Creekview
Member
Just watched a documentary on the Indian River estuary on the east coast of Florida. I grew up in Melbourne and Cocoa back in the 60's right on the River, which isn't a river at all. It incubates a vast variety of sea life in its mangroves and grass beds. The interesting part for me was the aquarium system they maintain at their research station in Ft. Pierce. Different tanks for each biotope. They talked about their "dirty" water, and how it nourished the ecosystems. I went to their website, http://www.sms.si.edu/, and found a section on their water maintenance. Primarily a horizontal flow trough algae scrubber. They use carbon for polishing in their low nutrient coral reef biotope, and limited skimming and particulate filtration. They reference the work done by Dr. Walter Adey more than 20 years ago using algae turf scrubbers at the Smithsonian in D.C. To quote the site, "In keeping with the Exhibit's philosophy of modeling nature, ATS are the primary means of removing excess nutrients."