Around October 2002 I made contact with the Curator of the Brighton Sea Life Centre. At this point my coral farming project, The Other World, (more info can be found by clicking the Coral Farming link to the left) was in desperate need of more space. In addition to this I was keen to raise the profile of captive coral propagation, and a public aquarium seemed like the obvious place to do so.

	The Brighton Sea Life Centre, formally the Royal Aquarium, was built in 1872 and is the oldest operating aquarium in the world. Over the course of its long and interesting history the site has changed hands many times, and was even taken over by the RAF during the Second World War. The picture to the left shows how the entrance looked in Victorian times.

The Sea Life Centre clearly saw the potential in setting up a large coral farming display; they offered me the use of an area of the centre that was due for renovation. We would work in partnership to create an exciting new display. The total area available covered about 20 square metres, and contained one large triangular tank. By adding several other tanks to the existing display tank, we were able to boost the system volume to over 6000 litres - of which about 70% was on public view.

The entrance as it looks today.

Our joint aim from from the outset was to try and stock as much of this display as possible with captive-bred corals and fish. Further to that we wanted to propagate every coral species in our care, and to attempt to breed some of the fish species. Some of the captive-bred offspring would be 'ploughed' back into the system as future breeding stock, with the rest being sold to individual aquarists; many of whom were keen to further propagate/breed these animals in their own aquariums.

In addition to the practical element of our conservation work, we also wanted to educate the aquariums 270,000 annual visitors about the important work we were doing. To that end we put up brightly-coloured and informative 'Interp' boards around the display explaining the work we were doing, how we were doing it and, most importantly, why we were doing it. The display proved to be very effective, and became one of the aquariums most popular exhibits.

Unfortunately towards the end of 2004 a succession of serious technical issues with the display and its operation were making it very difficult for me to farm as many corals as I intended, making the continuation of my partnership with the aquarium untenable. It was with great regret that, in December 2004, I decided to terminate my partnership with the Sea Life centre. The aquarium's management decided to continue running the display independently, and I therefore several all my links with the Sea Life centre and the display. I believe the display is still operating, albeit with no coral propagation taking place.

Coral Species Farmed

During the course of my 2 years with the Sea Life Centre, I was able to regularly propagate the following corals:

Acropora - 11 varieties
Pocillipora - 4 varieties
Montipora - 5 varieties
Seriatapora - 3 varieties
Hydnopora - 1 variety
Gorgonians - 3 varieties
Pulsing Xenia - 2 varieties
'Leather' Corals - approx. 20 varieties
'Mushroom' Corals - approx. 15 varieties

Additionally I had a large population of 'micro snails' who were very efficient scavengers/algae-eaters, which bred continually.

Pictures

Please click a thumbnail below to enlarge - image opens in a new window.

Construction


System


'Interp' Boards

Livestock