The flowing seawater system at the aquarium has been providing our tanks with lovely fresh creek water, the only problem is all the algae that comes with it. The algae foul the sides of the tank as well as the seagrass, and combined with all the leaves that have fallen from the surrounding trees this makes for a lot of crud in the tanks. We need to reduce the fouling as much as possible as it will cover the seagrass and prevent light from reaching the leaves. Once we transplant our seagrass in January we will be at the facility several times a week and keeping the tanks clean on a regular basis. Our mission last week was to get the tanks clean and ready to receive seagrass in the new year. We skimmed all the leaves off the surface, then drained each tank and scrubbed the algae off the sides finishing with scooping all the crud off the bottom. We had two trays of seagrass that we placed in a tank last month as a test, they were heavily fouled and we feared that they would be dead, but under all that algae they were alive and growing, so the good news is that seagrass love our tanks.
Cleaning aquarium tanks
We also made screens for each tank to prevent leaves falling in and to reduce the light to levels the seagrass would experience in the natural environment. With this done they we are set for transplanting in January.