450+ gal outdoor marine pond/lagoon

[whitelightning77]

I covered mine

Curious how your setup handled our lovely temperatures over Christmas?

I was able to maintain temp in my 40b I have on my back porch despite the upper 30’s/low 40’s temp (freezing for South Florida) and no additional insulation.

On a completely separate matter, I have been debating about building a SW pond but I want to use it as a grow out for coral in my actual backyard rather than on my porch. Due to this, I am concerned about the impact the rain would have on the salinity and other parameters. Other than enclosing pond in greenhouse (which is not what I wanted to do) I have been unable to come up with a reasonable solution to address my concern. All of the truly outdoor mariculture I have seen depends on natural saltwater being continuously pumped into the coral grow outs thereby removing the problem. Any ideas on how to address this? I assume this is why you it yours on the porch.
Thanks.

I covered mine. I ordered some couple 300 watt heaters from Amazon and they came just in time. The temp did drop to around 67 degrees for a day or so. I ended up losing a flag fin angel and a raccoon butterfly. Everything else survived, esp the native species. Looks to have come down with a bout of ich and the stresses made them succumb. My emperor snapper was showing signs of stress as well so I decided to drop the whole pond into hyposalinity over 3 or 4 days. Wednesday the snapper was still lethargic and not eating but yesterday after the tank was in true hyposalinity for 24 hrs it seems to have perked up. Responding better to food and I bought some feeder minnow specifically for him. He merc'd about 7 of them in the span of an hour.

 

[whitelightning77]

As for your question about an outdoor system and salinity, I would search Julian Sprungs outdoor pond on YouTube and try to reach out to him. He has a pond out in the elements. He spoke at our local club a few years ago. The way he explained it is he has his water level running at a certain point and then there is an overflow. So when it rains the freshwater sits on top of the saltwater, and it sheets off into the overflow and out of the pond. I'm not really sure how that works because I would have thought that the fresh and saltwater would mix, but then again it's Julian sprung and he knows a few things about keeping salt water aquarium.

 

[whitelightning77]

Couple slight changes this weekend. Added a little more height to the main rock structure and added a piece of drift wood i had laying around to give it more of a "mangrove" look, since its taking forever for these mangroves to grow.

Also rerouted the drain line to flow over the rock structure instead of straight into the main tank. Gives it the waterfall look I was going for.

 

[whitelightning77]

Also made a styrofoam top for it so I can cover it when the Temps dip. Been having Temps in the 40s at night the last week or so. Got tired of covering it with random things in the porch. Lol.

 

[Joj]

Awesome tank. Thanks for sharing. Want to do something like this in my garage. Any link to the 45mil liner you used?

 

[whitelightning77]

Also made a styrofoam top for it so I can cover it when the Temps dip. Been having Temps in the 40s at night the last week or so. Got tired of covering it with random things in the porch. Lol.

Awesome tank. Thanks for sharing. Want to do something like this in my garage. Any link to the 45mil liner you used?

I'll have to check my Amazon account.

 

[whitelightning77]

Awesome tank. Thanks for sharing. Want to do something like this in my garage. Any link to the 45mil liner you used?

Here's the link to the liner I bought. Full disclaimer though. When I bought it it was about 130$, its almost double that now. There inflation for ya!

Aquascape PRO Grade EPDM Boxed 45 Mil Liner for Pond, Waterfall, and Water Features, 10 x 12 Feet | 85000 https://a.co/d/iaILqbS

 

[DC_Reefer]

Cool project for the back yard!