BoxFish -- Let me offer you a different perspective of sorts, but one from somebody that
is in this business... DON'T DO IT!
A few years ago I built an aquaculture facility in Arkansas which was the first full-scale, high-end facility here. I spent an insane amount of money building it, but was able to keep those costs to an absolute bare minimum because I built it all up in my basement. As long as business was good, then I had few issues aside from the inevitable power outages, small isolated electrical fires, contaminates, parasites that would threaten to wipe out everything, etc.
I was doing great and making very good money when the rest of the country was doing the same thing. Once the economy tanked and people began losing their jobs and homes, my business beganm suffereing to the point that I was forced to "temporarily" shut down specific portions of my operation, because there was no sense in paying to operate something that was no longer being utilized. The ice storm that sat over us for 4 days last February was the nail in my coffin so to speak, because so many of my clients lost their reef systems when they suddenly were without power for anywhere from a week minumum to a month or more... I myself had to make hard decisions as to which systems would live, and which of mine would die, but I had enough large operational systems with excellant redundancy on each, to pull through with minimal losses. Tragically however, my clients didn't have that in place!
Each month over the past year I have continued to turn off system after system due to the costs associated with keeping them operational, but always kept hope that I would eventually have the
need to fire everything back up again, but it's simply not going to happen! Just yesterday I tore out the primary unit and sold off some of the equipment to a new aquariast that was thrilled to get top quality commercial rated equipment for less than the cost of used consumer grade stuff that often times isn't worth bringing home.
At peak operation, I had 30+ large pumps running, dozens of lights, and a utility bill that was through the roof, not to mention the consumables such as food, RO filters, bags, heaters, de-humidifiers (
these last about 6 months tops due to salt intake), lime, CO2, Muriatic Acid, SALT, etc. Keep in mind that bulbs must be replaced at least every 6 months because they have a far greater burn time in a commercial setting than they do in your living room, pumps all require enough spare rebulid parts to be kept on hand at all times to be be able to make repairs to about 1/2 of your system in the event that you take a huge power surge during a storm or simply whenever the power company screws up.
When you're not replacing parts, you'll be cleaning and rebuilding them.
To think that you have a good portion of yoiur requirements covered by simply having a set of scuba gear for each of you isn't even remotely close, because if this is to be your what you feel is a large element of your business, then I will be the first to tell you that you'll need at least 2 complete sets for each diver, then backup systems for those because if one set is being worked on, and the operational set fails, then you are suddenly "non-operational" which could quite easily cost you your entire business... You'll need an absolute minimum of double-redundancy in regards to your diving gear, and you'll also want 100% commercial rated equipment that can easily withstand use and abuse that light consumer grade stuff isn't designed to handle. Don't believe me..? Ask Bill or SeaJay, as both of them are commercial divers.
In regards to costs and infrastructure, I built up 100% of my system myself, at at
only 1400 gallons, I had a start up cost of roughly $40k before I ever added the first drop of water... While I stated that my aquaculture "facility" was the first and is/was the largest in the state of Arkansas, it was also not designed to be able to handle the demands of exportation, but exclusively for supporting my local & regional clientele which was 100% end-users and never any stores or distributors. Are you aware that the operations that are equipped to do that sort of thing must do complete water changes on a wekely basis at the most, and due to the amount of water that is being pulled from the systems during shipping, most of them (
local fish stores too) end up replacing 100% of their water several times a week.
I realize that you said that you wanted to use existing natural sea water for your operation, but it isn't feasible due to pollutants that are commonly in the top level of the water column, and often encompassing a several mile range from the nearest shoreline. Unless you're Walt Smith and have an operation in the Marshall Islands or some other highly environmentally protected region, then it's a crap shoot at best that also places OUR own systems at risk through the introduction of contaminants.
If you read many of the threads in this forum, then you'll see that I just bought a new "commercial/tech" grade diving rig, and I've spent a good deal of money on it, but nothing even remotely close to what I had spent to be able to first turn on my aquaculture system, let alone the monthly operational costs for several years.
I certainly didn't mean to pee in your Cheerios, but I did want to give you an "insiders" perspective into something that probably 80% of the people that want to open up a reef shop or aquaculture facility have no clue about what is actually involved, because it's certainly no longer anywhere near the same realm as that lovely livingroom system that you have.
If you have any further questions regarding anything that I have written, PLEASE take the time to ask them.
BTW: I spoke with the owner of an equipment manufacturing company yesterday morning, who has decided to stop manufacturing the products that made him very successful in this industry, because people are not spending money on reefkeeping systems when they don't have jobs and can barely support their families at this point... He made the same very difficult and painful decision that I have had to make, and he too has taken about a year tfor the reality of it all to set in and make a final decision. This pains me very much in more ways than one, because I exclusively used his aquarium controllers and felt them to be the finest on the market in many regards. Before I was in the aquaculture and system design & maintenance business, I was in the product design & manufacturing business within this industry, but sold that company several years ago, thus I have been around it all for quite a number of years.
Kindest regards,
Tim Greene
www.nea-reefkeeping.com
