Ecotoxicology Aquaculture facility

[Samper]

As I mentioned in a previous thread my university is planning to put in an aquaculture facility in the Ecotoxicology building. I received an email this morning from the head of that department and she wants to move forward with this project as she just received a very nice grant. I am meeting with her Friday to discuss the costs and look at the setting. The goal of this system will be to allow students and faculty to study various aspects of marine life in captivity. We will also aquaculture corals and hopefully can breed some fish in an attempt to offset some of the costs of running this system and the reef in the lab sciences building.

I am currently interested in phenotypic plasticity and was hoping to design the system in such a way to allow me to study it focusing first on lighting and flow and possibly moving into water chemistry as part of my Masters work. I am doing an extensive literature search this afternoon and am hoping to gain some insight on setting this up. I have also contacted a graduate from USC that I met a while back who has experience in this area. Am hoping to hear from him soon.

I know that the facility has a ton of glass and other types of tanks just sitting around. I was interested in some of the longer, shallow feed troughs that they have. They already have an industrial RO/DI and some new external pumps so this will help. The system will be setup on huge and very sturdy shelving like Sams Clubs uses. I have plenty of room above, beside and below for whatever.

I wanted to get this thread started now hoping that some of you had some ideas for me.

[zhenya]

Good luck with it, Chuck! It sounds like real fun project, too.
I can;t help you much in designing somethig like this, but would recommend contacting Anthony Calfo and pick his brain. He;s got tons of ideas, I am sure, in just about any type of set up you can think of. Or he can put you on to someone who has experience and know how.
If you need his contacts let me know.

[CSeaSee]

Sounds very cool indeed. How's the first week gone?

[Samper]

This morning we installed the shelving that will be used for the system. The entire series of shelves is 36'X42"X10'. Consisting of three seperate shelves all bolted together. Each section is 12'X42"X10'. For the first stage I will only use one section but I will be able to expand as I continue my education and as grant money comes in. These shelves were purchased heavily used but they are solid as a rock and each rack can be adjusted to any height between 2"-10'. I was told by the men who sold them to us that each tier can hold 3500lbs. I have included some pics of them below.

The first thing I would like to ask is what base should I actually sit the system on? There are metal grids filling the center space between each support beam and they are as bumpy as a teenagers face. Also it seems to me that if I use these grids because of the way they sit in the shelf they are not as sturdy as they could be. If you don't see what I mean from the pics I'll try to explain this better. Overall the shelves are perfectly level.

Secondly, how should I treat these to minimize corrosion?

[zhenya]

The first thing I would like to ask is what base should I actually sit the system on? There are metal grids filling the center space between each support beam and they are as bumpy as a teenagers face. Also it seems to me that if I use these grids because of the way they sit in the shelf they are not as sturdy as they could be. If you don't see what I mean from the pics I'll try to explain this better. Overall the shelves are perfectly level.

Secondly, how should I treat these to minimize corrosion?

Hi Chuck,

By grids you mean those metal wire looking things?

This are not bad looking shelves, I must add. I would paint them really well after priming them first, of course. Just like you would handle painting a car. ;)
Secondly, I would lay some plywood over this wire looking grids and paint that as well. Use some marine paint that can take salt creep and plain old abuse.

[Samper]

Yes those are what I was referring to. We did not have time to do any sort of prep work on these before having them installed. The guys came, unloaded them, and we all started putting them up. Then the guys left. These shelves are in a facility with some very sensitive research projects and other than scrubbing them down really well with soap, water, and a rough sponge I don't know what I can do. I won't be able to sand or use aerosols to finish them. I'm not even sure if I can brush paint it but I will find out. I like the plywood base idea. I can finish it outside atleast. The weight of the tank will also push the wood into the bumpy welds for a more uniform base.

[Samper]

Now onto the tanks. The plan is to use these insulated fiberglass troughs. We already have one pictured below. The dimensions of this one are 7'X21.5"X2'. Using an online calculator I estimate this to hold 184.6 gallons without factoring out the overflow section, water level, substrate or anything else. It has a bulkhead fitting in one end but I will need to modify this end some with more bulkheads to handle the return pump. The interior of the tank is sectioned into 4 parts. Measuring from the inside from left to right the far left drilled section is 16". The next two sections are also 16" and the last one is 33". I was thinking that these slots may come in handy for something one day. I planned on possibly using one as an overflow wall but since it's 16" I may just build one so I don't use up so much room inside of the tank. We will only start with one of these but I have room to place them side by side and enough lengths of shelf that I could have six of these going at some point. I would still have enough room to put another six 4' tanks on the middle shelf butted up to the 7' tanks. I also tons of room above and below for sumps, refugiums, equipment, etc. This is a start though.

We also ordered three additional 75g fiberglass, insulated units. The dimensions of these are the standard 48"X22"X18". I plan on using one of these as a sump situated under the prop tank in some fashion and the other as a gravity fed refugium which I will feed from a split in one of the return lines. The other one....I don't know what I want to do with it yet but I may save it for a qt tank or something along those lines.

