Update

The algae scrubber seems to be working pretty well. I also got maintenance to lower the temperature of that room to 70°, special thanks to Bill V, Jim, and Ms. Claeys for that. It is helping keep the tank down in temperature. Previously the tank was running around 78°, on a good day its now at 70°. I'm going to have to find a way to block out some of the sunlight coming into that room to stabilize it further. I'll probably find something like the mesh they use in green houses.

The Black Sea Bass has gotten rather big, he's finished off most of the smaller fish. There are only around 10 smaller fish. The three mullets are still alive. And of course the nitrate levels are still high and I'm planning on another water change, this time I'm going for a 75% change. I also need to find a good place to collect water. The water coming from Northwest Harbor isn't the best because the salinity is low, around 28%. Ideally I want the water to be 35%.

I'm also creating plans for a nursery tank that will sit on-top of the sand filter enclosure. This will be for smaller fish that wouldn't survive with the big fish.

The sand filter enclosure I'm talking about I built recently to hide the pump/filter. Its made out of old drift wood, I was trying to go for that aquarium model look. I'll post photos soon.

Species List

Here's a list of all the species I've had in the tank.

Right now I'm down to just a few species. The list below is all the species that have ever been in the tank.

Portly Spider Crab

Blue Claw Crab

Flat Claw Hermit Crab

Green Crab

Northern Moon Snail

Eastern Mud Snail

Eastern Oyster

Hard Clam

Atlantic Bay Scallop

Anomia simplex (jingle shell)

Purple Sea Urchin

Blue Mussel

Channeled whelk

Knobbed Whelk

Redbead Sponge

Boring Sponge

American Eels

Grass Shrimp

Spot Fin Butterfly fish

Mullet

Bay Anchovy

Striped Killifish

Northern Puffer

Northern Pipefish

Northern Searobin

Summer Flounder

Kingfish

Blue Spot Coronet

Horshoecrab

Forbes Sea star

Photos

Here are some photos of the tank

Channeled Welk

Winter Flounder

February and April

2/2/10

Nothing new really, same problems as before. The salinity has stabilized. I'm looking into oystershells for pH. The Algae filter still isn't working. The tank seems to be getting along nicely without the 2nd sand filter. It just needs to be backwashed more often. I put in some new plumbing so that process is easier/possible. I want to put in some lighting above the tank to give it that natural daylight look. I met with the firemarshal about lighting above the tank. Basicly we've gotten approved, we just need to get a electrician to come in and install it. The horshoecrab is also gone.

4/17/10

The spider crab died. We had a leak in the charcoal filter and the salinity dropped. Because of this, today we had to do a water change, to bring the salinity back up and lower the nitrates. We borrowed the big container for the seafood shop again to move the water. The algae scrubber is working better after I ruffed up the screen. I troubleshooted it with these guys: algaescrubber.net

I got oyster shells and they brought the pH right up. Its time to get more stuff, the tank is looking sparse. The lighting has been abandoned because of the price, I was looking at a bill of around $1,000.

Biggest Problem of the project

12/7/09

Hell has broke loose. During backwashing, the pressure in the sandfitler built and exploded. I turned on the pump and a hole opened up on the side of the filter; water started spraying all over the back room. I quickly turned off the pump closed off the valves so the whole tank didn't drain. It needs to be replaced but there is a ton of pipe work in front of it, so it isn't going anywhere until I want to remove the plumbing. So replacing it isn't really and option, and most people I've talked to said its not a good idea to try to repair it. I'm going to leave it bypassed and see if the smaller sand filter from system 2 can handle the whole tank. I'm not sure what went wrong, either something got clogged in the filter, or I forgot to open the waste valve.

Also the final tropical fish, the spot fin butterfly fish, disappeared. And the algae truf scrubber is leaking, and not growing algae. It needs to be sealed up with silicone and the screen needs to be ruffed up. The salinity is also low due to a problem that happened when we tried to back wash it. When I backwash the filters I use fresh water to not waste our precious salt water. But this time a good amount of fresh water ended up in the tank. The pH I'm still having a problem getting under control. Baking soda isn't working.

The other tropicals have died off in previous days. The blue-coronet fish died because I couldn't get him to eat. By the time special food arrived in the mail, he was was dead.

