The Heart of the System Centrifugal Pumps

Just what does it take to keep 10 million gallons of aquatic animal exhibit water
clean, clear and healthy for its inhabitants? Well, I like to refer to it as the magic
that no one knows about, but if you went behind the scenes within the Life Support
Systems department at Georgia Aquarium, the first thing you would see would be a
lot of pumps. In fact, Georgia Aquarium has over 400 pumps totaling over 5000 HP.
The majority of the pumps are centrifugal, long coupled pumps and range in size
from 2 to 100 HP. Often described as the heart of any aquatic animal life support
system, the pumping systems at Georgia Aquarium move over 250 million gallons
of exhibit water combined per day and are absolutely critical in keeping the animals
alive at the facility. But the importance here is not just keeping water healthy for the
animals that live here but also making sure that it is visually clear for the more than
2 million visitors that visit the Aquarium annually.
How and why are these pumps chosen? The pump selection process for Georgia
Aquarium is critical. First and foremost on the list of important criteria is ensuring
that nothing about any of the pumps selected for the Aquarium can
compromise animal health. Saltwater is incredibly corrosive and heavy metals can
be toxic to fish and invertebrates in low concentrations, so special considerations
had to be made to ensure that there were no metallic parts submerged within the
process stream. In fact, most people dont realize that all of the Aquarium pump
impellers, back plates and volutes are all constructed of fiberglass composite
materials. Another very important
factor in the selection process is choosing
a pump with outstanding reliability for
this unique process. Picking a durable and
maintenance
friendly
pump is obviously important, however the
Aquarium goes one step further to ensure
reliability in its pumping system design. This
is accomplished by specifying several
smaller pumps on a given process, rather
than one larger one. This ensures adequate
redundancy in case of a pump failure. Also, contributing to reliability are specially
designed mechanical seals to tolerate the heavy solids and corrosion that saltwater
brings. A pump shaft grounding system is also included to ensure stray voltage,
which can often be generated from variable frequency drives, stays away from

pump and motor bearings. Add to the list a high quality marine epoxy coating an
inverter duty totally enclosed fan cooled motor and you have yourself the Cadillac
of centrifugal pumps.
So why so many pumps? Well, the first and most obvious answer is that Georgia
Aquarium is a very large aquarium facility with a great deal of water. There are more
than 45 aquatic exhibits at Georgia Aquarium and each have an independent closed
loop (not open to any natural water source) filtration system that have an average
theoretical water volume turnover of once per hour. The largest exhibit at Georgia
Aquarium is the 6.3 million gallon Ocean Voyager, built by the Home Depot, habitat
which is home to whale sharks and manta rays and a plethora of aquatic species. As
one would imagine, walking into the pump room for Ocean Voyager is like walking
into the engine room of the Starship Enterprise. In this 30,000 square foot room
alone, there are more than 70 pumps totaling 2600 HP, moving a combined 130,000
gallons of water per minute. Also, similar to any other important water treatment
system, there are several different filtration processes at Georgia Aquarium working
in tandem to achieve the highly desired water quality and clarity goal. Most
common process types are primary filtration loops including sand filters for
particulate removal and specialized devices called protein skimmers for targeting
dissolved organics. Once through sand and skimming, the water then splits up into
several
smaller
side-streams. These
include
titanium
plate heat
exchangers for heating and cooling water and ozone gas contactors for chemical
filtration. Inside the heat exchanger is where the exhibit water interfaces with the
buildings HVAC system and inside the ozone contactors is where true water
disinfection occurs. One very interesting fact, the same chilled and hot water loops
used for heating and cooling airspaces within the building are also used to exchange
heat for the exhibit water. This makes the building chillers and boilers as critical for
animal health as the exhibit water pumps themselves.

Well then, who takes care of all of this equipment?

I would be remiss if I didnt mention the truly
dedicated staff of 15 life support operators
and two managers that work 24 hours a day,
7 days a week to ensure that all of the
pumps and other filtration equipment are
functioning as they should. This group of
operators are like the air traffic controllers for the
Aquarium, using highly sophisticated computer control
equipment, including camera systems to monitor everything
real time.
It truly takes a village to run an aquarium, and this team is as
important a group as you will find in any village.

Why is all of this so important? Whether youre a maintenance worker, facility plant
manager or pumping equipment vendor, you can appreciate that the pumping
equipment that drives critical industry processes deserves extra special attention. In
our case, pumps are not just a piece of equipment helping make a product, but
instead are an integral part or the heart of our aquatic animal life support
systems. So, the next time youre at Georgia Aquarium enjoying its one of a kind
animal collection, remember that behind all of the majestic animals and exhibits,
the aquariums fleet of pumps are hard at work.

