Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
We really had no choice but to agree. In our hearts we just knew that
some kind of disaster lay ahead—a dying elephant seal with full me-
dia coverage being the vision we feared the most.
I thanked my stars that I didn't work with mammals, and I started
my own preparations for the touch pool, fish exhibit, and informa-
tional graphics. The tropical aquarium was a nice-looking four-foot
acrylic cube, with its life support system beneath it. The touch tank,
ten feet long and irregularly shaped, was fabricated out of fiberglass
simulated rock. Given the time we had, the rock didn't look especially
realistic, but at least it held water. It would have an under-gravel filter
in the bottom for biological filtration and a refrigeration unit to keep
it cold.
Among the countless problems we encountered was the fifty-cycle
electricity available in Mexico City; for that, special pumps and re-
frigeration were purchased. The biggest problem, however, was the bi-
ological filtration, which had to be fully functional from the very first
day if the fishes and invertebrates were to stay alive and healthy. The
normal procedure during the set-up of a new aquarium is to seed the
gravel in the new tank with bacteria—which break down waste prod-
ucts into a nontoxic form—from a well-established aquarium and then
to feed the bacteria nitrogen to get them to multiply. This process gen-
erally takes three or four weeks, but I would only have a few days to
set up the aquarium systems and put the fish in just before the expo-
sition opened to the public. Introducing a lot of fish to an aquarium
that doesn't have a functioning biological filter is a sure way to kill them.
We couldn't run the risk of that happening.
The solution was to air-freight biologically active filter sand from
San Diego to Mexico, arranging for it to arrive the day after the aquar-
ium had been filled with artificial seawater. For this plan to succeed,
the billions of bacteria coating the grains of sand had to be kept alive
and healthy. The sand would therefore be shipped moist but without
liquid water, and the plastic bags containing the sand would be filled
with oxygen. I have no idea if this had ever been done before, but it
was the only chance I saw of having live, healthy fish in the aquarium.
Everything went according to plan. I flew to Mexico City with the
touch pool, the acrylic aquarium, and all the assorted life-support equip-
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