Awsome Tank, if it could work.

TheJay

New member
So i was thinkin about ideas for more natural biotype and what i would do if i had unlimited funds. this is what i came up with.

tank.jpg


the dimentions are kinda meaningless and just more to give it a since of space. any way the fresh area would be set up like a fresh water mangrove swamp with an amazon river tropicals. the marine zone would be reef of course and the brackish zone with puffers and such.

the fresh zone would have a a filteration loop equal to the volume of the zone and all make up water would enter on that end.

filteration on the marine zone would be 2 masive skimmers, so one could be taken off line at a tiem for cleaning and not lose filteration, and water movement would be accomplished with several closed loops.

while water movement with in the zones would be easy to acomplish, along the z and x axis (normal right hand 3D axis system, Z vertical, X comming out of the page, y left and right, for those who dont know) how could one move water from zone to zone, along the y axis, affectivly with out semi permiable membranes. the entire point of the system is to process waste in a more natural way with the fresh acting as a prefilter for the marine system and the brackish sytem with seagrass providing phytoplankton.

any one out there have an idea how this might be accomplished, or have any ideas that could potentially work, hey we can all dream right. :thumbsup:
 
The only way you could do it is with 3 seperate systems.

With an overflow like you have there you'd have to have a constant supply of fresh water... then there's the isue of adding salt to maintain salinity levels in the brackish and salt areas.

Lastly what do you do with all the extra salt water created by the constant inflow of fresh water?
 
The only way you could do it is with 3 seperate systems.

With an overflow like you have there you'd have to have a constant supply of fresh water... then there's the isue of adding salt to maintain salinity levels in the brackish and salt areas.

Lastly what do you do with all the extra salt water created by the constant inflow of fresh water?


This is exactly what I was thinking too?!?
 
Have the fresh water move down stream at a rate a little greater than your evaporation rate, and any excess salt water can be mixed with fresh to maintain the brakish section. It would take the use of holding tanks with salinity monitoring by a controler that turns pumps on and off to control surge volumes. I think maintaining the brackish section would actually be the hardest.
 
the entire point of the system is to process waste in a more natural way with the fresh acting as a prefilter for the marine system and the brackish sytem with seagrass providing phytoplankton.
Curious as to how the fresh section would have any effect filtering wise on RO/DI water? There should not be any trates coming out of your RO/DI filter for the mangroves to remove/clean up. Since you said unlimited funds I would think that you would be using the BEST RO/DI unit out there. Something along the lines of the Spectrapure UHE 1:1 unit.
 
Curious as to how the fresh section would have any effect filtering wise on RO/DI water? There should not be any trates coming out of your RO/DI filter for the mangroves to remove/clean up. Since you said unlimited funds I would think that you would be using the BEST RO/DI unit out there. Something along the lines of the Spectrapure UHE 1:1 unit.

well for the initial fill youde need a RO/DI unit and to make up SW for water changes, but as for make up water thats the point of the FW and bracksih parts, to filter the water. in teh real ocean rovers, deltas, swamps and inter costal tidal zones act as the RO unit for the ocean. so the make up FW could be tap water with declorinator or rain water collected in a cistern
 
wouldn't the fact that all three zones are connected in a closed system just result in one low salinity?

thats why youde need some thing to seperate the zones line disctinct bulkheads with overflows like OregonReefer said, or by the use of semipermiable memberanes between the zones. one that only allows water to pass between the fresh and brackish and one that only allows salts to pass to a certian level between the bracksih and marine systems.

another way would be to have the systems to be of such large volume that when the fresh and marine mix they naturally create a brackish zone like in RL, but how much of a volume you would need i have no idea.

the filterations system for each system would be distince too, so youde end up with 3 filteration loops
 
there would be no way to connect the whole system. if you did try to connect the whole system you'd end up with a brackish water system. The only way i could see this working is with 3 ATO and a constant RO/DI system and a constant salt water feed into the marine tank.