Aeration and Oxygenation

Author: Laura Muha
A few weeks ago, I noticed that the airstone in my 20-gallon tank was starting to
fizzle. Instead of perking away merrily, as it had when Id added it to the tank some
months before, it was emitting a feeble stream of bubbles, almost like a carbonated
soda thats been left too long in the sun.
No big surprise there; airstoneswhether wood, ceramic, or actual stoneare full of
pores that over time tend to get clogged with mineral deposits and algae. And while
Ive heard of people recycling them through a multi-step process that includes
boiling them in vinegar and water, scrubbing them, and forcing air back through
them, my feeling about that is: why bother? When compared to the many other
things that need periodic replacement in aquaria, a 50-cent airstone is hardly a big
deal.
However, you know me (or at least you do if you read this column regularly), and I
like to ask questions; and if I can get a column out of it, all the better. Therefore, I
present to you the topic of the month: airstones and other forms of added aeration.
Are they reallynecessary?
Back to the Basics
To find out if airstones and added aeration are really necessary, lets start with the
basics. Fish, like humans, need oxygen to fuel their metabolic processes, and like
us, they will die if deprived of it for long. However, the similarities end there,
because, at the risk of stating the obvious, fish live in a very different environment
than we do.
Even under the best circumstances, theres 95 percent less oxygen in water than
there is in air. Plus, water is 800 times more dense than air and 50 times more
viscous. So, fish have to expend a lot more energy breathing waterthat is,
pumping it through their gillsthan we do breathing air.
The structure of a fishs gills, however, helps to make up for this because the
feather-like filaments and lamellae create a vast surface area that enables the fish
to extract about 80 percent of the oxygen from the water that passes over them. By
comparison, our lungs extract a paltry 25 percent of the oxygen contained in every
breath we takeand thats only if were in peak condition.
However, we do have one thing going for us that fish dont have, in that the level of
oxygen in our atmosphere remains a relatively constant 21 percent. So barring an
oxygen-consuming disaster such as a fire, we can count on plenty of it being
available to us every time we inhale. Fish cant count on the same, because they
live in an environment in which the amount of available oxygen can vary,
sometimes considerably, from one moment to the next depending on things like
barometric pressure, salinity, the presence (or lack thereof) of plants, the weather,

the depth of the water, the time of day, and especially temperature. But Ive always
found that concept to be a little confusing; I mean, arent water molecules
themselves 1/3 oxygen?
A Friendly Explanation
In search of an explanation, I called my favorite chemist, who also happens to be
my father, Dr. George Muha, a professor emeritus of chemistry at Rutgers
University.
He explained that while water itself is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one
oxygen atom, the oxygen in the water molecule itself is not the oxygen the fish are
breathing. Thats becausehere I could almost hear him thinking Duh!the
oxygen in water molecules is already tied up making, well, water. Instead, the
oxygen that fish are breathing is essentially the same atmospheric oxygen we
humans breathe; its just that when it comes into contact with water, it dissolves
into it in much the same way that, say, sugar does.
Sometimes, this contact point occurs beneath the surface. Aquatic plants, for
instance, release oxygen during photosynthesis, although this happens only when
the sun is out. (At night and on cloudy days, they pull oxygen from the water
instead, thus explaining why oxygen levels can drop overnight or in bad weather.)
And if you have an airstone, an air-driven box filter, or some kind of decorative
bubble device in your tank, the bubbles it produces are pumping some oxygen into
the water as well.
But by far the largest amount of oxygen present in most tank water has worked its
way down from the surface, which is one of the reasons that a wide, shallow tank is
a better choice for most fish than a tall, narrow one.
Compare, for instance, a 20-gallon long tank with a 20-gallon regular. Both hold
exactly the same amount of water, but their dimensions are different: the regular is
24 inches in length, while the long is 30 inches in length; both are 12 inches wide.
If you multiply the length by the width to get the surface area of each, youll see
that the 20 long has a much bigger portal through which oxygen can enter the
water than the 20 regular: 360 square inches vs. 288.
And the long tank has another thing going for it as well. Its shallower than a 20
regular (12 inches deep versus 16). So oxygen entering the tank at the surface will
work its way to the bottom of a 20 long faster than it will a regular 20, if all other
things are equal.
However, all things are not always equal when comparing oxygen levels of various
tanks, because of all the other variables that come into play. Salt water, for
instance, doesnt hold as much oxygen as fresh water, and the same is true of warm
water when compared to cool.