[scubadude]

Looks nice Chuck! Im a little confused on the troughs though.....you have what appears to be baffle sections (if you want them) if Im seeing them correctly. Have you thought about utilizing the lengths for raceways zig-zaging down the lengths.....I believe me and you have talked about this before.....I know Rick was wanting to do something like this and maybe even a counter sunk airlift, this is gonna be a cool project to follow

[Samper]

Hey Rocky! Those are baffle sections but I don't think I want to use them at this point in time. I can always add a section and some powerheads to it if I needed one for something later on. The idea was to use the entire length as one frag tank in the beginning. I want to maximize available space but I'm not opposed to putting some raceways in it. How would you propose to set them up? For the returns I have not decided on hole placement but I will be using two seperate pumps. Now would be the time to get that aspect of the system completed so I'm open to any suggestions that you may have.

I'm including a few more pics below. The first two are of a large bottle used for Deionization of tap water. I'm told that the water is already very pure where I wanted to tap into it for my RO/DI. I am not even sure that I need to install one. TDS reads 0. The entire facility is plumbed in such a way that there are canisters in line alll throughout with sediment and carbon filters. At each outlet one of these DI tanks sits. The next picture is one of the inline cartridge filters..I'm not sure what's in that one but before the water gets to my section it has gone through six canisters that I can count plus the DI. The next picture is my tap in point.

[Samper]

The last two pictures that I have at the moment are of a massive air pump. This is a spare but two of these pumps are providing air to all of the other aquaria located in the building. I can utilize this....was thinking to feed a massive skimmer. Unsure on skimmers at the moment as well. I'd like a get a massive external.

[Samper]

I need some advice. I don't have time to DIY the majority of this equipment even though I wanted to attempt it. I'm looking for suggestions on large skimmers and reactors.

I really like MRC Nilsen reactors and am thinking to use their large Nilsen. I am going to feed it from a bucket with an ato and a tunze osmolator.

After using the MRC calcium reactors for some time I am interested in branching out to another brand. MRC is definately proud of their commercial reactors $$$. This is not the issue I just hate doing maintenance on them. There has to be an easier brand on the market to disassemble and do maintenance on especially the reactor pump. The ones I use have mag pumps and there is no easy way to get it off. The newer designs and pumps they are using may have eliminated the problem but I'll call them tomorrow.

I have always fed the Ca reactors with a MJ 1200 and had a problem dialing then in due to fluctuations in the powerhead output. I am thinking of feeding it from a bleed line off of one of the return pumps but have never done this before. I guess I need to decide on a reactor before deciding how to feed it.

I'm completely open to skimmer suggestions here.

[Samper]

Lighting this 7' trough........I am considering an IceCap 250w HQI with electronic ballast and a 10K bulb at the far right end. Then an IceCap 47'' T5 4 bulb pre wired for the left side. Does anyone have any other suggestions? I know these are expensive but their 3 year warranty is nice and I know the equipment is quality. I'm looking for growth at this stage and considered using all midday Giesemann bulbs.

I am going deep for the oolitic sandbed in the 75g refugium at around 10". I considered doing the same in the coral trough but this may limit me on space and water movement so I may just leave it BB.

I am also still up in the air on the skimmer, Ca reactor and return pump.
I am attempting to put together most of the equipment to run a 1000g system. Even though I'm nowhere near that right now it will allow me the ability to add more troughs without huge expansion costs.

Have been reading the large tank threads on RC for ideas but I could really use some imput. I've always been hesitant to really post much there.

[Samper]

First I wanted to apologize for not being around much. I'm staying really busy and my life has taken some unexpected turns lately. At any rate I'm still around. Thought I'd share some progress with you.

I ordered the following items
500 lbs of Aragasnow sugar size sand
2 Mag 24s
8 grounding probes
Refractometer
Salifert Kits4
Lots of media bags
8 1" bulkheads
2 2" bulkheads
6 1.25" bulkheads
Regulator
2 Milwaukee pH controllers
2 Jager 250 w heaters
Tunze Osmolator
6 160 gallon buckets of reef crystals
8 54w Giesemann midday T5 bulbs
4 IceCap 250/400w pendants ballasts and Icecap 10K bulbs with 4 replacements
Geo 8X18 Calcium Reactor and Pan World 40PX pump
3 gallons of CaribSea Arm Media Extra Course
Geo Kalk Reactor
2 ATOs
IceCap 4X54w Pre Wired T5 retro kit
Bubble King 300 Internal
1 hp tradewind inline chiller - which is ridiculously heavy

Anyway I acquired another couple of insulated troughs. I now have 2 7' tubs, another large square insulated trough and 2 75 gallon troughs. I start putting this together next week. I'm just going to upload a bunch of random pics now. Enjoy

[Samper]

A few more. I'm really looking forward to this.

[Samper]

Dang...I rotated those pics prior to uploading but for some reason it didn't change them. Sorry about that.

[kgeorge]

Lookin nice buddy. I'm gonna have to come see this. Hollar at me some time, especially if you're workin on it and need some help!

[Samper]

Coming tomorrow by chance? Haha

[Reefland]

That skimmer looks wimpy.

[Samper]

It does look rather wimpy! I put quite a bit of work into this the other day mainly because we moved the entire build to a rack across the room with alot more space. I have a removable walkway between the two 7' troughs and the sump sits underneath it. I took a ton of pictures but can't seem to find my card reader so until I do ....no pics. Describing it without them is almost pointless. It's a much better setup now ;).

[Samper]

Found it!