Open water/natural systems

[[email protected]]

Hey all,

I am looking for some starting places in exploring the feasibility of a
small (<=100 gals.) open water system, or whatever is the appropriate
term for an aquarium in which the water is pumped directly from a
natural source. The tank will not be a typical reef tank per se (I
live along an estuary), but filter feeding is likely to be the way many
of the inhabitants get most of their chow, and I imagine that this open
method has been tried by the reef aquarium community.

If anyone knows of any books, websites, or tips I would be very
grateful. In fact, even just some hany search vocabulary would be
useful, as I have so far not found any information for doing such a
tank on a relatively small scale (which should probably tell me
something of the problems).

Pace e bene,

Happ

[Marc Levenson]

I can only think of a single place that does that, and it is in Hawaii.
It is a very impressive set up, and they are able to pump in ocean
water to keep their tanks healthy and full of incredible coral growth.
The sun lights many of the tanks too.

Marc


wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I am looking for some starting places in exploring the feasibility of a
> small (<=100 gals.) open water system, or whatever is the appropriate
> term for an aquarium in which the water is pumped directly from a
> natural source. The tank will not be a typical reef tank per se (I
> live along an estuary), but filter feeding is likely to be the way many
> of the inhabitants get most of their chow, and I imagine that this open
> method has been tried by the reef aquarium community.
>
> If anyone knows of any books, websites, or tips I would be very
> grateful. In fact, even just some hany search vocabulary would be
> useful, as I have so far not found any information for doing such a
> tank on a relatively small scale (which should probably tell me
> something of the problems).
>
> Pace e bene,
>
> Happ
>

--
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Business Page: http://www.sparklingfloorservice.com
Marine Hobbyist: http://www.melevsreef.com

[Tidepool Geek]

> wrote
>
> I am looking for some starting places in exploring the feasibility of a
> small (<=100 gals.) open water system, or whatever is the appropriate
> term for an aquarium in which the water is pumped directly from a
> natural source. The tank will not be a typical reef tank per se (I
> live along an estuary), but filter feeding is likely to be the way many
> of the inhabitants get most of their chow,
> [snip]
> If anyone knows of any books, websites, or tips
> [snip]

Hi Happ,

Open water systems are actually fairly common among public aquaria that have
access to suitable water. I'm a volunteer docent at such a facility and
overall it's an excellent way of managing water quality. OTOH: It does have
its
own set of drawbacks. Here are some of the good and bad points that we have
experienced:

Good -
1. Perfect temperature control - Our water is fairly cold at 50 - 55F
(10 -12C) but even on the hottest days of summer we don't need to worry
about our tanks getting too warm.
2. Perfect water chemistry - Salinity, pH, calcium, nitrogen compounds,
etc. - all handled by mother nature! OTOH: We're displaying 'pure' marine
plants and animals, not estuarine stuff (more later).
3. A reasonable amount of phyto and zooplankton for our filter feeders - We
don't get as much as is available in the natural habitat (more later) so our
filter feeders don't grow as rapidly but they do seem to be completely
healthy.

Bad -
1. Turbidity - If the water around our intake becomes muddied, so does the
water in our displays. Usually that's just an inconvenience that clears up
in a few hours but sometimes it is an extreme problem. A few years ago our
local port authority did some dredging adjacent to our intake (without
warning us). The result of that event was 100% mortality among our animals.
More recently a fairly severe storm coming from an unusual direction stirred
up our intake water to the tune of 25% mortality - including my favorite
Rock Prickleback! BTW: Our water goes through a 500 gallon settling tank
prior to being distributed to the display tanks - for whatever reason this
doesn't seem to help very much.
2. Maintenance - It turns out that fitter feeders LOVE to inhabit the piping
that feeds water to our facility. Our maintenance folks have to clean or
replace pipes that have become clogged with 'squatters' several times each
year. Further, these squatters, in addition to the attrition from pumping
make for a pretty significant decrease in the amount of plankton available
to our display animals.

With an estuarine system you've got some additional challenges to deal with
however. The biggest problem,.as I see it, has to do with salinity and
possibly other chemistry issues. In an estuary, you've got fresh water
coming downstream and sal****er 'trying' to come upstream. The thing is that
the two don't really mix all that well. Sal****er is more dense than fresh
so a sort of wedge develops as the freshwater flows over the top of the
salt. The leading edge of this wedge moves upstream with the incoming tide
and recedes on the outgoing. In the wild many animals follow that interface
up and downstream as a means of maintaining some sort of salinity comfort
level. Sessile animals tend to be zonated for the same reason. That should
indicate how critical the site and position of your water intake will be -
get it wrong and you could, in the most extreme case, have an aquarium that
oscillates between almost fresh and almost full strength salt with every
tide change. My suggestion would be to select as many different potential
intake sites as is practical and do salinity tests at both high and low tide
and at different depths for each potential site. It would be even better if
you could do such salinity tests under varying river flow conditions.

