My marine aquarium science class took a field trip to the amazing cabrillo aquarium yesterday. This facilty isn't the normal HUGE aquarium that most people have grown accustomed to, but they do serve more people than the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific (where I just became a volunteer :thumbup
. They are revolutionary though in that almost everything found in the aquarium is interactive. If someone is feeding a tank, you can help them feed. You can interact with the tanks... not like other aquariums where you look at a tank, read a sign, move to the next tank. They are also a research center where anyone from junior high kids to master's students can do research. They provide the facility, as much manpower as they can to clean the tanks and feed, etc, and sometimes provide the researcher with the animals in some cases. On top of that, they have one of the largest libraries that focus mainly on marine biology, oceanopgraphy and many other scientific journals and such related to the field that students can use for their research or even masters thesis.
Anyways, we didn't go inside the actual aquarium, but we did get a tour of the marine "nursery" area and a behind-the-scenes look at the filtration system for the three systems that make up the nursery. So on to the pictures!
When you first walk into the nursery, you see their phytoplankton breeding area. Here they grow (from left to right) zooplanton, rotifers, red, green and brown phytoplankton. Those are brine shrimp off to the left there too.
Next was their red abalone research area. They are working on ways to increase the threatened populations of red and white abalone.
Then there was their seahorse breeding research are. They are experimenting with dark tanks, light tanks, tall tanks, long tank, etc and seeing how these variables affect the breeding of seahorses.
Some of you may be familiar with grunion fish. They are the ones that essentially beach themselves and lay their eggs in the sandy beaches. Well they are researching ways of cryogenically freezing grunion eggs and fertilizing them later on with fresh sperm. So far they have had success, but the growth of the grunion were stunted and they are currently trying to figure out why.
They had several Kreisel tanks which are these circular tanks used to house jellies.
Here are some strawberry anemones that they were doing some sort of study with.. not quite sure...
This was one of a few catalina goby tanks they had set up.
Here are a couple pictures of the inside of the nursery.
All their plumbing is overhead. The nursery is made up of three separate systems. They are constantly running 60* and 70* water and can switch any one of the systems to the other temp with literally a flip of the switch. Then there are quick disconnects in the drains that allow them to switch the return lines to the warm or cold sumps accordingly... it is as easy as that. Here is a picture of one of the return drains.
You can see the blue line coming in on the right there. That is the tube that is disconnected and would be moved to the back blakc tube there to go to the warm water sump... hope that makes sense. BTW, that is the senior aquarist for Cabrillo who gave us our tour!
Now, on to my FAVORITE part of the tour! The filtration system for everything you just saw.
Here are the pumps that power everything.
Remember that there are three separate systems and there are six pumps... each system has two pumps, one running at a time and they are switched every month for even wear. This way they always have a back-up.
This area was packed with plumbing. Everything you are seeing in these pictures is packed into an area about 15' square!
The first step for the water is the sand filters. These are about 6 feet tall and about 3-4 feet in diameter...
Then the water runs through heat exchangers and carbon filters... I didnt take pictures of those.
Next was the protein skimmers. They are about 7 feet tall...
The thing that was soo cool about the skimmers was that the collection cups are self cleaning! Here you can see the dirty one on the left and the clean one on the right.
Here you can see the four spray nozzles that spray water to clean out the cup every few minutes.
Next is the UV sterilizers that have four lamps each...
Then the ozone. They use a ReefKeeper 2 to control the ORP and various other parameters as well...
The final step is the tower filters. They are just that, a tower. There is 4 feet of plastic biomaterial in the top and the water is sprayed over the material were it comes in contact with the bacteria. As the water falls, air is injected into it. This helps to offgas micro CO2 bubbles that can come into the system via leaks in seals and pipes and can cause gas bubble disease.
These towers are were the pump's work ends. That is because the 11 feet of water in these towers give enough pressure to gravity-feed water to all the systems in the nursery.
