

 

[Hemmdog]

1/4 hp is smallest I can find on the net. Have tank running at Backwoods Lab(metal shipping container) in the boonies. Need to make stand, decide where chiller, food, dosing pumps, etc.... nothing like Sallstrom, but is time consuming.
Just came to check on the children of the sea. At the "Backwoods Lab"

Got sick for 4 1/2 weeks, (3mo. ago)effected my children.

View attachment 1078866

Wow very cool, how many gallons is that system?

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Wow very cool, how many gallons is that system?

It's only 46 gallons, it's a bow front tank, the bowed side(backside) helps fits 3K gyre pumps on bowed side which is in the back. Eventually 90 gallon or little bigger bow front tank would be nice. By doing this I get laminar flow one direction then opposite direction. By switching pumps.

 

[Sallstrom]

1/4 hp is smallest I can find on the net. Have tank running at Backwoods Lab(metal shipping container) in the boonies. Need to make stand, decide where chiller, food, dosing pumps, etc.... nothing like Sallstrom, but is time consuming.
Just came to check on the children of the sea. At the "Backwoods Lab"

Got sick for 4 1/2 weeks, (3mo. ago)effected my children.

View attachment 1078866

Sand pressure filters might be good to filter out particles. Not as a biological filter. I can't say if any of the two filters we have had running(10000L and 26000L tanks) have done any big difference in our tanks, but we wanted to try because the filters were already there.
One thing we've used them for is to participate phosphate with lanthanum chloride. That's been handy.
Perhaps they filter out some parasites as well.
The sand pressure filter we had in the 10000L reef did something good, that we could see on the backwash water. It was like milk.

Using silica sand was a bit of a chance. A couple of Swedish aquarists adviced against it. But what we've seen the sand doesn't increase the silica in the water as long as the filter is running as it should. We did see a raise in silica when the filter pump was turn off during nights(by mistake) for a month.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Sand pressure filters might be good to filter out particles. Not as a biological filter. I can't say if any of the two filters we have had running(10000L and 26000L tanks) have done any big difference in our tanks, but we wanted to try because the filters were already there.
One thing we've used them for is to participate phosphate with lanthanum chloride. That's been handy.
Perhaps they filter out some parasites as well.
The sand pressure filter we had in the 10000L reef did something good, that we could see on the backwash water. It was like milk.

Using silica sand was a bit of a chance. A couple of Swedish aquarists adviced against it. But what we've seen the sand doesn't increase the silica in the water as long as the filter is running as it should. We did see a raise in silica when the filter pump was turn off during nights(by mistake) for a month.

Planning to use(sand filter) for particle filtration, but filter on 12 hours, on daytime, feed heavy thru night, looks like I'll have refugium with dry rock, oysters, pods,sand filter tied into refugium.

On the lanthanum chloride, I used at first, saw my copepods disappear. Any issues like that for you?

 

[najer]

I haven't forgotten you, it is on my things to do list!

 

[mort]

Do you guys get to choose specific animals that interest you? I know you show a wide variety of marine life but can you sneak in things that you've always wanted but have limited appeal to others?

 

[Sallstrom]

Do you guys get to choose specific animals that interest you? I know you show a wide variety of marine life but can you sneak in things that you've always wanted but have limited appeal to others?

Yes, absolutely. If the animal also has a "story", or eat some kind of pest and doesn't cost a fortune, it's a plus
But we always talk it through, the staff, before we buy anything new.

 

[Brew12]

Yes, absolutely. If the animal also has a "story", or eat some kind of pest and doesn't cost a fortune, it's a plus
But we always talk it through, the staff, before we buy anything new.

How often have you guys added something that you later regretted?

 

[Sallstrom]

How often have you guys added something that you later regretted?

Now and then

What I can think of are mostly fish in the larger tanks. Like damsels that started cleaning/killing Acropora for laying eggs on their first day in the 10000L tank and a butterflyfish in the 1500L reef who didn't eat the pest I was hoping for(but instead loved the large Galaxea coral which we couldn't move out of the tank).
We had to live with both those mistakes since we didn't want to empy the tanks.

But, like with the butterflyfish, we are usually aware of risk. We probably did a couple of not so well though through purchases in the beginning, around ten years ago. I should have more storys to tell but my head is done for today I think
I might get back to this subject later tonight

 

[Sallstrom]

Planning to use(sand filter) for particle filtration, but filter on 12 hours, on daytime, feed heavy thru night, looks like I'll have refugium with dry rock, oysters, pods,sand filter tied into refugium.

On the lanthanum chloride, I used at first, saw my copepods disappear. Any issues like that for you?

If you turn the filter off at night, you'll do just what we did by mistake. My guess is without water flowing through the filter, the filter goes low in oxygen, and probably pH too. Something in this equation lead to the release of Si from the silica sand. I haven't seen any problems so far with a bit higher Si then natural seawater, but I wouldn't want to go too high(well, I don't know when it's too high, but at some point everything turns toxic).

We've only dosed extremly low doses of LaCl, and always in the inlet to a sand pressure filter or skimmer, so I haven't seen any bad effects so far. So be careful, you don't need much at all. One dose for us for a 10000L tank could be 4 grams LaCl powder. And we could see the phophate value was lower the day after.

 

[Sallstrom]

I haven't forgotten you, it is on my things to do list!

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That sponge looks so cool!

I expect a shipment in 2021