John Kelly
Goniopora Aficionado
Thank you Shawn for a grreaattt WOW tour. We had an excellent and educational time.
Here are a few pics and some details from Saturday.
Big Pump
BioFilters
Bank o' Skimmers
Shark Tank
Got Salt?
Big Skimmer
Our tour headed to a large room downstairs where there were large fiberglass holding tanks, tall bio towers, and a bunch of individual biofilters and pumps. I think those were running the main displays upstairs. After that, Shawn showed us a couple of huge skimmers and described how they worked. From there, he showed us his coral room where he was keeping some donated corals (hint hint anyone have some corals to donate?) and all of the "touch tank" animals. We listened to Dr. Jonathan Trent, who is some type of astrozoologist?, or something crazy like that. Dr. Trent studies wild looking deep sea creatures and is funded by a grant from NASA. He was giving his presentation in the same room with the large curved shark/saltwater tank. I cant remember how many gallons Shawn said the shark tank was, but I think it is 200,000+ gallons(?). Shawn took us up behind the scene to the top of the large shark tank and we could walk around looking down into it. We then climbed up some stairs to a room directly above it where there was a HUGE skimmer, two huge refugiums, and a bank of large skimmers. It was wild. We also got to see behind the scenes of how all the food was stored and prepped for feeding. We also went into a reptile room with snakes and alligators. Shawn introduced us to the bobcats (from the outside of the glass
). After the tour was over, Julia and I met back up with Shawn for a 3:00 Shark Tank feeding. We all put on some gloves and dipped into a bucket of chopped up fish/squid chum and fed the big display .
Thank you Shawn for your time and sharing all of your knowledge with us!:thumbsup: We had a super day.
Here are a few pics and some details from Saturday.
Big Pump
BioFilters
Bank o' Skimmers
Shark Tank
Got Salt?
Big Skimmer
Our tour headed to a large room downstairs where there were large fiberglass holding tanks, tall bio towers, and a bunch of individual biofilters and pumps. I think those were running the main displays upstairs. After that, Shawn showed us a couple of huge skimmers and described how they worked. From there, he showed us his coral room where he was keeping some donated corals (hint hint anyone have some corals to donate?) and all of the "touch tank" animals. We listened to Dr. Jonathan Trent, who is some type of astrozoologist?, or something crazy like that. Dr. Trent studies wild looking deep sea creatures and is funded by a grant from NASA. He was giving his presentation in the same room with the large curved shark/saltwater tank. I cant remember how many gallons Shawn said the shark tank was, but I think it is 200,000+ gallons(?). Shawn took us up behind the scene to the top of the large shark tank and we could walk around looking down into it. We then climbed up some stairs to a room directly above it where there was a HUGE skimmer, two huge refugiums, and a bank of large skimmers. It was wild. We also got to see behind the scenes of how all the food was stored and prepped for feeding. We also went into a reptile room with snakes and alligators. Shawn introduced us to the bobcats (from the outside of the glass
). After the tour was over, Julia and I met back up with Shawn for a 3:00 Shark Tank feeding. We all put on some gloves and dipped into a bucket of chopped up fish/squid chum and fed the big display .Thank you Shawn for your time and sharing all of your knowledge with us!:thumbsup: We had a super day.