Well, I have a few other pictures, bu ti just realized this post is way too long so Ill end it here for now!
Jesse
. They are revolutionary though in that almost everything found in the aquarium is interactive. If someone is feeding a tank, you can help them feed. You can interact with the tanks... not like other aquariums where you look at a tank, read a sign, move to the next tank. They are also a research center where anyone from junior high kids to master's students can do research. They provide the facility, as much manpower as they can to clean the tanks and feed, etc, and sometimes provide the researcher with the animals in some cases. On top of that, they have one of the largest libraries that focus mainly on marine biology, oceanopgraphy and many other scientific journals and such related to the field that students can use for their research or even masters thesis.Anyways, we didn't go inside the actual aquarium, but we did get a tour of the marine "nursery" area and a behind-the-scenes look at the filtration system for the three systems that make up the nursery. So on to the pictures!
When you first walk into the nursery, you see their phytoplankton breeding area. Here they grow (from left to right) zooplanton, rotifers, red, green and brown phytoplankton. Those are brine shrimp off to the left there too.
Next was their red abalone research area. They are working on ways to increase the threatened populations of red and white abalone.
Then there was their seahorse breeding research are. They are experimenting with dark tanks, light tanks, tall tanks, long tank, etc and seeing how these variables affect the breeding of seahorses.
Some of you may be familiar with grunion fish. They are the ones that essentially beach themselves and lay their eggs in the sandy beaches. Well they are researching ways of cryogenically freezing grunion eggs and fertilizing them later on with fresh sperm. So far they have had success, but the growth of the grunion were stunted and they are currently trying to figure out why.
They had several Kreisel tanks which are these circular tanks used to house jellies.
Here are some strawberry anemones that they were doing some sort of study with.. not quite sure...
This was one of a few catalina goby tanks they had set up.
Here are a couple pictures of the inside of the nursery.
All their plumbing is overhead. The nursery is made up of three separate systems. They are constantly running 60* and 70* water and can switch any one of the systems to the other temp with literally a flip of the switch. Then there are quick disconnects in the drains that allow them to switch the return lines to the warm or cold sumps accordingly... it is as easy as that. Here is a picture of one of the return drains.
You can see the blue line coming in on the right there. That is the tube that is disconnected and would be moved to the back blakc tube there to go to the warm water sump... hope that makes sense. BTW, that is the senior aquarist for Cabrillo who gave us our tour!
Now, on to my FAVORITE part of the tour! The filtration system for everything you just saw.
Here are the pumps that power everything.
Remember that there are three separate systems and there are six pumps... each system has two pumps, one running at a time and they are switched every month for even wear. This way they always have a back-up.
This area was packed with plumbing. Everything you are seeing in these pictures is packed into an area about 15' square!
The first step for the water is the sand filters. These are about 6 feet tall and about 3-4 feet in diameter...
Then the water runs through heat exchangers and carbon filters... I didnt take pictures of those.
Next was the protein skimmers. They are about 7 feet tall...
The thing that was soo cool about the skimmers was that the collection cups are self cleaning! Here you can see the dirty one on the left and the clean one on the right.
Here you can see the four spray nozzles that spray water to clean out the cup every few minutes.
Next is the UV sterilizers that have four lamps each...
Then the ozone. They use a ReefKeeper 2 to control the ORP and various other parameters as well...
The final step is the tower filters. They are just that, a tower. There is 4 feet of plastic biomaterial in the top and the water is sprayed over the material were it comes in contact with the bacteria. As the water falls, air is injected into it. This helps to offgas micro CO2 bubbles that can come into the system via leaks in seals and pipes and can cause gas bubble disease.
These towers are were the pump's work ends. That is because the 11 feet of water in these towers give enough pressure to gravity-feed water to all the systems in the nursery.
Well, I have a few other pictures, bu ti just realized this post is way too long so Ill end it here for now!
Jesse
