I took a behind the scenes tour of the filtration room at Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park today. The filtration in this room runs a 212,000 gallon Philippine Coral Reef tank, a 100,000 gallon Northern California Coast Display, a 100,000 gallon Amazon display and others.
They said they turn the Philippine Coral tank over one time (through the filters) every 45 minutes. Flow within the tank is achieved by huge powerheads.
He said he didn't have the exact specs on each tank, but they do change out "a percentage" of the water each week. In other words, even the pros do frequent water changes...in order to keep fish healthy, there's no way around it.
I am creating a separate thread that shows the displays tanks, so please don't ask me to show them here.
I will try to provide details where I can...the tour was only 1 hour so they did not cover everything.
Enjoy!
10' tall skimmer
Huge Sand Filter that was about 10' tall.
I lost track of how many huge Baldor Motor pumps they had. I would guess there were easily 40 of them that must have been 2HP +.
Better view of huge 10' tall skimmer.
Heat Exchangers for the Coral tank and the Amazon Tank. These were powered by a natural gas boiler (unfortunately we did not get to see the boiler). They said that because of the heat generated by the pumps and the lights, they do not need to run the exchangers very much to achieve 78F. They said the Northern California tank is chilled with a conventional (allbeit huge) electric chiller. Unfortunately we did not get to see the chiller.
They mix their own salt for the reef tank. He said they used to buy a premixed salt from a name brand company from the east coast, but found that buying it directly from Morton's here in the Bay and mixing their own was cheaper. Each sack/pallet is 2,000lbs.
They said they turn the Philippine Coral tank over one time (through the filters) every 45 minutes. Flow within the tank is achieved by huge powerheads.
He said he didn't have the exact specs on each tank, but they do change out "a percentage" of the water each week. In other words, even the pros do frequent water changes...in order to keep fish healthy, there's no way around it.
I am creating a separate thread that shows the displays tanks, so please don't ask me to show them here.
I will try to provide details where I can...the tour was only 1 hour so they did not cover everything.
Enjoy!
10' tall skimmer
Huge Sand Filter that was about 10' tall.
I lost track of how many huge Baldor Motor pumps they had. I would guess there were easily 40 of them that must have been 2HP +.
Better view of huge 10' tall skimmer.
Heat Exchangers for the Coral tank and the Amazon Tank. These were powered by a natural gas boiler (unfortunately we did not get to see the boiler). They said that because of the heat generated by the pumps and the lights, they do not need to run the exchangers very much to achieve 78F. They said the Northern California tank is chilled with a conventional (allbeit huge) electric chiller. Unfortunately we did not get to see the chiller.
They mix their own salt for the reef tank. He said they used to buy a premixed salt from a name brand company from the east coast, but found that buying it directly from Morton's here in the Bay and mixing their own was cheaper. Each sack/pallet is 2,000lbs.