Another unique aspect of an estuarine aquarium is that estuaries are very
important nursery areas for animals that spend their adult lives at sea.
Many if not most of the animals you collect are going to be babies that will
outgrow the tank fairly quickly - a few months to a couple of years. With an
open system and locally collected animals you won't have any objective
problem with returning these animals to the wild but you might want to avoid
getting too emotionally attached.

For further study your best bet for specific information about estuarine
aquaria is probably "Dynamic Aquaria" by Walter Adey. He documents the
design of two large scale estuarine systems and gives a good grounding in
the theory behind those designs.

For internet resources, try Google searches on various combinations of
estuarine, hydrography, hydrology, and biology. Here's one site that turned
up on such a search:
http://www.skio.peachnet.edu/research/coastalphysics/estuarine_ocean.php
It gives a pretty good picture of just how complex an estuarine system can
be!

I hope that I'm not being too negative. I do think that you can be
successful with your plan but it's important to do a ton of site specific
planning with an eye to what animals you want to display and how to best
model their environment.


Brackishly yours,

TPG

[Ibswamp]

The Zoo and aquarium of Tacoma does also they take the water from the
peuget sound filter and return for all there Marine tanks.
Bill M
> I can only think of a single place that does that, and it is in Hawaii.
> It is a very impressive set up, and they are able to pump in ocean
> water to keep their tanks healthy and full of incredible coral growth.
> The sun lights many of the tanks too.
>
> Marc
>
>
> wrote:
>
>> Hey all,
>>
>> I am looking for some starting places in exploring the feasibility of a
>> small (<=100 gals.) open water system, or whatever is the appropriate
>> term for an aquarium in which the water is pumped directly from a
>> natural source. The tank will not be a typical reef tank per se (I
>> live along an estuary), but filter feeding is likely to be the way many
>> of the inhabitants get most of their chow, and I imagine that this open
>> method has been tried by the reef aquarium community.
>>
>> If anyone knows of any books, websites, or tips I would be very
>> grateful. In fact, even just some hany search vocabulary would be
>> useful, as I have so far not found any information for doing such a
>> tank on a relatively small scale (which should probably tell me
>> something of the problems).
>>
>> Pace e bene,
>>
>> Happ
>>
>

[DanRad]

Don't know about web sites for this, but check our the Doc Ford novels by Randy Wayne White. The "Doc" has a 1,000 gallon setup like you're describing, and White gives a fairly good account of how it's done. Some of the titles are Sanibel Flats, Ten Thousand Islands, Shark River, The Heat Islands, and others.

[Marc Levenson]

Another one that comes to mind is the New England Aquarium in Boston,
right next to the harbor. They must get their water from the harbor,
because last year at MACNA, water was brought in for all the vendors to use.

Marc


Ibswamp wrote:
> The Zoo and aquarium of Tacoma does also they take the water from the
> peuget sound filter and return for all there Marine tanks.
> Bill M
>
>> I can only think of a single place that does that, and it is in
>> Hawaii. It is a very impressive set up, and they are able to pump in
>> ocean water to keep their tanks healthy and full of incredible coral
>> growth. The sun lights many of the tanks too.
>>
>> Marc
>>
>>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hey all,
>>>
>>> I am looking for some starting places in exploring the feasibility of a
>>> small (<=100 gals.) open water system, or whatever is the appropriate
>>> term for an aquarium in which the water is pumped directly from a
>>> natural source. The tank will not be a typical reef tank per se (I
>>> live along an estuary), but filter feeding is likely to be the way many
>>> of the inhabitants get most of their chow, and I imagine that this open
>>> method has been tried by the reef aquarium community.
>>>
>>> If anyone knows of any books, websites, or tips I would be very
>>> grateful. In fact, even just some hany search vocabulary would be
>>> useful, as I have so far not found any information for doing such a
>>> tank on a relatively small scale (which should probably tell me
>>> something of the problems).
>>>
>>> Pace e bene,
>>>
>>> Happ
>>>
>>

--
Personal Page: http://www.sparklingfloorservice.com/oanda/index.html
Business Page: http://www.sparklingfloorservice.com
Marine Hobbyist: http://www.melevsreef.com

[George Patterson]

Marc Levenson wrote:
> Another one that comes to mind is the New England Aquarium in Boston,
> right next to the harbor. They must get their water from the harbor,
> because last year at MACNA, water was brought in for all the vendors to
> use.

They do get it from the harbor.

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.