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Piranha Tank at the London Aquarium

Tank Maturing very nicely indeed.. 🙂 It is a massive tank. I convinced them to get a separate filter for it, so that they can dose ferts and up the co2 a bit. Currently sharing the filter with the rest of the aquarium, a 2 million Liter filter.. 🙂 size of a double storey house.

Considering that many expected it to fail, it is good to see it still going after almost 9 months.
 
I really enjoyed were the kids and the families that took the time to look at the fishes and the plants.. some were surprised that the plants are not fake.. Hopefully will get more people to realise how much better a tank can be with plants.

Also helped the guy that takes care of the London riverside display, and you will see how much better it looks, with real plants, such as hydrocotyle in the river banks.

Slowly it will make a difference in peoples perception..

It is also a fitting end to my time in the UK, as I am relocating to Cape Town this monday.
 
Well done mate. It looks great!

I have to admit I didn't think would turn out so well.

With it sharing water with all the other freshwater tanks complete with cyanobacteria etc...

I am really happy to be proved wrong! 😀

Thanks for sharing and all the best with your new life in SA.
 
Thanks.. Hopefully they will manage to get a bigger filter for this tank so that it is separate from the rest, they are building it at the moment, and then dose ferts, using the EI method.. 🙂

I wish I had this tank at home.. 🙂
 
You have not seen the tank, or actually understood the challenges ... 🙂 no offence.. 🙂 When you have a tank that is almost 2 meters away from the lights, shaded, and under 120cm of water, then tell me you not surprised the crypts are not only surviving, but growing, keeping their deep red colour and spreading.
 
Well what can I say? 🙂

I am surprised that the crypts are growing. 🙂 and spreading in such unfavorable conditions..

... Not yet a master like most of you.. 😛 so these things surprise me.


___________________________
Luis
@ghostsword
 
Thanks Luis for posting the updates. The tank does look well indeed. I occasionally speak to the team at sealife and they are still very proud if it.
Only last week they used the photos of the building of the tank to promote their rainforest awareness week.
The plants supplied by aquadip were of a very high standard when we started so they had a good chance of success in the tank. The team in London took on board all of our advice and continue to do so and the proof is in the current display.

Yes some errors in plant selection was made and none of the design team knew exactly how it would turn out. But it continues with a good 90% of the plants still thriving - nearly 9 months on. Sadly the only failure in the whole project was my company. I took a risk with the whole project and it failed. The press releases were ignored and slated. The wrong information was released to some magazines and quite correctly was commented on to correct the obvious mistakes in the early plant selection. But I could not survive that level of bad pr.

However the one thing that I can say is that I am personally proud of the team who were involved from day one, who worked solidly for the 3 days of the planting and who can sit back and say - we did that against everyone's disagreement.
Plantedtanks was the company who responded to the challenge - it started from a £10 error in Borneo and finished with a £65,000 freebie to London aquarium. I enjoyed the 3 years that the company survived and I feel it finished on a high.

I don't think any comments now would be able to turn back the tide. But I sincerely thank those who backed me from the start and were working alongside me at the end of the company. I also had the pleasure of meeting some of the worlds top aquascapers on the journey.

Finally - I hope that this display will last the same length of time as the previous setup - which was 15 years. Time will tell.
 
The aquarium has done a documentary about the work they do.. a few minutes dedicated to the Piranha Tank..

The piranha tank is shown at 05:00.. and you see me at 06:44.. 🙂 but you need slow down the video, as it was done with a timelapse..

This should give a sense of scale..

9926251995_243f257ee7.jpg
Large piranha tank by Luis Embalo, on Flickr

The video is here..
 
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