Baltic Sea Biotope

[HX67]

Hello, you brackish you.
 
My spiritual home for many years, Baltic sea.

 
It's about time to start making a biotope based on the upper northern parts of this sea, namely Gulf of Finland, northern shore and a bit of Sea of Åland and the archipelago.
 
Salinity is around 1.005 SG on these waters, varying only when there's a serious pulse of saltier water rushed in from the Danish straits. The latest remarkable pulse happened early -80's.
Water quality is, well, bad. It's been said that the Baltic sea is actually the most polluted sea area on the planet. Shallow, restricted area with little water exchange and many countries around it dumping waste/nutrition into it. We are not proud of it and there's a lot of actions being done to improve the state of this sea. Awareness being the most important factor. I hope I can add my share with this project.
 
Temperature fluctuation around the year will be a challenge with my biotope. During summer surface water heats up to low 20's. Come winter, ice covers the whole area I'm interested in.
I'm not aiming at icing up the tank/s, but a serious temperature drop for winter is essential.
 
Brackish water biotopes in general are poor in fauna. Not many species of animals, from invertebrae to fish, can adapt to brackish water.
My goal is to make a system that can sustain a large variety of life, in a series of tanks connected to each other.
 
During the summer I'm going to take a few trips to figure out what I need to do to make this vision come true.
 
Here's one of the research vessels (

)  I'm using for the purpose

"Jenita" is a 24 footer, 6 mph boat. Perfect for my need.
 
Island after island, that's the archipelago pretty much throughout the biotope. The base rock is pretty much oldest in Europe, dating back 3000 - 1400 million years. The latest ice-age shaved an average of 7 meters off the top of the rock and shaped the scape to what we see today.
 

 
Climate keeps the scape quite bare.
 
Thanks for looking, I hope I can make an interesting trip out of this.
 
 

 

[iliveinazoo]

Hello, you brackish you.
 
My spiritual home for many years, Baltic sea.

 
It's about time to start making a biotope based on the upper northern parts of this sea, namely Gulf of Finland, northern shore and a bit of Sea of Åland and the archipelago.
 
Salinity is around 1.005 SG on these waters, varying only when there's a serious pulse of saltier water rushed in from the Danish straits. The latest remarkable pulse happened early -80's.
Water quality is, well, bad. It's been said that the Baltic sea is actually the most polluted sea area on the planet. Shallow, restricted area with little water exchange and many countries around it dumping waste/nutrition into it. We are not proud of it and there's a lot of actions being done to improve the state of this sea. Awareness being the most important factor. I hope I can add my share with this project.
 
Temperature fluctuation around the year will be a challenge with my biotope. During summer surface water heats up to low 20's. Come winter, ice covers the whole area I'm interested in.
I'm not aiming at icing up the tank/s, but a serious temperature drop for winter is essential.
 
Brackish water biotopes in general are poor in fauna. Not many species of animals, from invertebrae to fish, can adapt to brackish water.
My goal is to make a system that can sustain a large variety of life, in a series of tanks connected to each other.
 
During the summer I'm going to take a few trips to figure out what I need to do to make this vision come true.
 
Here's one of the research vessels (

)  I'm using for the purpose

"Jenita" is a 24 footer, 6 mph boat. Perfect for my need.
 
Island after island, that's the archipelago pretty much throughout the biotope. The base rock is pretty much oldest in Europe, dating back 3000 - 1400 million years. The latest ice-age shaved an average of 7 meters off the top of the rock and shaped the scape to what we see today.
 

 
Climate keeps the scape quite bare.
 
Thanks for looking, I hope I can make an interesting trip out of this.
 
 

 
Looking forward to seeing how this goes.  Presumably there is a lot of interesting marine and freshwater creatures that are slowly beginning to change their salinity tolerances to expand their distibution? 
 
Will you be running a chiller?  Are chillers noisy and expensive to run compared with heaters?

 

[fm1978]

Very interesting indeed!
 
I'll be watching this space patiently...
 
What sort of life will be going into this biotope?

 

[HX67]

 

 

 
Looking forward to seeing how this goes.  Presumably there is a lot of interesting marine and freshwater creatures that are slowly beginning to change their salinity tolerances to expand their distibution? 
 
Will you be running a chiller?  Are chillers noisy and expensive to run compared with heaters?
 
 

 
 
 

Oh, there's some very nice life below the surface. Not nearly the variety of either fresh of full marine, but some very interesting life.
 
Osmoregulation abilities of the reproductive phases of creatures is pretty much the key in tolerating brackish. Some have it, some don't. Surely, some are slowly acclimating to it.
 
I will definitely need a chiller for this. I'm thinking I can mod a restaurant bench fridge cooling element I salvaged a while ago.
Running those monsters is not very cost-efficient. For most of the year I'm aiming to take advantage of the freezing winter climate and make some sort of a heat-exchanger for the system.

