Coral Tank from Canada (1350gal Display Tank)
- Thread starter nineball
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FiremanReese
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Padrino I saw it on page 283. Reese
dave.m
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Oops! Don't know what happened there. I'll try it again here.
Dave.M
Dave.M
nineball
Active member
Thanks Dave. I haven't forgotten you....this week is turning out to be the week of appointments that are cropping up all over the place. So maybe it will be next week unless you are on safari or something like it!!!!
Peter
FiremanReese
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The next project for Peter's tank will be a live food culturing system. I'm working on a design that will allow passive automated feeding. Basically, a dosing pump periodically delivers fresh system water to a series of independent live food tanks, allowing them to overflow down through a standpipe into the sump below, and over an internal dam feeding the next level of the food pyramid.
At the bottom of the food chain we have Phytoplankton, then rotifers (zooplankton), then Brine Shrimp/Artemia Nauplii (zooplankton), and finally the larger Mysid Shrimp (zooplankton). Each live food item grows at a different rate with the bottom end (phytoplankton) growing at the fastest rate followed up the food chain to the slowest (mysis shrimp).
It is important to segregate each item as contamination can wipe out the food source. For this reason, the airlift is placed at the end that is down the food chain and the dam is high enough to discourage cross-contamination.
An air line will keep water moving and protect the live food from being damaged in pumps or filters. A turkey baster will be used to collect food as well for target feeding. The dosing pump will be adjusted to keep the cultures from overpopulating and crashing and to control water quality. The dosing pump will come on periodically for a few minutes, perhaps for one minute once an hour???
Brine shrimp are photosensitive and attracted to light, so they will be concentrated at the surface where it is easy to overflow them to the mysis or standpipe to the sump. The light will also keep the tanks warm for faster growth. I will have to adjust the size of each tank to support the biomass and feeding requirements.
I don't expect this system to be self sustaining. It will periodically crash and will require replenishing. The idea is to have a steady supply of live food for the display tank, via the sump to feed bacteria, invertebrates and fish. Brine shrimp will be hatched in a separate vessel to keep the floating hatched cysts from overflowing into the sump and mysis tank.
Here is a drawing of what I have in mind. Let me know if you have any ideas or spot any design flaws.
FiremanReese
New member
Sorry to double post I had a question on the auto feeder.
Looking at it was wondering how to restrict overflow on first chamber so water would spill to the following sections without dumping it all in the first overflow
He that made sense . Reese
Looking at it was wondering how to restrict overflow on first chamber so water would spill to the following sections without dumping it all in the first overflow
He that made sense . Reese
Padrino
New member
Thanks Dave for pulling that up and thanks peter for putting that together. Photography was great and shows so much diversity. Your tank has come together beautifully.
Rob
Padrino
New member
Peter,
forgive me for jumping in here but i think Hubert touched on this subject earlier when it was brought up. This design looks good and logical on paper however the issue of contamination is huge which usually wipes out your colonies. I met with Brian from Reef Crew a few times at club meets and other events. He openly shares how to start home cultures and how to continually keep cultures going without crashing. One point he always stressed when cultivating multiple levels of the food chain was to leave lots of space between cultures (like have each species on opposite sides of the room). Contamination such as a small splash and your culture is gone.
He also mentioned how each level had its own grow cycle, phyto was every 7 days before harvesting where rotifers were like once a day or something extreme like that.
Reese,
Perhaps Brian might be a good resource for you with regarding to building such a reactor, He is very well informed on how to grow algae. Last time i met with him, he was mentioning about growing algae for the government as a renewable resource.
Hope this helps
Rob
shannonpayne86
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Peter the tangs and the idols make that tank. Well done guys, surprising how everyday show fish in this hobby can be be made to look even more spectacular in the right tank.
FiremanReese
New member
Thanks Padrino was looking at the mechanics of it for plankton. So I might just plan on a system just for that with a doser. Thanks
sfsuphysics
Active member
Also looking at the design (it seems great!) is that the amount of water you're "recycling" from the sump, it would either go down the tube, or hit the overflow but not both, unless the tube was so tiny that it couldn't handle the volume coming out of the doser in which case it might clog up.
Not to mention the fact that you're taking from the sump means you very well could get some of said cross contamination.
gmneil
New member
the design looks good however i would collect new water from a completely seperate and sealed off container instead of from the sump, that way you wont contaminate the cultures.
also i would skip the turkey baster method, instead you could seal off the top completely, and install valves on the side in each chamber for manual collecting just like you did for release into the sump.
also yo may want a large height difference in between the cultures to avoid any splash contamination from crossing cultures as well, i would actuall make each wall all the way to the top and just drill a few holes where you wanted the cultures to over flow, there shouldn't be alot of flow so it should work fine that way.
Allmost
New member
thank you Peter, I will be looking forward to see what you and MR Wilson will come up with
to be honest, I have been keeping seahorses for about 5 years now, and have had multiple different set ups running over the years, currently have 2 seahorse tanks. I gave up on breeding project about 6 months ago, as its just too much work, and requires too much space which I simply do not have. with that said, I am sure that are many out there, and also local to us, who have ALOT more experience than I do in this field. Ray from here and Mark just to name a few. but I would be more than happy to help in any way I can
labour, or the limited knowledge that I have I will PM you to hopefully come and see your amazing system soon thanks again for your reply.
nineball
Active member
Because the longest span was 16 ft and the colouration made acrylic(no distortion) a better option.
Peter
slief
RC Sponsor
I have a 48" jelliquarium in my office which is essentially a kreisel for jelly fish.
I had sea horses in it for a year or so after I got tired of the jellyfish. I had some long strings of fake but realistic kelp stands in it. It actually worked great as the flow was low and the circular nature of the water flow did a great job suspending the live food making it easy for the seahorses to see and eat. My seahorses seemed to have babies every couple months.
The owner of jelliquarium/midwater systems is a friend of mine and owns a patent on the designs. He happens to have a line of sea horse tanks as well which he sells to public aquariums quite frequently along with his kreisels.
This was taken after it was setup. I dont have any of it with the sea horses.
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Slief, that is way cool. I'd guess it's only 6-8" inches wide?
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