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Hi everyone -
New to the forum, and I have a TON of questions. But before I get to them, let me preface with a bit of my background -
I own and operate a small marine import/wholesale company in the Midwest, focusing primarily on less-common collected animals (NOT rare/endangered/threatened!) purely as a hobby, and also spend a considerable amount of time and money on my own captive breeding programs for different exotic fish and invertebrates. I have a background in marine biology and would consider myself to be a so-called "advanced aquarist". I'm only mentioning this before my questions because I am used to a lot of unnecessary ad hominem attacks when I want to try something new or different.
Now, to my pond.
I have several Urobatis halleri (a small, friendly sting ray collected in California) and a juvenile pair of Heterodontus francisci (known as horn sharks, also collected in California). These are pets and are hand fed and played with daily; the rays have been breeding successfully for a couple years as well.
I am toying with the idea of building an outdoor pond for them but have some logistics issues I need to solve.
My basic idea is:
1. Build the frame as a standard plywood/fiberglass tank,
2. Submerge the tank to extend below the freeze line - local pond people tell me at least 2' into the ground. So tank dimensions would be roughly 10'x10'x5' - depending on how deep I need to go. I'd like it to be at least 2-3' above ground so I can put in a viewing window on one side
3. Have the "sump" in my basement, plumbing the return lines and overflow through a basement window and having a large volume of water there for all the filtration equipment to. I'm a fan of automation so filtration will primarily be fleece roller mats, algae turf scrubbers and a large fluidized sand reactor. I'll probably need other media reactors (purigen, etc) as well but with scrubbers and fleece I'm running nearly 0 no3/po4 levels in large heavily stocked systems.
So my first set of concerns:
1. Waterproofing the exterior of the tank. I had this idea to line the hole with benonite clay before building, and then filling in/packing the sides to prevent moisture from getting in. A friend simplified it and suggested to just use roofing tar, tar paper etc. for a guaranteed seal, but I am open to ideas
2. I could really use help planning depth, temperature etc. I live in zone 6a and I have a lot of concern about maintaining 55 - 80f year round. Cooling is easy in the summer as I can just add a large titanium based chiller to my existing AC (intentionally oversized for this), but heating in the winter is a concern.
I assume I'll need to add a number of titanium heat pumps. I was looking at the "electro" pumps, but I am confused on how many I should plan to use.
Assuming the system ends up being 4200 gallons or so (500+ in the basement), I will be running at least 5x Sicce Synchra 16 (4200gph pumps). Do I want to to with smaller pumps and go 1:1 with the inline heaters? If so, help me with the math so I can figure out how many are needed to keep the temperature stable.
I should add that I will probably cover it for winter as well, to prevent evaporation and not as a thermal barrier.
3. Things I'm not really concerned about - salinity swings in rainfall, environmental contamination (pollen, leaves other debris).
Really just temperature and waterproofing right now.
Thank you!
New to the forum, and I have a TON of questions. But before I get to them, let me preface with a bit of my background -
I own and operate a small marine import/wholesale company in the Midwest, focusing primarily on less-common collected animals (NOT rare/endangered/threatened!) purely as a hobby, and also spend a considerable amount of time and money on my own captive breeding programs for different exotic fish and invertebrates. I have a background in marine biology and would consider myself to be a so-called "advanced aquarist". I'm only mentioning this before my questions because I am used to a lot of unnecessary ad hominem attacks when I want to try something new or different.
Now, to my pond.
I have several Urobatis halleri (a small, friendly sting ray collected in California) and a juvenile pair of Heterodontus francisci (known as horn sharks, also collected in California). These are pets and are hand fed and played with daily; the rays have been breeding successfully for a couple years as well.
I am toying with the idea of building an outdoor pond for them but have some logistics issues I need to solve.
My basic idea is:
1. Build the frame as a standard plywood/fiberglass tank,
2. Submerge the tank to extend below the freeze line - local pond people tell me at least 2' into the ground. So tank dimensions would be roughly 10'x10'x5' - depending on how deep I need to go. I'd like it to be at least 2-3' above ground so I can put in a viewing window on one side
3. Have the "sump" in my basement, plumbing the return lines and overflow through a basement window and having a large volume of water there for all the filtration equipment to. I'm a fan of automation so filtration will primarily be fleece roller mats, algae turf scrubbers and a large fluidized sand reactor. I'll probably need other media reactors (purigen, etc) as well but with scrubbers and fleece I'm running nearly 0 no3/po4 levels in large heavily stocked systems.
So my first set of concerns:
1. Waterproofing the exterior of the tank. I had this idea to line the hole with benonite clay before building, and then filling in/packing the sides to prevent moisture from getting in. A friend simplified it and suggested to just use roofing tar, tar paper etc. for a guaranteed seal, but I am open to ideas
2. I could really use help planning depth, temperature etc. I live in zone 6a and I have a lot of concern about maintaining 55 - 80f year round. Cooling is easy in the summer as I can just add a large titanium based chiller to my existing AC (intentionally oversized for this), but heating in the winter is a concern.
I assume I'll need to add a number of titanium heat pumps. I was looking at the "electro" pumps, but I am confused on how many I should plan to use.
Assuming the system ends up being 4200 gallons or so (500+ in the basement), I will be running at least 5x Sicce Synchra 16 (4200gph pumps). Do I want to to with smaller pumps and go 1:1 with the inline heaters? If so, help me with the math so I can figure out how many are needed to keep the temperature stable.
I should add that I will probably cover it for winter as well, to prevent evaporation and not as a thermal barrier.
3. Things I'm not really concerned about - salinity swings in rainfall, environmental contamination (pollen, leaves other debris).
Really just temperature and waterproofing right now.
Thank you!