The Coral Reef Project At Stratton Elementary School

[awesomesquad]

A

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

Hey R2R,

It's been so long I forgot my username and logged in using an old one on my phone. Please ignore the two replies above.

One big change is that I upgraded a 120 gallon reef tank with a 250 gallon acrylic tank donated by Neal at Titan Aquatic. It was a very generous gift and I hope the R2R community can throw some good karma his way.

The tank came at the beginning of last summer and I spent my break building the new system.

I'm notorious in my community for crazy projects and I'm on a first name basis with the fire marshal (and not for good reasons). I knew my tank would be frequently inspected so I went overboard when building the stand. There was a learning curve and we must of went to Lowe's a dozen times (4 times in one day once) Pictured is my daughter Cora, finally old enough to attend Stratton with me and have her summers off.

I set up temporary tanks for all of the livestock in the 120 but all of my tanks are very full and I really had to squeeze a lot of coral into a small a lot of place. Keeping water perimeters stable and the coral from killing each other as difficult.

Here's the finished stand and in a burst of inspiration I tried to create a closed loop circulation system and did kind of a bad job plumbing it.

I was on a budget and spend +$1K on the stand. I had to recycle a lot of old sand.

Here's a more recent photo of the tank. It is connected to 90 gallon stand-alone refugium. I pieced together as many of my LED lights as possible but don't have enough intensity for corals. I've decided to make it a FOWLR tank and have it stocked with some of the larger tangs from the 120 and a ton of clownfish we used to cycle tanks. I have an order out with Quality Marine for this wednesday with two spotted eels, big wrasse, and a lion fish.

 

[Be102]

Hey R2R,

It's been so long I forgot my username and logged in using an old one on my phone. Please ignore the two replies above.

One big change is that I upgraded a 120 gallon reef tank with a 250 gallon acrylic tank donated by Neal at Titan Aquatic. It was a very generous gift and I hope the R2R community can throw some good karma his way.

The tank came at the beginning of last summer and I spent my break building the new system.

I'm notorious in my community for crazy projects and I'm on a first name basis with the fire marshal (and not for good reasons). I knew my tank would be frequently inspected so I went overboard when building the stand. There was a learning curve and we must of went to Lowe's a dozen times (4 times in one day once) Pictured is my daughter Cora, finally old enough to attend Stratton with me and have her summers off.

I set up temporary tanks for all of the livestock in the 120 but all of my tanks are very full and I really had to squeeze a lot of coral into a small a lot of place. Keeping water perimeters stable and the coral from killing each other as difficult.

Here's the finished stand and in a burst of inspiration I tried to create a closed loop circulation system and did kind of a bad job plumbing it.

I was on a budget and spend +$1K on the stand. I had to recycle a lot of old sand.

Here's a more recent photo of the tank. It is connected to 90 gallon stand-alone refugium. I pieced together as many of my LED lights as possible but don't have enough intensity for corals. I've decided to make it a FOWLR tank and have it stocked with some of the larger tangs from the 120 and a ton of clownfish we used to cycle tanks. I have an order out with Quality Marine for this wednesday with two spotted eels, big wrasse, and a lion fish.

Thanks for this! I am going into early education and have always had a dream like this in the back of my head to create some sort of reef in my classroom in the future.
You give me a lot of inspiration to try to learn as much as I can so I can pass it forward! Hopefully in 5 years I’ll be able to do something similar than you have done.

 

[DeniseAndy]

Looks great Brandon. I am happy to see things still going strong.

 

[Jmareef1022]

This is awesome just read the whole thread and thrilled it's still going strong.

 

[chickofthesea]

I haven't been on here in a long time. I just wanted to show you all what kind of a person we have representing this hobby. I was diagnosed with cancer last May. Being unable to care for my tank I was watching it slowly deteriorate and couldn't just watch something I love die right in front of my eyes. As much as I didn't want to give up my reef, I contacted Brandon to see if I could donate my stock to the project. He wouldn't hear of that and refused to take anything. Instead he took my whole reef to school until I can take care of it again. Now that's a great example to his students of community and friendship. There will be no way I can ever repay that, no matter how many field trips I volunteer to go on in the future.

 

[jenerally]

Wow. I just found this thread so many years later. I had a fish tank in my high school biology class and something so simple had so much impact on me.
I also worked at a small animal education center and some kids had never seen a butterfly before. Something that so many take for granted that can be life changing for others that don't have access.
Really wonder where this project currently is. If anyone has a current thread/social media for this project, please direct me to it!