Swedish fish - behind the scenes rebuilding a public aquarium

[ksed]

Sorry for not updating for a while. Everything is fine. Outside they are putting up some of the walls and floor of the new Aquarium building, and in the temporary Aquarium it’s a bit chaos as usual

Today I’m trying out and improving a coral dip station my colleague built to me on my birthday That’s why it has a name on it..
I did two cages out of egg crate yesterday and today was the first try. This is for dipping lots of frags and small colonies at once.

Since the water start to cool down as soon as we take it from the tank, we run a heater in the dip bucket. And a stream pump for circulation. Controlled by GHL.
My addition was the cages.

And other buckets before and after the dip, large enough for the cages.

Today I tried Reef Prime from Polyp lab for the first time. We’ve also used The Dip from Fauna marine and Reef Dip from Seachem the weeks before. They all seems okay. Hard to say how much flatworms they remove, but the corals have done fine at least.

ReefPrime is basically potassium chloride

 

[Sallstrom]

This is what the new Aquarium building looks like today

 

[Sallstrom]

Our new game is called “find the pipefish”

 

[Brew12]

This is what the new Aquarium building looks like today

Looks like it is almost ready to start adding water!

Provided it rains, anyway....

 

[Sallstrom]

Looks like it is almost ready to start adding water!

Provided it rains, anyway....

Well... There is lots of ground water already. So don't joke about water that when the engineers listens

 

[Sallstrom]

ReefPrime is basically potassium chloride

In that case I think ge got a different type of potassium chloride.

Reef prime is 45 g for 1 gallon of tank water.
I just used 4 g of our KCl powder for 1 gallon of tank water, and the gammarus, seastars and tubeworms fell of dead or paralysed after just a few seconds The Acropora echinata I didn't even dip more then 20 sec, since they usually don't like to be dipped.
So it seems to be very potent. Will check on the corals in an hour and see how they look. Just tried 5 Acropora frags in this round. We did have some die off when we tested this powder as a dip two years ago. Not directly, but after a few weeks (not 100% sure it was the dip's fault though..).

 

[ksed]

Swedish KCI is much more concentrated.

 

[Stigigemla]

To get 400 mg/l potassium You need 762 mg/l potassium chloride. So I think You overdosed a little bit.
But it would be very interesting to know how much is needed as dip for different pests like aiptasia or vermetid snails.

However I dont like the thought of dipping live rock as I want the small worms and copepods to survive so they can continue cleaning their home.

 

[Sallstrom]

To get 400 mg/l potassium You need 762 mg/l potassium chloride. So I think You overdosed a little bit.
But it would be very interesting to know how much is needed as dip for different pests like aiptasia or vermetid snails.

However I dont like the thought of dipping live rock as I want the small worms and copepods to survive so they can continue cleaning their home.

We done dips in two concentrations now, K at 800ppm and 950ppm.
On our latest ICP test from Triton lab, K was at 416ppm in the tank we are dipping corals from.
1g KCl per liter -> 940ppm K ( 1g - > 523 + 416 ppm K per liter)
0,75 g KCl per liter -> 800ppm K ( 0,75g -> 392 + 416 ppm K per liter )


The 800ppm wasn't that hard on gammarus, small snails, asterina seastars and mysis. Some fell off but stayed moving for 20 minutes. I didn't find any AEFW so I don't know if they would be paralysed or not in this concentration.
The 940 ppm dip I think kill some tube worms pretty fast, and gammarus, small snails and asterina seastars seemed to be affected more. Some of them looked dead after just a few seconds.

The corals are fine today. I dipped yesterday and the day before. So I think we are on the safe side for Acropora at least.

No, I won't be dipping large rocks. But I did dip a couple of small rocks just to see the effect if there were no flatworms on the corals.

Anyway, I think we will go on experimenting with KCl. It last a bit longer then the dip products

 

[najer]

I get what I use from the supermarket, 55% potassium chloride and use half a teaspoon per litre, stuff flies off in seconds and not killed a coral yet.

 

[Sallstrom]

I get what I use from the supermarket, 55% potassium chloride and use half a teaspoon per litre, stuff flies off in seconds and not killed a coral yet.

That is great! I probably over do some stuff. Like buying this KCl:

Potassium chloride ≥99%, GPR RECTAPUR®

Learn more about Potassium chloride ≥99%, GPR RECTAPUR®. We enable science by offering product choice, services, process excellence and our people make it happen.

uk.vwr.com

But it wasn’t that expensive actually! Cheaper than the dipping products on the market

 

[Stigigemla]

In Sweden we have Seltin in the grocery stores. It has 40% KCl but also 50 ppm unspecified iodine as any normal table salt here in Sweden.
I wonder if Saxa is iodized too as most table salts.

 

[najer]

 

[Sallstrom]

Picture from the work site yesterday. The guy in yellow west to the left in the picture is standing inside the future reef tank.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Picture from the work site yesterday. The guy in yellow west to the left in the picture is standing inside the future reef tank.

Holy guacamole!!!!

 

[Sallstrom]

A new day, a new round of “find the pipefish “

 

[Sallstrom]

We got a tank bottom! And a floor in front of the future reef tank
The room closest to the camera is the filter room for the three other water systems in the new Aquarium, two cold water and one Mediterranean system.
They also started placing some of the aquarium pipes today. The black ones on the picture below. For connecting tanks to the filter rooms. These pipes will go in the concrete floor.

 

[Tastee]

In Sweden we have Seltin in the grocery stores. It has 40% KCl but also 50 ppm unspecified iodine as any normal table salt here in Sweden.
I wonder if Saxa is iodized too as most table salts.

We have Saxa brand in Australia and it is available in iodized and non-iodized.

 

[1Clown]

Always wondered how public aquariums make a profit, seems like far too much expense and on going cost goes in to these things to ever make a profit?

 

[Sallstrom]

Always wondered how public aquariums make a profit, seems like far too much expense and on going cost goes in to these things to ever make a profit?

There are many ways to run a public aquarium, so I can only answer for us

In our case we are a non profit museum/aquarium under the City of Gothenburg. So most of our expenses, like wages etc, are from tax money. But we also have foundations helping us economically. That's mostly based on large donations made before the museum was built in 1933-34.
We do have an entrance fee, but in our case that fee is quite low (entrance fee 6$, 10$ for an anual pass).
There are more ways to increase our budgets, like sponsors and collaborations.

In that way we are not directly dependent on visitor numbers (entrance fees), but at the same time we need to stay relevant to the people of Gothenburg to keep our budget and mission from the politicians running Gothenburg. (no, they are not allowed to tell us what to do ).