Algae Turf Scrubber

11/23/09

We've done a water change a while ago. We found out that the Seafood Shop in Wainscot has a large 350 gallon container that you can put on the back of a truck. Colin, the owner, kindly loaned us the container for the day. We were able to do the water change in two trips. The sand filters need to be backwashed, they are starting to build in pressure because of all the organic debree they've collected.

Also, I installed a new filter. An algae turf scrubber. This filter is going to remove the nitrate from the system. Although nitrate doesn't hurt the fish a lot, it promotes algae growth. The concept is fairly simple. All plants use nitrate to grow. So I created a filter that grows algae. I took a PVC pipe, cut a slit down it and hung a piece of plastic canvas from it. When the water is pumped through the pipe it will evenly flow over the canvas. On both sides of the canvas I built two containers to house 6 fourescent bulbs. These bulbs will make the algae grow. When enough algae grows on the screen, I'll remove the screen and scrape off the algae and discard it, thus removing the nitrate.

Above is a photo of the orange water tank and pump, and to the left is a photo of the algae scrubber.

Water and Fish!

Now that the tank was ready for water it was time to get the water, all 1,200 gallons. It took 7 trips, 9 garbage cans each load, to fill the tank. It took two whole days. I then went looking for fish. That week me and Ryan Shutte got a bunch of fish and stuff for the tank. From here on I'm going to describe the events day by day.

9/08/09 Tropical Fish

It turns out that lots of tropical fish make their way up to Long Island on the Gulfstreem. If you know where to go you can catch them. Today I went down to pondquogue bridge to find them. I found them but wasn't able to catch any of them. They were too fast. I did find some other stuff though, they're in the tank now. The water is much clearer in the tank today, the sand filters got all the free floating stuff out from the bay water. I forgot to turn the chiller on but its on now and we'll see how good it works. That has been a concern, weather it will be strong enough.

9/11/09

The water temp came down around 73°. The pump of system 1 was leaking so I had to take it out and put in gasket sealer. That fixed that leak but then system 2 started leaking, while fixing that leak I turned the pump on with the valve closed and broke one of the lines. It turns out I forgot to glue it and the pressure pushed it apart. Water started to flow out of the tank because of a siphon. I pull the return pipes of the tank so the siphon would stop. I then glued it together and also put in a valve to stop siphoning in the future. I'll start it up Monday once the glue is dry. Its nice to have two systems so if one breaks the other maintains the tank.

9/28/09

Today I went to Pondquogue to catch some more fish. On a previous day I did catch one, but it died before we got it in the tank. I've tried to catch them multiple times now, maybe 3 or 4 trips. Today we finaly caught some, 2 spotfins and a blue-coronet fish. I'm going to bring them to ross tomorrow. I also met another guy from ATMW at Pondquoue, he said he works with chris and often collects things there: lionfish, blue damsles, cow fish.

Plumbing and Filters

The orginal plan was to use the west life support system from the west tall tank. This way I could still use the east tank. The big tank had only one pipe that ran from under the tank to the back rooms. Each tall tank also had one of these un-used pipes. My plan was to use the pipe under the big tank as the return, and one of the pipes under the tall tank as the feed. But it turned out that the one pipe under the big tank only went to the east system room (the one I was using for the east tall tank). So I was forced to turn that system over to the big tank. Before I discovered this I had already repaired the pump for the west system, and started working on the chiller that had quite working. The pump on the west system was a reck, it looked like someone put sand through it or something. It had completely self destructed. All parts except for the motor and the large housing had to be replaced. I designed the plumbing so that you could switch the east life support system between the big tank and the tall east tank, if anyone ever wanted to use that. I met with Chris Paparo to go over what the plumbing should be in the tank, as far as positioning of return lines. He said that it would be good to have four outputs to keep the water moving in most parts of the tank. We also figured out how to construct the bio-filter, which I'll explain bellow.

Since the east system wasn't quite strong enough for this tank (mind you it flows at 60gpm) I used the existing pump that was on the big tank. I'm going to call the east system: System 1, and the system that is in the same room as the tank: System 2. This pump had been installed for pumping water over rocks to make waterfalls. The plumbing wasn't right for a fish tank. So I completly dismantaled this system. I was able to salvage a good amount of the pipe

work, but a good part had to be replaced.

