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We have been donated some stunning fish and corals this year by local fish keepers - Thanks to all of you!!
The big new feature for 2008 was the conversion of our large ray tank into a tropical lagoon.
the plan was to make it a shark lagoon growing on small sharks and fish. We stripped out the old sand - fixed up the undergravel filter bed and constructed three large artificial coral reefs using concrete over beer crates covered in plastic coated chiken wire - Jason from Itchynuts design created a tropical feel to the area by building a fishermans hut - a rustic jetty and a cliff with water fall. I installed a massive sand filter filled with Advanced filter media from Dryden aqua powered by 2 argonaut pumps - I put in mid water suction plus a skimmer box (with some help from jason) this works really well at skimming the oily film from the surface of the tank. The other important element added to the filtration was a large 10 foot x 1m x 3 foot plastic bio sump filled using the water from the old air lifts - this is a nice way to move water around without killing planktonic animals - the sump has a chamber full of bioballs to de-gas the water then it passes over a sand bed with loads of caulerpa macroalgae which remove nitrate and phosphate- this sump is lit by 2 70 w metal halides I had spare and the water passively flows (over some live rock and back into the display. We fitted a gas boiler and an inline titanium heat exchanger - I am pleased with the look of the tank - despite the project being a reall mission to get finised in time for easter!
The star of the tank was a huge Zebra (or Leopard ) shark Stegasoma fasciatum - this was given to us by an old friend who is the curator of Bournemouth Oceanareum- this is a truly beautiful shark - grows to 4 metres eventually though so most people wouldnt want one in their reef! All was going well untill.... We have had a really busy winter looking after 2 fantastic logger head turtles which some of you may have heard about- they were washed up within a week of each other off the north coast of Cornwall and Devon. We nursed them back to health and eventually in june I went over to the canary islands to release them (tough life!). at the end of JUly we had a phone call from the British Divers marine life rescue who had another turtle - this one was small called flash - then the following week we had another turtle brought to us - missing a flipper and named Nemo. Both turtles were pretty bad when they arrived but are now doing well and we hope to repatriate them again to the canaries in the next couple of months. Allwas well - flash was in the lagoon looking well cool and nemo was in the ocean tank - but as nemo recovered we realised that she is a bit of a psyco! She kept trying to bite her tankmates and when she took a pop at my favourite fish elvis (the humphead wrasse) that was the final straw! She got moved to the lagoon so we had to move the Zebra shark to the ocean and because we were worried that she may bite flash - he was relegated to the quarantine again! Nemo has now taken over our so called shark lagoon and we have had to move pretty much all of the sharks out of there for fear that she will take chunks out of them! We are hoping to get confirmation from our Vet soon as to wether she can be released and hopefully if she can be released it will again become a stunning collection of sharks and larger reef fish in the lagoon!!
our hard coral display has had its ups and downs this year - the halides were causing heat problems because its in a confined small space - so we have decided to try out LED units from a company called Green Skys - we are well pleased with them and corals look pretty good under them - I still have one 400w metal halide so I havent been brave enough to switch completely but our energy consumption is far less and the heat problem has been solved.
Will try to up load some pictures soon
See you
Matt Slater Curator
Blue Reef Newquay
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