What kind of filtration system do huge aquarium use?

Question

and how the h**l do they do water changes?

Answer 1

how huge is huge?

like a 300 gallon home setup?

or a 50,000 gallon public aquarium tank?

home aquarium generally use sumps or some kind of wet/dry, they can also besupplementedd with canisters and HOB (hang on the back) filter

public sized tank have something that looks like a giant pool filter and other than that are rather hard to describe.. sometimes (especially right by a lake or ocean) the tanks are actually open to water directly from the lake/sea

Answer 2

Here is an article on MFK on the building of a 5,000 gal tropical tank, it has pictures of the filter system as well. It could probably filter the water for a small town.

But the theory is the same, just you need bigger pumps, filters, sumps etcs. You can see they use 5 x .3/4hp, 220volt, 3 phase pumps. Further down you can see the 4 x 6,000w heaters. And you were worried that a normal tank might bump up your power bill? ;-)

Water changes, probably a continous trickle (pour). Just pour new treated water in (dosed with water conditioner with another pump) and run off the overflow.

Ian

P.S. I think that tank has since been enlarged to 10,000 gallons

Answer 3

Most of them use sumps with gigantic pumps and such, for the sake of catching fecal matter. For their water changes it's not so much a sealed tank. It's more a constant flow of new water which never really lets the nitrate build up. Most of us cannot afford this, but with the revenue they generate they can get new water daily and not have problems with cash flow. So aquariums are less of a sealed tank, more of a "stream"