In-Ground Swimming Pool Frag Tank?

[goda]

Originally posted by gallivanmk
There are such things as salt water pools. My uncle has a salt water in-ground pool at his house. Apparently, it is easier to maintain than chlorinated pools because chemicals are not needed. Everytime I go over there, I am like "let me add some fish!" So, I am not sure how he did the plumbing, but it is definitely possible...

\the salinity is REALLY low ( one bag of rock salt usualy)
and then it uses electric to make chlorine form the salt. i had one

[Reefski's]

can you explain the salt to chlorine thing

[goda]

yupyup . same thing as if you put two pieces of metal in water and shockit. one will be hydrogen hte other oxogen.
this just breaks the sodium chloride bond. defininitly not a pool youd want fish in

[goda]

yupyup . same thing as if you put two pieces of metal in water and shockit. one will be hydrogen hte other oxogen.
this just breaks the sodium chloride bond. defininitly not a pool youd want fish in

[Reefski's]

just putting NaCl in water it will disassociate the salt into it's respective ions. no electricity required. it does not form chlorine gas.

[goda]

well they use electric. thats all i can tellya. my old pool had this thing with 6 metal plates on it. and when it was on it bubled and had a strong chlorine smell

[Phintastica]

Salt pools are 1/100 of the specific gravity of the oceans. Great for pools but bad for fishies!

[ManEatingGuppy]

this thread got me interested... dont mind if i ask but will the UV from the sun damage any fish or coral?

[kappaknight]

Originally posted by Opcn
I think you could get started for alot less than 50K, Lets say 1K on pumps (no skimmer, just pumps,go for a lagoon like current) Sand shouldn't be too hard to get in GA, 2K for that, 2-3 K worth of live rock, and another K for sand, then another K for fish, tanks and rabbit fish perhaps, and then with corals it would be up to you.

I think you are WAYYYYYYYY underestimating the needs of a pool. Live rocks for regular 55g would probably already be $350. How much would $3k of live rocks get you? 350 lbs? That wouldn't fly in a tank that's a few thousand gallons. Many of the reefers on here with big tanks (300+ gallons) have already dropped more than $10-$15k on those "small" tanks alone.

[Reefski's]

yep, big bucks. my 20,000 gallon koi pond. fresh water. cost about $60,000. that is me doing a lot of the work. and no live rock, sand, or salt. water changes aren't cheap either even without salt.

[reefnewbie54321]

I would say a green house, right climate, and NSW are a must. If these things were not present I would not attemp it.

For sand you could use home depot play sand and bring it in by the truck loads.

The biggest cost is defintly live rock, I think there are 3 options.

-Some how make contacts with Live Rock importers to get a discount price. This also would require making a "fake bussiness" that really woulnt be fake its just your only customer is yourself lol, also not sure of the legal issues on this one. People aspiring to start there own LFS might find this option reasoable though.

-DIY Live Rock, this could require years of manual labor building Rocks one batch at a time. Plus 6 months to cure. You also would have to seed the rock with Live Rock or to spped up the time of seeding and bring down the cost of Live Rock to seed with you could collect corraline algae scraping from a LFS and seed your first batch of rocks and while you were makin them they would slowly seed the other batches ... the pond would have to be up and running to do this though

-Collect dead rock, I saw a post in the DIY froum about a guy who collected his own dead rock in florida. This would have to be done on a tremendiosly bigger scale and wouldnt be an option for some locations.

For flow you could look into what amusment parks use to create wavepools except on a smaller scale and smaller waves. I beleive they use soliniods.

For filtration I would build a second pond/pool the same size as the "display" pond for added volume. This pond could be turned into a HUGE refugium that would run wild with the natrual sunlight. I also would build a ATScrubber like the ones that are used at Public Aquariums that dumped into the refugium pond creating flow for the refugium plus the added bonus of turf export. I would try to aviod a protien skimmer becuase commercial units can run up to $34,000. I know every one is a skimmer nut but with natrual sunlight and NSW algae export and water changes would be the cheapest way to go.

To stock it I would go the Catch it Yourself route, I love to scubadive and this would make the costs of your fish, and cleanup crew nothing. Fish are collected on large scales everyday so I dont see how this could realy affect a real reef. I would never incourage collecting wild caught corals though!

That is how I would do it

Costs,

Pool/Pond (not sure but my uncle reently cemented in a 15,000 gallon kio pond so I will talk to him about costs)

Sand (not sure what home depot play sand goes for but my dad built a HUGE sandbox for me and my brothers when I was little and he brought in sand by the truckloads so he might have an idea of the cost)

Green House (depending on how you build it it can be really cheap or really expensive)

Live Rock (depends on what method you choose, I would go the DIY rock route simply becuase no matter what you do it will take you years to get this running so he extra time it takes you to make live rock every weekend and weekday nights for the next year really wouldnt bother me)

Thats my 2 cents, I plan to post agian after I have information on cement costs, DIY greenhouse plans, and more information on public aquarium filtration. I also will be looking into how amusment parks create those huge waves. In the end a surge device might be more feasable but the extra cost might be worth it due to major evaporation and salt creep from surges.

[reefnewbie54321]

I would also say go as deep as 8 feet ... In ground swimming pools tend to stay around 80 degrees during the summer when I rent a house in florida for the summer (this is also the loaction I would choose becuase of the NSW supply and close proximity to a real reef). I would assume it would drop down to 70 during the winter. It also is cheaper to heat a pool then it would be to cool it down so I would rather have a deeper cooler pool that I heat then have a shallow one that has serious algae problems, bleached corals, and some mega chillers to cool it down.