So here is the plumbing scheme. Starting with the bio filter: This filter is essential a sump inside the tank. It maintains part of the nitrogen cycle in the tank. Water flows from the display chamber over a bulkhead into a chamber (the bio-filter). This first chamber is filled with bio-balls (see photo). They're specially designed to have a huge amount of surface area. All this surface area harbors bacteria which run the nitrogen cycle. Specifically it converts Ammonia to Nitrite to Nitrate. This fitler didn't exist, I built it myself. I was lucky to have some big sheets of plexiglass and made the chambers. And I got the school to purchase the bio-balls.

After running throughout the bio ball chamber, the water goes under another bulkhead, over another bulkhead and then to the feed pipes. The point of the last little maze is to prevent air from getting into the life support systems.

There are two feed pipes in the last chamber, one goes to system 1, and other to system 2. In system one, I ran the pipe along the floor, around the door, (photo to the right) under the tall tank, and connected it to that un-used pipe under the tall tank. Making the connection under the tall tank was one of the more stress full moments. The pipe was so short coming out of the cement floor I had to get it right the first time. There was no room for error. Luckily it worked out. If it had not cemented correctly I wouldn't have been able to cut it off and start over. This un-used pipe runs to the back

room. In the back room I Tee-ed in the new feed pipe, and set up the new return. In the photo on the right, the red highlighted pipes are the old pipes for the tall tank, the yellow is the new pipe for the big tank.

In system 1, the water goes through the pump, sand filter, charcoal filter, UV filter, chiller, heater (which is bypassed) and back to the tank. System two is just a sand-filter and a pump. Both systems return the water to the tank through two return spots in the tank. The UV filter is also bypassed - Chris said it just kills thing that you don't necessarily want to kill. They don't use any over at Atlantis Marine World.

I also created an auto-fill device. This keeps the water level in the tank the same as evaporation occurs. I fill the tank with fresh water because when the water evaporates the salt stays in the tank. If you look at this photo to the right, you will see that there is a little rod that pushes a switch (the black thing highest in the photo). When the water goes down the switch is released, a delay timer is triggered (blue box) and a electric valve is opened to fill the tank through the closest PVC pipe. The point of the delay timer is to slow the cycles of filling.

The Big Tank - Buffing and Cleaning

Over the summer of my sophomore year I started the big tank. This tank, which is in its own room, is 1,200 gallons. I contacted Ms Fayyaz and got her permission to take over the tank. She was using it for landscape design. I also got permission for Jim Knowlan to go ahead with the project. One of the logistical problems was that a pipe had to be run around a door, and he was fine with this.

One of the first steps was to remove all the rock, soil, and plants from the tank. There was a massive amount of this material. I did leave a good portion of the rocks as the structure. After removing this stuff it was time to clean it. Algae was glued onto the walls of the acrylic sides, dirt was everywhere, and there was biological muck everywhere. I spent a whole week sitting in the tank with a bucket of clorox and a shop vac. Once it was relatively clean I filled up the tank, put in a lot of clorox and ran the existing pump system. (there was a pump that was designed for water falls and such for the landscape design, but it had to be removed and completely re-plumbed.) With the clorox, the idea was to eliminate all the things that were alive from the previous set up.

I then drained the tank and started work on restroing the side of the tank. When the previous people put the rocks in tank, they accidentally hit them up against the display side wall. They also used a rough brush to clean algae off it. The tank itself is made out of acrylic (plexi-glass) so it scratches VERY EASILY. You can scratch it with your fingernail. So the display side wall was damaged pretty badly. I ordered some acrylic polish and got to buffing. This was the single longest process of the tank, and Bill Matejovic can contest to it because he had to let me into the building so many times over the summer. The problem was that not even the polish could remove the scratches. I was surprised by this and email my friend Chris. It turns out that deep scratches have to actually be sanded out. But with really fine sand paper, like 2,000 grit. I started with a 1,000 grit, then moved to 1,500 then, 2,000 and then finished by buffing out the tiny sandpaper scratches. Some of the scratches were so deep I had to get out an electric sander. Many of them are still there because it would have taken me months to remove them all.

