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May 11th Steinhart Aquarium Tour

I spoke with Matt and asked him to let you know we're running late and well join the 230 tour since there's still spots open on thAt tour
 
gimmito said:
Hope everybody had a good time. .. what was your favorite part of the tour ?
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Having Matt give us the tour of the facilities. It was a privilege to have someone with his knowledge explain to us the choices they made to keep the animals thriving.

Something surprising was the saltwater mix. They do their own concoction. I later learned from a volunteer is Matt’s own. He skipped over that on the tour...
One of the hallways was lined up with huge bags (easily >500lbs) labeled “Morton Salt”. I cracked up.

Julio
 
First of all, Jim, Thanks for coordinating!

Secondly, my favorite part of the tour is seeing the scale of the systems for the big tank but also how these map directly to what we do on our hobby systems:

  • Larger carbon filters that dechloronate the SF tap water used to make the saltwater
  • Swimming pool size saltwater mixing vat (made from Morton table salt - minus the iodine and magnesium triphosphate)
  • Large heat exchangers
  • Massive cooling towers
  • Gigantic back-up generators
  • Massive activated carbon reactor
    2x 1000 gallon protein skimmers
    Ozone generators and venting system
    100 gal/day Kalkwasser top-off system (using deionized SF tap water)
    Large sand filters that act as filter socks
    There is even the equivalent of a larger bioball trickle filter (used to ensure all of the O3 escapes)
 
The tour was amazing, far more interesting than the behind the scenes tour that I went on at Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Matt actually works at the aquarium so he was able to provide a lot of information and cool side commentary.

I was particularly intrigued by the story of sick Claude. :) And, the Morton's salt.

My kids were on the tour as well (8 and 4 year old girls) and they said they had a great time.

Many thanks to all of you for arranging this once in a lifetime event!

I'll try to post pics soon so that those of you who were not able to go can see what you missed.
 
The tour was awesome and being some one who is trying to be a learning sponge, I was grateful to come away with some new insights and perspectives in keeping a healthy reef tank. I second Ray and Lily's comments above. Matt did such a great job as tour guide. I was glad that he was able to help translate what's done at Steinhart on such a massive scale to what we do in our home systems.

I found it interesting to see how much Morton's salt they used and then see how much they used of trace minerals and nutrients. You see these 2000lb sacks of salt and then Matt pointed out that literally a pinch of some of the micro-nutrients are all it takes - even for a 200,000 gallon tank.

I liked going in the quarantine area too. Those leafy sea dragons in there were very cool.

I also liked all the hallway chats with the others on the tour. I learned a lot from the other forum members as we walked from place to place.

I hope these activities continue. They are another great reason to be a forum member.
 
dmhinsf said:
The tour was awesome and being some one who is trying to be a learning sponge, I was grateful to come away with some new insights and perspectives in keeping a healthy reef tank.

I hope these activities continue. They are another great reason to be a forum member.
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BAR membership has its perks !
 
Here are the photos that I took during our tank tour. There aren't very many.

http://denzil.smugmug.com/Events/Bay-Area-Reefers/20130511-Steinhart-Aquarium/29479822_VJKbtX
 
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