[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToZtYTy9qIE[/youtube]
When you think of a fish room, a long line of 20 gallon-ish aquariums on 2×4 racks usually come to mind. These systems do certainly get the job done, one just needs to look at Joe Lichtenbert‘s old fish room to see what we are talking about, but are usually not the most aesthetically pleasing. This Portuguese state of the art fish room however throws this vision out of the window. Although not so much a fish room as a coral room, this might very well be the most impressive fish rooms we’ve ever seen.
The fish room of Machado de Sousa, or the Coral Maternity as he likes to call it, rocks a total volume of 8000 Liter, or just over 2000 gallons. The system is compromised of a 650L (~170 gallons) Display tank, a 450L (~120 gallons) nursery tank, six 780L (~205 gallons) “day care” tanks, a 100L (~ 26 gallons) frag tank, a 200L (~52 gallons) Quarantine tank, and a 2000L (~530 gall0ns) sump. Lighting on the Diplay is provided by two Sfiligoi Vision fixtures while the other tanks are illuminated by T5 tubes.
Filtration is provided by two internal Deltec AP903 skimmers, two Internal H&S 400 skimmers, a reactor with a 1000ml biopellets, and two 5L zeolite reactors. Calcium needs are met by a Deltec PF 1370 filled with 95kg (yeah that’s ~210 lbs) calcium reactor media and a Deltec PF 1001 filled with 35kg of media, along with the bailing method to keep other parameters in check. Temperature is held in check by an A/C system and a four fan Deltec Eco Cooler. We don’t even want to get into the head spinning circulation system, but a lot more info on the system along with pictures can be found here.
