Touch Pool

ichthyogeek

Plecostomus
MFK Member
Jan 1, 2015
288
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61
Arkansas
Hi everybody, I'm new, so please excuse any faux pas I make in this first post, and PM me if I do so I can't make the same mistake again!

So I've always liked going to Seaworld and public aquariums. I especially liked the touch pools where I could touch the cownose rays and sharks, and if I could feed them, I would! My question here is: is this feasible in private aquariums? Not to the extent of a whole herd of cownoses and a shoal of bonnetheads, but maybe...3 bonnethead hammerheads, 3 cownose rays, and a male/female pair of bamboo sharks? How big of a tank/pond would this be? How much fish/shrimp would I need/day? I get the feeling I'd need to be a millionaire for this kind of project, but ya never know. I'm assuming I'd need an oval aquarium that's relatively shallow (less than 4 feet deep), and would probably need live rock and all sorts of life support, but what else? Ideally, it would be a pond with the above species, lunare wrasses, and goatfish on a sandbed with some sort of macroalgae in there like Caulerpa prolifera and soft coral like Xenia that would help absorb wastes as well. Would I even need circulation pumps since life support would be so big? Would the slime coat on these fish even get very damaged since their brethren in Seaworld and aquariums get so much more abuse? Sorry if I'm rambling, this idea seems more like a dream, but still...
Anyways, what are y'alls thoughts on this? Minimum aquarium size and dimensions? Am I missing out on anything else?
 

Riley S

Gambusia
MFK Member
Jan 19, 2014
102
12
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Minneapolis
For your hypothetical system and with the animals mentioned, you would be close to 500 sqft with either a 25' diameter pool, or an oval around 35' x 15' to keep them for life (around 14,500 gallons). Live rock would only be a decoration in the middle for smaller fish to hide in, and the real life support system would be closer to what you'd see on a behind the scenes tour - large skimmer (rk2), good mechanical filtration, bio/degassing tower. The space and husbandry requirements is why you see them in public aquaria and not typically in a home setting. Very cool animals though.
 

fuzzlebug

Candiru
MFK Member
Feb 3, 2014
419
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46
scotland
Yeah betterstart buying loto tickets...small s/w tanks are expensive to run. A lfs near me has a 300g sw tank that cost a few hundred a month just in electric and water. Something this size would be in the thousands a month to run. But therein is the dream...

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ichthyogeek

Plecostomus
MFK Member
Jan 1, 2015
288
185
61
Arkansas
Thanks all! I've (thankfully) been snapped out of my dream, so onwards to hypothetical situations! Riley S, is this just a function on the swimming requirements or the biological load or both? Would I have to worry about jumpers? What about food? Some 500 colossal uncooked shrimp/day/fish? So are cownose rays and bonnetheads just fish best left in the ocean? Are all ram-breathers (the fish that need to ram water into their gills to breathe), do they all need these giant space requirements?
 

Zoodiver

As seen on TV
MFK Member
Aug 22, 2005
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South FL
Yes. Something like you are asking about is definitely something I have helped private owners set up. Cownose theive and will even breed in a pool set up. There are tricks to making it more cost effective compared to a tank. Equipment is larger, but more efficient. You can look at bulk food so it becomes cheaper.
 

Aggressive By Nature

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 20, 2012
76
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Boynton Beach, FL
I would love to own something like this!!! The problem is with keeping it outside and controlling the temp. the best way would probably to live on the water like in the keys or something like that. How much do you think this would cost Matt?
 

Yoimbrian

Dovii
MFK Member
Feb 11, 2013
920
252
102
Twin cities
Why not just get smaller rays and sharks? Get California rays instead of cownose and skip the bonnet head sharks and just get coral sharks. You'd still need a big tank but wouldn't need to be a swimming pool. Something like 10x4x2 would be awesome.

That's on my "someday" list.


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ichthyogeek

Plecostomus
MFK Member
Jan 1, 2015
288
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61
Arkansas
I've looked at pictures of California rays and coral sharks, and... the appeal just isn't there. First off, cownose rays are the major rays that people feed at water attraction parks, and I find them amazing to watch. Do you have any suggestions for rays similar to cownoses? If there were smaller rays similar to cownoses, I'd probably switch to those. There's also the whole "cownose rays eating all of the oyster fishery" problem in New England, and people being encouraged to buy Cownose meat, so I figured that they must be at least a little bit cheaper than other rays. Bonnetheads are one of the smaller hammerhead sharks. First off, the fact that they have more ampullae of lorenzini to better find their food has me thinking that I can feed them better, as they can probably detect electric impulses(?) better than other sharks. Their head shape also would make me feel safer working in the tank, as their snouts would hit before the teeth did, unlike with say, leopard sharks. Even though I'd prefer the scalloped bonnethead (Sphyrna corona) due to its size, bonnetheads are the more commonly kept species in public aquaria, and I'm going to assume private aquaria as well.
 

Zoodiver

As seen on TV
MFK Member
Aug 22, 2005
6,872
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1,005
South FL
I would love to own something like this!!! The problem is with keeping it outside and controlling the temp. the best way would probably to live on the water like in the keys or something like that. How much do you think this would cost Matt?
Anything outside in South FL could be managed for temp. Cownose can handle a pretty wide range. The biggest two cost numbers would be making the pool and setting up the filtration.

I've looked at pictures of California rays and coral sharks, and... the appeal just isn't there. First off, cownose rays are the major rays that people feed at water attraction parks, and I find them amazing to watch. Do you have any suggestions for rays similar to cownoses? If there were smaller rays similar to cownoses, I'd probably switch to those. There's also the whole "cownose rays eating all of the oyster fishery" problem in New England, and people being encouraged to buy Cownose meat, so I figured that they must be at least a little bit cheaper than other rays. Bonnetheads are one of the smaller hammerhead sharks. First off, the fact that they have more ampullae of lorenzini to better find their food has me thinking that I can feed them better, as they can probably detect electric impulses(?) better than other sharks. Their head shape also would make me feel safer working in the tank, as their snouts would hit before the teeth did, unlike with say, leopard sharks. Even though I'd prefer the scalloped bonnethead (Sphyrna corona) due to its size, bonnetheads are the more commonly kept species in public aquaria, and I'm going to assume private aquaria as well.
Bonnets (and any other hammerhead) are actually a bit harder to handle due to the increased sensitivity.
 
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