The "Small" Tank or the "Tank from Hell"

Before I hit the big tank, I got the small tank up and running. The "small" tank is 800 Gallons. It is a surprisingly poorly designed tank. The guys from Atlantis Marine World recall it as the tank from hell. What's its problem? Its 7 feet tall, and the base is only 3 feet by 4 feet. So if for any reason you want to get to the bottom of the tank.... you can't. What ends up on the bottom stays on the bottom. Another problem that this tank had was the design of its plumbing. The plumbing for the system is in a tiny cramped room where there is no space to fix anything. I would later discover that this would be a devastating flaw.

The first step was to get the water flowing. I filled the tank with fresh water and turned on the pump. Here came the first problem, a leak from the pump. The pump is a large 1.5 HP pool pump. Most of the components are made of plastic. I removed the pump and opened it up. I couldn't see any visible problems so I put some silicone grease on the gaskets and put it back together. It still leaked. With some research on the web I found the that most likely source was what is called the pump seal. This is a cool little device that lets the shaft of the motor connect to the impeller but keeps the water on the side of the impeller. So I ordered a replacement one and installed it. The pump still leaked. I went back to the internet and posted on a forum. They said that if the pump seal wasn't the problem then probably the seal housing plate had gone bad. This piece is what the pump seal sits in, the shaft goes through it and this piece separtes the water from the electric motor. I pulled out the pump, took a look at the plate and found a few very tinny cracks. I replaced this piece and there were no more leaks. This all took about four weeks.

On to the other filters! The sand filter needed sand! The charcoal filter needed charcoal! And the chiller needed refrigerant? The sand filter is a very simple concept; run the water through a container of sand and all the organic debreee will be filtered out. I was able to find the special sand at a pool store and loaded up the filter. For the charcoal filter, luckily there was a box of activated charcoal at the school. I filled up the cartridge, rinsed out the soot, and put the filter back together.

The chiller was far more complicated than that. Heat has been a reoccurring problem throughout both tanks. Without the chiller working the tall tank would heat up to 83°. The chiller that was on the system did not have any refrigerant left in it. Without the refrigerant (a special gas) it didn't work. The gas that needed replacement is highly regulated and hard to get a hold of. But it turns out that they do sell it to consumers for automotive air conditioning. I got a few can of this gas, emptied them into the chiller and it started working. I came back two days and it quite working. All the gas and leaked out. A leak in the chiller was not good, that meant lots of money to get it fixed. Luckily there was an identical system on the other side of the room so I traded the two chillers. I'm going to later refer to this other system as the West tank. There are three tanks, 2 tall tanks and the big long tank. Luckily the other chiller was still working, and it brought the tank down to a nice 70°.

With all the systems fully functioning it was time for water. Salt water that is. With the help of Mr. Drossell, my uncle's pick up, the school's gasoline powered water pump, and ten garbage cans, we transported 800 gallons from Northwest Harbor to the school. I think it took five or six trips to do it. The water was rather murky coming from the local bays, but that water was quickly cleared by the filters. The water was so clear that you couldn't tell if there was water in the tank or not.

By the time we got to filling the tank it was December. All the fish had left. I went over to Atlantis Marine world and they kindly gave me two Permits and a Nassau Grouper (both juveniles.) From the beginning of the project I had been in contact with Joe "Fish" and Chris Papparo from Atlantis Marine World. They gave me an enormous amount of advise and continue to do so.

A Big Idea

The first time I saw those giant tanks in the Eco Lab, I questioned why they weren't being used. In the subsequent years I figured out why they were never used, they are a tremendous amount of work. I started out in the fall of my sophomore year repairing the 800 gallon tall tank. It had numerous problems which I'll describe in the proces posts. Many people suggested that I use freshwater instead of saltwater for both the tanks. Freshwater was available from the tap, where as saltwater had to be trucked in. Moving such a large amount of water is no easy task, but I stood strong to my vision - a tank of organisms that I could find locally.

After getting the tall tank up and running, I set my eyes on the really big tank. 1,200 gallons, 20 feet long, and 4 feet high. At the time it was being used for landscape design. In the summer of my sophomore year I spent a huge amount of time building this tank. I say building because the only thing that was there was the tank, no filtration system. All the life support systems had to be amended to the big tank.

Although the tank looks rather simple right now, as you will read there were many problems and challenges in getting there. It was far from filling it up, turning on the pumps, and putting fish in it. And even now that it is currently up and running, there is a constant bombardment of problems in maintenance of the complex life support systems.