Living reef aquarium

[Scubadude]

Hi everyone!

I live in a beach resort approx. 20m from a living coral reef in Puerto Galera, Philippines. Conservation is top priority for us and we are actively involved with the Reef Ball Foundation and PADI Project Aware. The reef on our foreshore is constantly taking a bashing from local fisherman so there are many beautiful coral heads that get broken with boats and anchors etc. We are undergoing other projects to educate people on environmentally sound ways to fish here but its a long process.

I really want to save these broken corals and thought that maybe I could make a massive aquarium for them. Is it possible to pump sea water from the reef through a living coral fishtank on a large scale and create a 'living reef' aquarium of maybe 1500 gallons or more?

As you can tell I'm totally noob to this and really would like some good advice

Thanks

Scubadude

[Bruce]

Welcome to 3Reef Scubadude,

That sounds like a great idea, im sure that alot of people here have many tips to help you with your project.

In my opinion 1500 gallons would be a perfect size, are you planning on using sunlight? where you are now seems like a perfect place to utilize an outdoor system. also the idea of pumping sea water in and out of the tank sounds great too, that would really reduce the stress that the corals would go through if you had to put them into synthetic salt water, hope everything goes well

[Scubadude]

thanks bruce!

Sunlight isnt really an option as we will be putting it behind the bar as the main attraction. The bar will be open plan and overlook the reef tho. The sun gets so hot out here that i dont think direct exposure would work anyway as the glass/acrylic would cause the tank to heat up significantly. As you're probably already aware, anything over 32 degrees bleaches living coral that much heat may be disastrous for the tank.

scube

[Bruce]

Still sounds like a great idea, hopefully when people see a reef that might not exist for much longer they will want to help save it!

[Scubadude]

oh btw, please tell all your friends not to support cyanide fishing for the aquarium trade! 1 fish in 30 is captured alive for export....do the math

scube

[Area 51 Exotics]

Here's an article on Cyanide Fishing. It's pretty screwed up what people will do to our environment just to make a buck!!!

http://www.coralreef.org/factSheets/cyanide.html

[Scubadude]

has anyone had any sort of experience trying to run a living reef environment like this before?

[chetrod]

There was a few people mostly bait shops that use the gulf water here in tampa to run their holding tanks and an aquarium here in Tampa. The only thing is they had to have a back up plan when red tides hit because they would have to switch to another source. If ever in Tampa check this place out. http://www.flaquarium.org/html/l2/l2_explore_swim.html

[Jason McKenzie]

The Vancouver Aquarium as well as Seatle's Aquarium uses fresh sea water in their tanks. They pum it in as you describe. I believe they also run it though filters.

As for Lighting by the Sun you could do it as you are going to replace the water fast enough with sea water that the temperature should be regulated by the ocean.

J

[Bruce]

i saw the vancouver aquarium is has a very large reef tank, very nice