Sequoia Middle School (CA) Reef Aquarium - Year 1

[SunfishFun]

After being essentially out of the hobby for several years I have set up a 105g reef tank in my 8th grade Science classroom in Pleasant Hill, CA (SF East Bay Area). I have been lurking on RC the past year trying to catch up on the major developments that have been going on in my absence. We set up the tank in April with awesome Tampa Bay Saltwater live rock, the tank survived the summer heat and room cleaning, my students all moved on to high school and now my new students and I are getting ready to start planning and stocking!

Next week we will start to culture rotifers thanks to the donation of materials and expertise by Reed Mariculture. I have no experience with this but it seems good for students and good for the tank, so here we go!

If you would like to follow our adventures so far, check out our website maintained by the afterschool aquarium club:
SequoiaReef.weebly.com

-Maureen

 

[Daniel62]

Cool

 

[Nano sapiens]

Wish I had a reef tank in science class 'back in the day'

I'm a BAR memeber, have been 'reefing' longer than I'd care to admit and just so happen to live close by in Gregory Gardens. If you should have any questions/issues, feel free to ask.

Ralph.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Nice job Maureen! Great website also but I do have one suggestion, please make all pictures thumbnails so they can be expanded to larger full size pictures, would be much better if you can do this with your website software. I'm looking forward to the updates as the students get back to school.

 

[SunfishFun]

Thanks for your interest.
Ralph - I am also in BAR (Molamola) but had no idea there was anyone so local! We pretty much just have inverts so far but maybe you'd like to pay us a visit when we are more stocked.
DKuhlmann - thanks for the tip. I will see if that is possible on Weebly. Better yet, I'll have a student see if it's possible!

 

[Nano sapiens]

Ralph - I am also in BAR (Molamola) but had no idea there was anyone so local! We pretty much just have inverts so far but maybe you'd like to pay us a visit when we are more stocked.

Sure, that would be fun someday

 

[Genera]

Could you explain how you're caring for those sponges? I.E. what you're feeding them, flow, placement, etc. I'm very interested in sponges and have been studying them for weeks but I still don't feel ready for them yet :rollface: :sad2:

 

[SunfishFun]

Genera - Our sponges were doing fine from April through August with pores open and what I think was a visible feeding response. Changes that I know occurred August-Present during which time they have declined are: additional flow added because I set up Tunze circulation pumps (before was fairly low flow from LocLines split 4 ways), decreased feeding of Reef Nutrition PhytoFeast when we started adding OysterFeast, and annual cleaning of the classroom (wrapped the tank and such but custodians didn't follow our plan to phone me when starting use of floor stripping chemicals so I could turn off return pump and phoned me after they were done), no water changes for over a month, and there are measurable phosphates now. I also wonder if they are receiving too much light and we are feeding the inverts too much (OysterFeast plus homemade seafood mix). In an attempt to remedy the decline of the awesome sponges I placed a couple in a lower flow location, we did a water change last week and I bought more PhytoFeast today. I hope we can save them. The ones that grow low over the rock and in shady areas are still doing fine.

 

[platypusklr]

Awesome!!! I went to sequoia middle school!!! CPHS '97.

 

[SunfishFun]

Are you kidding Platy?! PM me if you like. Wow, what a small world!