Blue Reef Aquarium

HI every one - I have finally made it onto the forum!
Hope youre tanks are all doing well
here at the aquarium we had a very busy summer with all that rubbish weather
I had a couple of weeks off to catch my breath and now the winter fun starts all over again - ie lecturing on the coral biology module of the Marine aquaculture foundation degree at cornwall college Newquay. I do enjoy the teaching and it forces me to catch up with latest developments in the coral world and do some reading! the problem is the winter is our busiest time from the point of veiw of designing and building new displays so i will be really busy with that untill easter plus we stay open all winter so we still have the talks feeds and maintenannce to work on as well.
Last winters project was setting up our new hard coral system - I had a lot of good advice from Jason and Lindsay at Jasons aquatics with this plus I was lucky enough to visit some of the best coral keepers in Uk public aquaria - probably the most impressive coral displays I have ever seen were the tanks at London aquarium - there was a good article about them on practical fishkeeper last year - the hawaiian tank is awesome - really natural looking with huge mature green Acropora formosa - literally 2 foot high plus loads of other species of SPS coral
also the reef tanks at London Zoo aquarium are incredible in terms of varieties of species - they get all of the conviscated hard coral from Heathrow customs and seisures all around the country and the diversity is incredible - well worth a visit if you are up in the big smoke.
Any way talking to all these guys helped me design the new tank - sadly we are running out of space here in our building - the only space we had available for a new tank was pretty small and the budjet was restricive so the tank is only 6 foot by 2 foot by 2 foot. I am really pleased with the look of the tank - we have 3x400 watt IP rated metal halides and the tank is filtered by a 5 foot sump - (from Jasons Aquatics) with coral sand and caulerpa and chaetomorpha. the sump is currently lit by a 150 watt metal halide and growth of algae is excellent but I do feel guiltiy about the energy consumption and would like to replace this with low energy alternatives like Jason has done. I used an arganaut AG8 pump as we have alot of these on other tanks and a spare in case any of them break - they are quality pumps but do take up a fair bit of space.
the water return is hard plumbed to a pair of water butts which act as a water change reservoir so you can easily do a 30% water change whenever you like, water flows from this back to the sump some water is pumped throuhg a TECCO chiller and goes into the main display. We have a tunze wave box for water flow and this is producing a great effect moving the whole volume back and forth by about 4 cm every half second or so - very nice effect - can someone design one that is even more powerfull please for the large displays!
linked in to the system is a 3 foot by 2 foot by 2 foot tank with 8 inches of coral sand - acting as a denitrification filter - and to give another 'creature feature' we have 7 garden eels living in there - I wouldnt recommend these to anyone but the most dedicated aquarist because we have found that they need to be fed at least 8 times per day - we literally feed them every time we walk past the display - but they do look great - like mini conger eels hiding in the sand.
Any way I have to go and do a talk now so Id better go
If anyone is in the area come and have a look at the tank - the coraline algae is going mental - really purple and the corals (mainly frags from london Zoo and some nice LPS euphillia cultured by jasons customer s are all doing really well! I wanted the tank to be as environmentally sustainable as possible so have used artificial live rock (from Jasons Aquatics) I cant fault it - it has pupled up really well and is porous and good flat and chunky shapes. -I recommend it and its nice to know it hasnt been chiseled off the sea bed!
Any way hopefully I will be putting some photos up soon
See you down here!
Matt

International Reefers - Reefkeeping Forum Marine Fish Forum Reefkeeping Forum: Blue Reef Aquarium - International Reefers - Reefkeeping Forum Marine Fish Forum Reefkeeping Forum