1 Set them all up on there own systems
2 have an ATO running from the fresh two the marine tank
3 have an ATO running from fresh to brackish
4 have an ATO running from Salt to brackish
5 Have an RO/DI system hooked up to the fresh tank so it doesn't lose water
6 This system would be way to complicated
7 I think it would end in disaster
8 you would end up putting way to much fresh water in the marine tank trying to keep the brackish water tank full
9 you would need a tank the size of the world to make it work successfully

lol pretty creative thinking though :ape:
 
think it could be done with out using the entire world.

diff.jpg


with out breaking out Fick's Law, cause im lazy and i already gratuated college and dont have to conceptually show any thing to an engineering proff.... I think that if one were to have circulation with a velocity greater than that of the diffusion rate of the salt it could work. after that it would be breaking out some state equasions and using a 99% confidence caculating how many salt ions would escape from the current. once you know that you know the diffusion rate and can caculate the distance required for the brackish zone. you could also caculate the salt build up in the brackish zone and how much FW would be needed to keep it brackish.

ultimatly the overflows for the system would need to be in the brackish zone and the distance deend for the brackish zone would be a function of the volume of the marine side. hard part too would be maintaing the required flow velocity in the open areas away from the pump outlets.
 
thing is if they all shared water and filter you would have one brackish water tank. add a high amount of fresh water to salt water and you get brackish water.

plain and simple they would have to be three different systems.
 
It could work but the scale and cost would definitely be very high (I know the thought was unlimited funds, but even then it'd be expensive).

The brackish portion probably wouldn't work. You can't overflow fresh into brackish and brackish into saltwater without causing a flux in both tanks. Even slowing down to the rate of evaporation, you still end up with FW/FW/hyper-salinity. With a rather large setup you could slowly overflow fresh into salt though. You'd just need to monitor (or more likely have a automated system) and possibly intervene if you saw a drift happening. There would be the rather odd situation of expensive freshwater though (FW tanks don't handle pure RO/DI very well).
 
If closed system, the turn over rate would have to be extremely slow from one zone to another. If the saltwater zone was last, it's salinity would eventually drop and would require constant adjustment. Let's don't even consider water changes in a system proposal such as this, can you say "nightmare". Three separate systems would be much easier and sustainable.
 
well for the initial fill youde need a RO/DI unit and to make up SW for water changes, but as for make up water thats the point of the FW and bracksih parts, to filter the water. in teh real ocean rovers, deltas, swamps and inter costal tidal zones act as the RO unit for the ocean. so the make up FW could be tap water with declorinator or rain water collected in a cistern


I am at a complete loss here as to why you would do this. This is what I am getting out of your statement: You would start the system and do WC's using RO/DI but then you would add "dirty" aka tap water for your top off water so that the mangroves can "clean it up"? Mangroves are only going to pull out nitrates and phosphates and they do this at a very small amount in hobby sized plants. The rest of the stuff that the dechlorinator and the mangroves do not remove will still be in the water. Ok let's move down stream. When this water is in the brackish zone it will have fish in it right? That would add these trates right back into the water as your feed the fish. Now you just defeted the purpose of your fresh zone. HMMMMMMMM :headwally:
 
I am at a complete loss here as to why you would do this. This is what I am getting out of your statement: You would start the system and do WC's using RO/DI but then you would add "dirty" aka tap water for your top off water so that the mangroves can "clean it up"? Mangroves are only going to pull out nitrates and phosphates and they do this at a very small amount in hobby sized plants. The rest of the stuff that the dechlorinator and the mangroves do not remove will still be in the water. Ok let's move down stream. When this water is in the brackish zone it will have fish in it right? That would add these trates right back into the water as your feed the fish. Now you just defeted the purpose of your fresh zone. HMMMMMMMM :headwally:

well there would be a minimun of a 1 foot sandbed through out for the nitrogen cycle and sea grass in the brackish zone and maccro in the marine zone. but as far as removing other contaminates from teh water, plants do a great job of absorbing heavy metals and other contaminates. also 50-60 hobby sized plants wold remove alot, along with the other fresh water plants the system would have. just remember those strawberries your eating do contain uranium, arsnic and lead. and as for the "dirty" water, ive never used anything but in FW systems and the water does become very clean if u got the correct biofiltration.

but i do think i agree with Khemul and skip the brackish section and have controled over flown from the fresh into the marine with seperate side by side tanks. :spin2:
 
Back
Top