A high tide/low tide tank.

[APISTOBORELLI]

A friend and I have been tossing the idea around for a bit. Here's how we think it might work. An extra pump on a timer would turn on at a specific time and draw extra water from the tank into an oversized sump. Later it would turn off and the water level in the tank would return to "High Tide"(or normal) level.

Good/Bad idea?
Anyone have any thoughts or want to join in the project?

 

[Jill & Brian]

How about a second tank drain with an automatic ball valve on some sort of rotary actuator. this way you wouldn't have to run a second pump. It could be on a seperate overflow that is set lower than the primary overflow, and drain into the same oversized sump mentioned above.

Not sure why you would do it, but it sounds like a fun project

-Brian

 

[nitrofish]

sounds interesting. only problems I see is tuning the pump to draw out the right amount of water and making sure it puts the water back after the "low tide"

 

[APISTOBORELLI]

Good points. As to why, I have no idea. It would be fun though! If we decide to do it, I'll let you know.

 

[naturebatslast]

Someone did this on RC, it was like a timed closed loop thing. A small, shallow, long tank. Pretty cool.

 

[APISTOBORELLI]

What we're looking for is a tidal tank I guess. A timed closed loop is a good idea. We were talking about gathering livestock from around New England as our "test subjects".

 

[Jill & Brian]

I guess the only downside is the "low tide" smell in your living room

 

[this is me]

Yeah, I was gonna say that.
SPS smells man

 

[APISTOBORELLI]

Well, for obvious reasons, we wouldn't let that sort of thing be exposed. However, there isn't much SPS in the tidal pools of New England. We're thinking more of cooler waters with local organisms to start. See where it goes from there.

 

[naturebatslast]

What about wave surges, not high or low. You would have low water, but not no water.

 

[fanaglethebagle]

The "low tide smell" is mostly from trash and dead fish...

 

[naturebatslast]

The "low tide smell" is mostly from trash and dead fish...

Maybe in an urban waterway, it depends where you live.

 

[APISTOBORELLI]

What we've talked about so far is no or little flow at "low tide". The tidal pools around here don't get much flow at that point and we want to recreate that.

 

[fanaglethebagle]

They sometimes get bursts of waves like the tank in the NE aquarium with all the green & orange anenomes, That would be awsome

 

[naturebatslast]

No flow, but how deep is the pool. Totally stranded pool, away frrom wave action. Or a tidal pool that gets lapped by the occassional wave. The pool that's lapped sound the easiest, little bit of water coming in. A tidal pool on the upper intertidal zone can be almost stagnant in water movement. If you were to have truly high and low tide, your "sump" would have to hold most of, if not, all of your water.
A chiller sounds in store if your going for a geographically accurate pool. It could be cool, stocking would be easy, probably wouldn't need an intense light setup, you could use NSW if your close enough.
That thread on RC is worth looking at, I think the whole system was 18 gallons. And the only difference between tidal surge and tidal action is length of time.

 

[fanaglethebagle]

I was just wondering, is it legal to capture and keep stuff out of tidepools?

 

[Gina McReeferson]

Yeah, I was gonna say that.
SPS smells man

YOU GOT THAT RIGHT! I had no idea what that funky smell on my hands came from, it took me a minute to figure out it was the Acro I had just moved.

As far as smell goes, I grew up on a tidal river and it was never very smelly, what smell there was I believe was mostly generated by the marshes, as they can hold stagnant water, and we all know of the special treats stagnant water can provide.