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View Full Version : Trip to London Aquarium


asylumdown
05-03-2011, 03:50 PM
I'm here in London for the week and just spent the afternoon at the London aquarium. It was cool, but I noticed a few things I'm sure I never would have seen if I had never owned a reef tank:

First, turns out we're not the only people who struggle with aiptasia. They had a few display tanks that were literally over-run by them and majano's. Sucks, but at least it makes me feel better knowing that even professional institutions have to deal with it.

Also, I couldn't tell what they were feeding their tangs, but there was a heartbreaking level of HLLE in their tanks. They probably had 200 purple tangs, and maybe three of them weren't affected to some degree, though most of them had it BAD, bad enough that some of them were only identifiable as purple tangs because of their tails and overall body shape (their fins were even starting to erode). I've never seen that happen in a tank where the tangs are fed an appropriate diet of different species of marine algae, and considering it's a professional institution i don't really see an excuse for it. The purples had it the worst (they also had far too many purple tangs together in smallish tanks, so it might have been stress related), but most of their tangs had it to some degree.

They also had no signs which even mentioned coral, which was a shame because they actually had a couple of really beautiful reef tanks. I doubt that the people walking by even know that what they were looking at was alive.

Can anyone identify these two species (sorry for the crappy iPhone pics): The first looks like the nicest mimic tang I've ever seen, but wrong somehow. it was about a foot long and I swear I know what it is, I just can't place it.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1040.jpg

This other one looked like a square-spot anthias that had been tie-died, really, really beautiful.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1049.jpg

Lance
05-03-2011, 04:47 PM
The Tang looks like a Chocolate: Acanthurus pyroferus and the others are Schooling Bannerfish: Heniochus diphreutes

strickrick
05-03-2011, 06:48 PM
I believe its a chocolate tang as well and the anthias looks like maybe a bimaculatus anthias.

asylumdown
05-03-2011, 11:02 PM
Thanks! I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for those anthias in the LFS, they were spectacular in person