Summertime, chiller to keep the water sub-20°C. Winter, either circulating water outdoors through a heat exchanger or bringing cool air indoors to cool the system.
Either way, tanks are indoors and well insulated...
 
Compared with heaters chillers are noisy, yes. There's always a compressor involved. Well, except with the wimpy peltier coolers...
 
Thanks for joining the ride.
 
 

Very interesting indeed!
 
I'll be watching this space patiently...
 
What sort of life will be going into this biotope?

 
Thanks, and yes, patience will be needed with this one.
 
I'm seeing this as a multi-tank system with a combined water circulation.
I have four 50 cm cubes for a few nice separate scapes for smaller fish and invertebrates.
I need a bigger, shallow tank for a sandy bottom biotope to hold flounders and another high tank for pipefish.
 
But in the end it all really depends on what I can catch...

 

[Mads]

Hi 
 
Sounds very interesting. I'm very interested in the baltic sea. So I look foreword to hear about your experiment with a baltic biotope. Have you started to build the tank? have you plans on making tidal water level changes?
 
Which fish would fit? Pike, Perch or other? 
 
Regards 
Mads

 

[HX67]

Hi, Mads!
 
Nice to hear someone else is interested in the largest brackish pool in the world.
 
The difference between the Baltic Sea at your latitude and mine is that there really is no tide at the northern shores. The very shallow inlets around Denmark control the amount of water Atlantic tide tries to push up to the pool.
 
My project will contain a series of tanks.
I wish to create a reef-like biotope for invertebrates and a few separate biotopes for fish that will not be able to coexist in a tank environment.
 
The only Percidae species I'm probably going to house is 
Gymnocephalus cernuus

 
The largest tank in the system will be only 500 liters or so, so pikes are out… No to monster fish keeping.
But there are still many interesting options for the tank/s.
The only viviparous member of the blenny family, 
Zoarces viviparus

 
 is definitely on my list.
 
If I get the invertebrate portion of the system working and producing, I'm looking forward to trying out
Syngnathus typhle

 
or maybe
Nerophis ophidion

 
Many option for smaller bottom-dwelling fish like gobies to choose from, as well as some small schooling Cyprinid species.
 
I've also always been very fond of flounders, so there's an option to study.
 
Anyhow. Im at the stage of planning the system. The most difficult angle is cooling the water without a huge electric bill.
What we do have is cold weather most of the year. I'm designing a heat exchanger utilising this endless supply.
 
Thanks for your interest. Pack up an extra dose of patience for this trip...

 

[HX67]

The first sweeps with a net on this rocky island

 
resulted in this catch:
 
Cottus gobio

 
Phoxinus phoxinus

 
Pomatoschistus minutus

 
And a shrimp only lately introduced into northern Baltic sea, Palaemon elegans.

 
A glimpse of other fauna on the baltic, here's a flock of Phalacrocorax carbo warming up in the morning mist

 
Thanks for looking.

 

[HX67]

A very depressing find on one of my trips this summer was this Halichoerus grypus

 
A closer look at the animal revealed the reason she was dead:

 
A seal researcher agrees these seem to be bullet wounds.
Whether the kill has been legit or not is hard to tell. But upwind from the location the carcas was found there's this:

 
A quota has been set on hunting these seals annually on the Finnish waters, despite the population declining on Baltic sea these days.
 
How come we tend to F__k up everything?

 

[maurizio]

That's what we're good at, we humans...

 

[HX67]

Everywhere we go, M.
 
The credit for finding the seal goes to our faithful companion on the project, Walo

 
He thinks animals are kinda cool.
 
He enjoys work onboard the M/S ApoCalypso

 
 
Now down to the serious business.
I salvaged this beer tap cooling element from a bar I built

 
It looks to be perfect for the job. Not only is it food grade stainless steel, it's also already split in two equalish parts. One for the outside chilling tank and one for the sump.
I think we're going somewhere with this.

 

[LyraGuppi]

Oooo, can't wait for moar!

 

[Goggy]

Yup, same

 

[Malex530]

Sounds interesting.
Following!
Good luck

 

[sawickib]

Definitely following! Terrible about that seal though...

 

[HX67]

Thanks for your interest, folks.
 
Some more test fishing for prospect inhabitants this weekend resulted in a few Myxocephalus quadricornis.
Male:

 
 
Female:

 
Back in the sea after posing

 
 
These guys are a bit too large for the tank at 25-30 cm. But it would be interesting to see some younger/smaller specimens in there...
 
 
Also got aquainted with this nice fellow, Saduria entomon

64759_754279457994675_2011417701903590549_n.jpg
 
Water was +5° C.
Chilly.
 
Thanks for looking.