Plumbing direct to the sea

Raymond Fanelli · Jan 10, 2019

I live in the Bahamas and have a house on the beach. Does anyone have any experience in plumbing a tank directly to the ocean? The water in front of our home is very clean and clear with many types of fish thriving there. Will I need to have a filtration system or can I just pump the water in and have an overflow for the old water?

Crabs McJones · Jan 10, 2019

Welcome to R2R! I'm not sure on your question, I live in the middle of the country lol. I guess my biggest concern would be contaminants and unwanted pests getting into the system this way. But hopefully someone else chimes in with an answer to your question

#welcomeToR2R

PDR · Jan 10, 2019

Welcome to R2R! Sorry I can't help with your question, but hopefully someone will come along who can!

hdsoftail1065 · Jan 10, 2019

Welcome to R2R!!! I would love to have your problem... Bahamas....house on the beach.....

I'm actually further inland than Crabs!

Neo Jeo · Jan 10, 2019

Welcome! Very cool if you can get it set up! Wish I was you!

Muttley000 · Jan 10, 2019

Welcome to R2R. I would suggest you take a bucket of water and leave it set in the dark for 24 hours. I think you would be surprised what settled out! I would guess (I’m not sure not an expert and never tried it) you would need to be turning enough water over to evacuate this stuff. Now there is a lot of info out here on preparing natural sea water for aquarium use though.

Billldg · Jan 10, 2019

Welcome to R2R!!!

Ruben's Reef · Jan 10, 2019

!!! Welcome to R2R !!!

dantimdad · Jan 10, 2019

In an old aquarium book I have(I will have to look again for the name) the author mentions doing this and the settle out tank he had.

Basically, he pumped water to a settling tank and then to the aquarium. It was done at a very slow flow to allow the settling and, IIRC, it was the first usage of UV I had read about as well.

If I were to do it, that would be how I would do it. And I would shut the flow down a couple times a month to clean the settling tank and UV unit.

eggplantparrot · Jan 10, 2019

Can you plumb in a settling chamber with low flow so all the pests and stuff you dont want would stay in there, and you could just clean it out once in a while.

Build a big overflow into it to dump excess water back to the ocean when your main pump to the tank is off.

TerraFerma · Jan 10, 2019

TerraFerma · Jan 10, 2019

Public aquariums by the water usually have some sort of rudimentary particle filter. And a UV would help cut down on unwanted algae and other stuff making it into your tank.

You could just plumb direct but be prepared for algae and unwanted visitors to make it into the tank. Another issue is ensuring the line from the ocean doesn't get clogged up with encrusting stuff.

bsn_rn_cen · Jan 10, 2019

Welcome to reef2reef.

saltyfilmfolks · Jan 10, 2019

Welcome to Reef2reef!

You’ll be pumping a lot of plankton in.
A basic rundown of how scripps Oceanographic institute does it.

Settling tank , sand filter.

http://www.sdreefs.com/forums/showthread.php?11201-Scripps-Water-Google-Map-Quality-Transport

They back flush the entire system weekly I belive.

One word of caution , when importing coral and macro algae you do not want to flush back into the ocean. The filtration at Scripps outlet is much much much higher than the inlet. Full uv boilers etc. the water going out is actually of higher quality than going in.

we had a few lagoons north of San Diego get clogged with a commonly sold calurpas. It cost millions to clean up. It’s now illegal to buy trade and sell it.

kschweer · Jan 10, 2019

Raymond Fanelli said:
I live in the Bahamas and have a house on the beach. Does anyone have any experience in plumbing a tank directly to the ocean? The water in front of our home is very clean and clear with many types of fish thriving there. Will I need to have a filtration system or can I just pump the water in and have an overflow for the old water?

Welcome! I do not know the specifics in the Bahamas but here in the states I know this can be an issue. At one point I consulted with the head aquarist of a large aquarium that did this. They would pump the water in from the nearby ocean and pump it out almost continuously. Water was filtered on the way in but also had to be filtered on the way back to the ocean. The parameters of the outgoing water had to meet strict guidelines when being returned, these guidelines were stricter than the in coming water.

Lovemyreef2015 · Jan 10, 2019

KJ · Jan 10, 2019

Welcome to R2R!!!

mike werner · Jan 10, 2019

welcome to r2r!!

reef lover · Jan 10, 2019

Welcome to r2r!!

P-Dub · Jan 10, 2019

Welcome!
Follow the advice of @saltyfilmfolks. If you can emulate the way scrips did it I think that will work for you. The big question is it in your budget to do it that way. I do miss the accessibility of water I had from Scripps when I lived in San Dog.
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