The 200,000 gallon tank build thread.

[Anonymous]

How often do you need to perform water changes on a system this size? Also, that topping off amount is incredibly low, how on earth is that achieved? The top of the tank isn't completely closed off, is it? (Obviously, haven't visited the new facility.)

We perform small water changes weekly as part of backwashing our sand filters.

The top of the tank is open, but remember the surface area:volume ratio decreases as you scale up, so a 200g tank will also have 10 times the surface area:volume that a 200,000g tank will...more or less, assuming both have similar proportions. This tank also happens to be very tall. If it were in your living room, scaled down, it's be about 6' wide by 30" tall. So there is less surface area than you'd expect from a typical home reef tank that's shallow and wide. Finally, it's SF, and the Sunset district of SF a couple miles from the ocean, so the building gets bathed in very cool, very humid air for much of the year. I suspect this is one of the biggest factors working in our favor.

We're glad it doesn't evaporate much, but it was intentionally designed with that in mind. When we first turned the tank "on" my estimation was something like 500gpd of evaporation, so I'm glad I was wrong.

I'm also really glad you're asking these questions because I hadn't really thought about it in depth before!

 

[Anonymous]

Interesting to hear about the water change, that was one of the things that I always worried about from the number of behind the scene tours I've done there (Thanks to the lovely Matt ), but didn't want to say anything simply due to "they're more experienced than I" aspect.

I'm wondering though if you can't filter older water and "recharge" it as opposed to simply dumping it down the drain. It surely is impractical at the hobbyist level, but scaled up it might be doable.

Good times though, I'll have to look at a few of my picture albums as when I went there quite a bit more often (as a member) I took pictures (most of which turned out like crap though).

 

[Anonymous]

[youtube]0n_BNCrP5Sc[/youtube]

 

[Anonymous]

Stunning!

 

[Len]

Whoa. Dude, blog this

 

[Anonymous]

Whoa. Dude, blog this

I will!

 

[Ben1]

I wanna go scuba diving in there! :mrgreen:

 

[Anonymous]

Enough with the fish already, grow some corals in there!!!

 

[Anonymous]

Enough with the fish already, grow some corals in there!!!

I did a quickie vid transect the other day, I'll try to get it up soon!.

 

[Anonymous]

Enough with the fish already, grow some corals in there!!!

Hey, we have corals in there bigger than many people's tanks!

A lot of different species are starting to take off. We will have to photo document...

 

[Anonymous]

I know I know... I'm just giving y'all a hard time I've seen some of my corals in there, I've seen some of my corals die in there, I've seen some others corals do absolutely awesome in there as well, it's kind of like my own little 3rd world child where I give 12 cents a day and see how the whole thing does

 

[Anonymous]

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/blog/st ... hilippines

 

[kmacartney]

Cool!

 

[Anonymous]

http://vimeo.com/23717993

 

[Anonymous]

http://www.calacademy.org/blogs/expedition/?p=597

and

 

[Ben1]

Thanks Thales, as if I wasn't jealous enough of all you with awesome jobs. Diving in the Philippines sounded like it was amazing!

 

[Anonymous]

Out of curiosity in the photo (CAS) what are those lights in the distance (not the lightning)

 

[Anonymous]

Fishing boats right up to the limit of how close they can fish

 

[Anonymous]

http://vimeo.com/24080492

Cespit spawing

 

[Anonymous]

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/blog/diving-on-the-moon