Outdoor coral tank to snorkel in!

[genomik]

Hey hey hey,

I have a dream that could actually become reality and I bet some of you have some ideas, or maybe I will spark an idea for you!. I love swimming for exercise and also snorkelling in tropical oceans. How to combine this in California? My general idea is the following;

A greenhouse outside, probably filled with orchids and lots of other stuff so it can be beautiful on many levels. This would probably have climate controls built in in some way to vent hot air in summer and keep temps up in winter. Orchid greenhouses are good at this.

Build (or buy) a swimming sized aquarium. Maybe 4 or 5 feet deep x 8 feet long and 5 feet wide for example. There could be variations on size for sure, maybe rectangular or maybe some variety of shapes. You could aquascape the shallow side with corals and other robust stuff. Here you could actually go in with a snorkel and float over the corals and such. Perhaps in a common area or separated would be swimming area for doing tethered laps.

I could see this reaching 1000 gallons or something pretty easily. Since it is mostly designed to be seen from the top it does not need expensive acrilyic sides or anything fancy. Strong and cheap sides would be best. Maybe you throw in a few strategic viewing sides. The guts should all be cheap and robust.

Not sure exactly what to put in it but probably mostly invertebrates and plants. a few fish. gobies and such. The water parameters could fluctuate a bit - they do not need to be perfect 78 degrees and perfect water. Just needs to be pretty good and cheap and easy.

Has anybody ever thought of such a thing? Has anyone done it? I can concieve of it being very do-able tho with a lot of work. I think if u can get the environmental controls right w greenhouse that would be a majority of the problem.

From another direction we r talking about just building a salt water swimming pool and throwing some living stuff in there.

Ideally it would be salt water tho freash water also could be an option though I think with fresh water I might be more concerned about health issues to do with water getting nasty. I percieve salt water to be more inhospitable to human pathogens but i might be wrong.

Maybe industrial protien skimmer or other large scale but cheap products could make it happen. 5 or 10k to build the tub and water sould like the right budget? Greenhouse could easily be 10 to 20k. Maybe the whole thing could be built for 20k?

Any thoughts? If i could pull this off it sure would be fun. I guess with it being 2008 I could put a TV monitor in one end and just watch nature shows!

I have always dreamt of a greenhouse big enough to immerse yourself into, the terrestrial part is easy - orchids, lizrds, frogs etc. A beach even. The hard part is the water area.

Thanks,
Erik

 

[nattarbox]

I fully approve of this idea, but I don't think 8 feet long is going to be enough room for actual swimming. I could stretch my arms and touch both edges. Once you fill it with coral there might not even be enough room for you to actually get in the tank.

 

[kar93]

If you built an actual sized swimming pool then i think it could be a great idea! I think you would need more than 8feet aswell for swimming and would also need alot of depth for the corals so youre not scraping corals everytime you go in it. In california i think the sun would be perfect aswell. But you would need to build a glass or acrylic cover for when it rains.

 

[bigdaddyadam]

Not to try and shoot you down but have you considered the fact that just by being in the water you are polluting it. The toxins in your sweat are actually harmful to corals, I read an article about a year ago that the sweat from the massive amount of snorkelers on the Great Barrier Reef is actually having a negative effect in some places. On the other hand big public aquariums do maintanence this way. Also, I know a few years ago someone on here was talking about a similar project and was actually getting somewhere with it, I believe using an old indoor swimming pool.

 

[kar93]

It was the sunscreen that was affecting the corals, not sweat.

 

[bigdaddyadam]

see this little link for example on the damage of human sweat to reefs

http://www.miamisci.org/oceans/coralreef/introcoralreef/greatbarrierreef/damage.html

this link from the Australian government says the same thing

http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/greatbarrierreef/

 

[Kent E]

I'm not buying the human sweat thing for a second. I don't care what scientist or pseudo-scientists says it.

Sunscreen makes much more sense, as do soaps.

 

[kar93]

Yeah im not buying the sweat thing either. When you're in Australia sunscreen is a MUST and you sweat it off so when you go snorkeling or diving all the sun screen will wash off. But sweat makes no sense to me.

 

[genomik]

Thanks for the responses. Yeah, 8 feet is a little short. I guess the best basic idea is a swimming pool retrofited to hold corals. So maybe the pool form and structure which there is a lot of selection and such. The filtration would need to be custom since pools r usually freshwater with chlorine and here we r talking about salt. But that seems pretty do-able.

I think that to get in we would need a shower to really clean off well first, soap to get rid off sunscreen and antiperspirant etc. Then rinse the soap off very well. Maybe a freshwater or saltwarer rinse in tub might be good.

I think sweat would be mostly water, salt (NA, CL, K, ), bacteria, and trace elements. Sweat by itself should be irrelevant. Dead skin cells might contribute some proteins etc. So a protein fractionator/skimmer is probably important.

The greenhouse is important for environmental control.

 

[adamsaranluke]

Lots of people have salt water pools especially in CA. I live in Sacramento and I have seen them. Granted it's not the same kind of saltwater needed to support reef life but the concept is the same and therefore might not be extremely difficult to do. Pools already utilize a giant skimmer too. I am not 100% sure but I think it works on the same principals as an aquarium skimmer. It seems like a shelter would be nessessecary but it would also make it difficult to utilize the sun for your light source.

 

[adamsaranluke]

I live in CA and if you do it I would love to help. Not very experienced with the reef stuff but I love learning about it and I have been involved in every aspect of residential as well as comercial construction. I am very knowledgable about the construction process and I possess many skills. Let me know and I can even help with plans and permits.

 

[tbittner]

Rubber maid makes containers all the way up to 5,000 gallons. Just dig a hole big enough to place the container, run plumbing under ground to the support room, and fill it up. You'd be good to go. And they are a fraction of the cost of an aquarium and it doesn't sound like you'd care if it was viewable from the sides.

 

[mcliffy2]

There was a guy in Brazil who built a concrete tank that involved a beach sloping into the tank and he scuba dived in it...there was a post about it here, but the bulk of it is in a Brazilian computer. I have a bookmark to the page on my work computer, but if you make a post about it in this forum (something like - looking for link to huge concrete brazilian tank), I bet someone else will have it bookmarked as well.