Water changes in rediculously big tanks??

[archie]

The other weekend, i went down to the state aquarium
to have a look with my wife, and its huge! The main ocean-arium hold 2.2 million liters of water and they have it filled with sharks and sting rays.

Do you think they do water changes every week? even if they changed a third thats like 730,000 litres of water! Does any one know how they get around it?

[Tooch]

I've been curious about this as well! I've been to the Georgia aquarium a couple times, and they have a HUGE tank where they had their Whale Sharks (I've heard they all died... Is this true?) I wonder about the filtration on these mamoth tanks as well!

[Lady Hobbs]

No way. They have a far superior system than any of us would ever have. With that much water, it would take a long time to ever go toxic! It's not like a 10 gallon. LOL

They probably have some type of set up that fresh water is being pumped in on a daily basis.

[A340]

With this perhaps ....

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:ezpi_wink1:

[Tooch]

Yup! That'll do it! And in only 400 trips from the sink!

[cocoa_pleco]

ive seen some people with monster ponds have a system that does not need a motor, freshwater constantly comes in and old water drains from the bottom into the sewer system, i would imagine that the water bill would be high but its efficient

[Fishguy2727]

The Baltimore Aquarium mixes massive batches to use throughout the aquarium. I can't remember the numbers now, but it is still in the range of hobbyists based on %/week. They do it differently in that it is done little by little, not drain half the tank and then refill.

Even though the systems are much larger, they are still stocked about as much as our tanks are. So it would not take much time at all for them to become toxic.

They also use other filtration methods that can maintain better water quality between changes. For example: algae scrubbers. They use very bright lights over a shallow area that water flows through. Algae grows like crazy, which removes nitrates, phosphates, etc., which helps keep water quality up.

[xoolooxunny]

I've heard of an aquarium in Georgia (US) that is pretty close to the ocean, and pumps that water into the facility, where it already has the proper ph and salinity, they just treat it for pollution.

[cocoa_pleco]

when i went to the seattle aquarium thats what they did too

[tropfish]

thye probably have a flow through system, water constantly coming in and leaving, that would be a expensive but awoesme system, almost no maintenance.

[Sasquatch]

I did some work at the Parc Aquarium du Québec a while back and they gave me a tour of the "filtration house". It's a small warehouse where all the water that goes into the aquariums is processed. They pump directly from the St-Lawrence, treat that water and then pass it through a mega filtration system which treats it and treats the return water from the exhibits.

UV sterilizers, fluidized bed filters, holding tanks the size of your house, you name it, it's there and it's big! For the saltwater, the get the salt shipped in pallets that weight like 2 tonnes. They mix it up in holding tanks too and goes through it's own filtration system.

Quite interesting, even if the actual attractions aren't that great.