Thats because water molecules become increasingly agitated as the temperature

rises, and the more they bounce around, the harder it is for gases to dissolve in
them and the easier it is for the oxygen thats in there to get bounced out.
An Oxygen Emergency
Other substances that aquarists sometimes add to water (medications, for instance)
also can cause oxygen levels to drop. Thats because some such substances bond
so tightly to water molecules thatto grossly oversimplify an incredibly complicated
dynamicit effectively decreases the amount of water in solution thats available to
hold the oxygen.
When this happens, fish have a number of ways to compensate. They can push
water through their gills faster (the fish equivalent of panting); they also tend to
hover near the surface where the oxygen content is higher. Over the long-term, they
can increase the number of red blood cells and the concentration of hemoglobin
within them to more efficiently transport oxygen to their tissues.
And in truly desperate situations, they may do whats known as pipingswimming
head up at the surface, opening and closing their mouths as they suck at the
oxygen-rich skin of the water, something I witnessed the first summer I kept
goldfish.
Back then I wasnt experienced enough to understand stocking limits, so I put too
many goldfish in a too-small pond. When I went outside to feed them one morning I
found them all hanging at the surface opening and closing their mouths as if they
were gasping. A frantic call to the pond shop identified the likely problem. It was
very hot, so the water wasnt holding much oxygen to begin with; it also was
overcast, so the plants in the pond were probably competing with the fish for what
was available (and so were the nitrifying bacteria), and the pond was stocked to
capacity so there was no margin for error. The oxygen in the water was getting used
up faster than it could be replenished, and the fish were desperate.
The temporary solution was to agitate the surface of the water to get oxygen into it
faster, in much the same way that youd stir your coffee if you wanted to get the
sugar to dissolve more quickly. While my husband rushed out to get a submersible
pump with a fountain head while I created some temporary agitation by spraying
the surface with water from the hose. The results were remarkable: Within seconds,
the fish stopped gasping and began to swim normally (although they still stayed
close to the surface).
After we installed the fountain, we never had another problem. However, having
learned a few things since then, I now keep fewer fish in a much bigger pond
equipped with both waterfall and fountain.
So How Much Oxygen Do They Need?
All of this leads to an obvious question: Whats the critical oxygen level for fish? But
once again, theres no easy answer. Goldfish, for instance, are very efficient at

getting oxygen to their tissues, so theyre able to withstand low oxygen conditions
for longer than some other species. So can gouramis, which evolved in the lowoxygen conditions of shallow, stagnant ponds in Southeast Asia and have what is
known as a labyrinth organ. This is a sort of primitive lung that allows them to
breathe surface air when they cant get enough from the water.
Generally speaking, however, large fish use more oxygen per hour than smaller fish,
and faster-swimming fish use more oxygen than slower swimmers, while fry often
need more oxygen than adult fish. A fishs consumption of oxygen also increases
after feedingsome studies have found it to be by as much as 50 percentbecause
of the energy demands of digestion and growth.
However, the picture is further complicated by the fact that fish are cold blooded, so
the speed of their metabolism corresponds to the temperature of the water theyre
swimming around in. The problem is that the warmer the water gets, the more
active the fish become, and the more oxygen they need to fuel their increased
activity (their demand can double or triple with every 10-degree increase in
temperature), but warm water also holds less oxygen.
Aeration Devices: Are They Necessary?
There are a number of ways to help counter this, and thats where aeration devices
come in. There are two basic types: Those that infuse oxygen directly into the water
(such as airstones and decorative bubble walls) andeven more effectivethose
that expand the surface area of the water to give the oxygen more entry points.
Thats what I was doing when I sprayed my pond with the hose, for instance,
because each droplet of water picked up a lot of oxygen as it cascaded through the
air; thats also part of the point of waterfalls and fountains. And in aquariums,
certain types of filters help aerate the water as well. These include hang-on-back
filters and trickle filters.
Some fish farms involved in high-intensity aquaculture sometimes use such means
to hyperoxygenate the water, which allows them to increase stocking levels without
increasing the amount of water in their systems. However, there are some
indications that this can stress fish; in one paper reported at a World Aquaculture
Society meeting in 2006, Swedish researchers found higher levels of the stress
hormone cortisol in Atlantic salmon that had been raised in hyperoxygenated water.
Too much oxygen in water can lead to the potentially lethal gas bubble disease, in
which gas comes out of solution inside the fish, creating bubbles in its skin and
around its eyes. (Excess nitrogen, however, is a far more common cause of this
disease.)
All of this brings us back to the humble airstone and the question I asked at the
outset of this column: Is it necessary?
Probably not, if by necessary you mean that your fish would die without it. (If
thats the case, youreway overstocked.) Yes, it adds oxygen to the water, but if

thats what youre worried about, there are more effective ways to do itwith a
trickle filter, for instance.
On the other hand, can airstones and other bubblers serve a useful purpose? Yes,
within limits. They do add some oxygen to the water, and the bubbles they create
help to keep water moving within the tank; by strategically locating it in areas in
which water circulation might be lessnear the bottom, for instanceyoull help to
keep suspended particles circulating so that they can be sucked out of the water by
the filter.
So while Im not going to bolt out to the pet shop to replace mine the way I would if,
say, my filter quit working, Ill probably pick one up eventually. Because when it
comes to aeration, every little bit helps.