Amazing Zoos-Animal Planet

[rhidien]

I was watching animal planet the other day, they had a show called amazing zoos, I believe...anyway, showed the worlds most impressive aquarium, in the Neatherlands. Glass was over a foot thick! I've tried finding more info about it, but no luck with anything in english. Anyway, what struck me as odd, it looked like they had a bio ball, or wet dry set up? Anyone know more info about the aquarium and set up?

 

[rhidien]

It's the Burgers Zoo, display is refered to as the Ocean. Still not finding much info on it.

 

[bradreef]

Last year when Charles came to speak he was showing us slides of Japanese public Aquariums and they were Amazing. Super thick glass also. Whale shark Exhibit.

 

[NaH2O]

rhidien - their website has an English link to it at the bottom - to the right. The photos are awesome - I love how they have a ship wreck in one of the tanks. Here are some snipits I pulled from the website (Burgers' Zoo):

Some facts
- Construction was begun in September 1996.
- In order to filter the water and control the various processes, some 10 kilometres of wiring and pipes are required.
- The surface area measures well over 3,400 meters, while the useful floor area measures some 5,500 square meters.
- Burgers’ Ocean consists of 11 basins with a total volume of well over 8,000,000 (8 million!) litres of water.
- Visitors look through 23 acrylic panels and a tunnel wall with a total surface of 475 square meters.
- The walk is some 300 meters long.
- To construct the building approx. 6,500m3 of concrete were cast.
- The walls and floors were coated with 6,100 m3 of coating, to protect them against the corrosive sea water.
- Gross contents of the building: 47,500m3.
- Pumping capacity is approx. 1,050m3 per hour.
- The project itself can produce 57,000 litres of sea water at a time.

That is why, at various levels in the tanks, the water is extracted to filter baskets which mechanically purify the water with filtering cloth or filtering sleeves. Animals which happen to be sucked up can be easily caught back from the filter basket. The filter baskets are not nearly fine-meshed enough to extract all floating particles and proteins from the water. That is why skimmers are used; drainage outlets on the surface. Burgers’ Ocean uses skimmers with an overflow pipe which automatically adjust to the level of the water. The result is that only the very top layer of water is taken away, the layer in which most of the floating particles of dirt are found. Just like all other water purification units, the skimmers are located on the top floor of the Ocean.

For this reason, the bacteria are grown in so-called biological filters which are aerated thoroughly and which have a large interior surface area, which enables as many bacteria as possible to settle here. The best results are obtained with the spray or trickle filters; the water seeps through a large tube onto an open substrate.

Owing to a clever combination of biological and non-biological filtering systems, the water only needs to flow through the filters twice a day. In aquariums in other parks the water usually passes through the filters every hour or every two hours.

 

[rhidien]

On the show they said they had to have some company from Japan specially make the extreamely thick glass...guess it's some sort of trade secret as to how they connect it seamlessly at that scale. Very cool!
Brad, the sunken ship exhibit, is a giant shark tank.
Thanks for the info nikki, guess I missed it.
If anyone else knows where to find out more about the exhibit, especially it's filteration system, I would love to hear more about it.

 

[albert]

All the information you are looking for is there
http://www.burgerszoo.nl/English/Ealgemeen/Eocean/Eachterdeschermen.html
http://www.twaron.com/pdf/0704-08-Burgers.pdf