Outdoor reef river in Miami?

[drcrook]

I live in Miami Beach and we are renovating the outdoor garden area. I was planning to build a water river probably with koi out of concrete with some acrylic windows. Tons of tutorials on this.

Then i got this bright idea that maybe i can run a mixed reef in there instead . We have reefs here naturally. Ill not be putting any expensive stuff, ideally just some things we normally catch.

anybody have experience with this or seen it done?

 

[blaxsun]

I haven't, but it sounds interesting.

 

[jtichenor]

The owner of Two Little Fishies lives near you and has an outdoor reef pond. He might even hook you up with some mangroves!

 

[Staghorn]

Julian sprung had a small saltwater pond in his front yard in miami. With some tunicates and sponges if I remember correctly. My sister’s neighbors attempted to do this and repeatedly cooked several fish in a giant outdoor aquarium the set up and eventually got rid of. It would be a challenge I think to overcome the heat.

 

[agame2021]

I have seen one or two online and wanted to do it… however I don’t have the right climate where I live. The biggest issues I saw with these were they were all sun powered but they had problems with shadowing from buildings/trees which caused less than the 12 hours of sun. The other issue is in the ocean the corals are normally a lot lower in the water. This is where they had some corals do alright and others not so well. Lastly evaporation. This all depends on how deep you go. Normally you need around 3-4 ft of water just to slow evaporation. Especially in home made ponds or streams. This will happen a lot more with saltwater and leave tons of salt creep. You also need to find a way to stabilize the temperature and control all the water biology. I would love to build something like this but it’s easier for me to build a fresh water or brackish water outdoor pond.
That being said it might be easier to do a larger room sized pond with a lid to help stave off evaporation. You might get away with a solid pond but a stream?! There just becomes too much surface area that causes you to not be able to control or keep it stable.
There are not problems to consider but for a FOWLR you could get away with it and get sharks or rays. Or maybe just a ton of other sea life. This would be easier and has been done in a few peoples pools.

if you have the time and money to solve all those problems I think it would be amazing! And I would love to see it working in person! I’m not trying to shoot it down just trying to point out what would have to be thought of before the attempt.

good luck!
Agame.

 

[Timfish]

Cool idea! I've played with the idea about setting up something similar big enoug to house sharpnose sharks. Dealing with rain is the big stumbling block I think. Here in central Texas it's possible for weather fronts to drop 6" of rain in an hour. Seems like a good pressure pump and big RO could be used to remove the fresh water quickly but it's likely going to be a fairly expensive setup.

 

[jtichenor]

Julian sprung had a small saltwater pond in his front yard in miami. With some tunicates and sponges if I remember correctly. My sister’s neighbors attempted to do this and repeatedly cooked several fish in a giant outdoor aquarium the set up and eventually got rid of. It would be a challenge I think to overcome the heat.

He talks about the heat and the rain issues in this recent vid:

 

[Miami Reef]

I’m in Miami Beach too!!!

 

[drcrook]

Very interesting. I think I might give it a general go and see what happens.

 

[Chrisv.]

If you decide to go for it, please post a build thread!

 

[ZoWhat]

Better check local laws and ordinances and permits and licensing

The Florida Game and Wildlife Officers are pretty much Texas Rangers with a serious attitude

Since it's outdoors they will seize your property if it includes any evasive species that they deem unstable and could get out into the environment

But hey! You could make the News in a "perp walk" in cuffs

Be FULLY INFORMED before sinking money into an outdoor project
.

 

[MaxTremors]

I live in Miami Beach and we are renovating the outdoor garden area. I was planning to build a water river probably with koi out of concrete with some acrylic windows. Tons of tutorials on this.

Then i got this bright idea that maybe i can run a mixed reef in there instead . We have reefs here naturally. Ill not be putting any expensive stuff, ideally just some things we normally catch.

anybody have experience with this or seen it done?

I saw that Julian Sprung has a reef/lagoon pond on his front porch, so I imagine it’s doable. Like an endless river. The problem is heating/cooling it (heating is easy, but cooling would be difficult, maybe if half of it was shaded, or was deep enough to be cooled by the ground?), the other issue is keeping the salinity stable (obviously you can run an ATO, but when it rains, how do you keep the salinity stable? Maybe have some super salty water in a reservoir and hook up a salinity probe to a controller? You would also need some sort of way of dealing with overflow). Also, keeping neighborhood cats/raccoons/etc out and keeping the fish in (maybe put some frag rack material over it). Also the lighting could be too intense, you may need to put some shade clothe over it.

Its a cool idea, but there are a lot of problems that would need to be solved for it to be successful.

Edit: I see that someone above posted a video about Julian Sprung’s pond.