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[Delphinus]

I applaud your efforts to engineer an intertidal zone but I'm really sort of stuck on what animals in the intertidal zone you wish to showcase? All the things I can think of in that zone, are maybe things that could easily do without the low tide (or could just have a section of land/rock in the tank that is above the waterline, like a paludarium of sorts, where the in-betweeners could go if they so desired).

Any fish, mollusk, starfish, etc. that can tolerate being in an intertidal zone can likely do just fine without being exposed at low tide. The only exception I can think of are those little beach crabs.. And I dunno, I think a beach area in the tank could probably service them just as well as anything (and could be an interesting feature point of the tank as well).

Again, it's something interesting to engineer, I've often thought about ways to accomplish it as well, but in the end I wonder if it's really necessary, i.e., if you could enjoy a coldwater habitat without the varying water levels of a tide.

Another method is to have two overflows, and an actuated ball valve on the lower overflow. Dial back the lower overflow so that it's a super slow drain anyhow. Then open and close the actuated valve every six hours. There ya go, I gave you an idea just to show I'm not completely raining on your dream

[Dale]

Thanks for the link scavenger - just what I'm looking for!

D - No raining on parades here Kicking the ideas around and looking for the weaknesses is an important part of designing. Better to see the pitfalls on paper (VDT) than afterward.

I'm committed to the C.W. tank but not the tidal pool per say. It is a design I've been kicking around in my head for a while and I may set it up barebones just to see what happens. I like the idea of putting a super slow valve on the low tide drain. The tank has 4 bulkheads in the bottom so one could go:
standpipe #1 - high tide drain
standpipe #2 - returnline (at or above high tide drain level)
standpipe #3 - valved low tide drain
Standpipe #4 - emergency high tide drain
As long as the return pump fills slightly faster than the low tide drain it will fill and maintain the high tide. When it shuts off the display will slowly drain to low tide.
I think I like it.

If one focuses on true ocean temps there isn't much variation granted but I have long suspected that intertidal species do tolerate a wide variation of temp extremes. I've noted this many times when I've poked about in natural tidal pools. A sculpin (for example) caught in a shallow pool will go from true ocean temp to quite warm in a matter of hours on a sunny summer day. The plan here is to only stock intertidal species.
Here are some temp ranges from the link that scavenger provided:
Arrow Goby: 4 -26C
Black rockfish: 10 - 17 and up to 22C
Grunt sculpin: up to 23C
Longspine combfish: up to 24C
Starry flounder: 0 - 21.5C
3 spine stickleback: up to 26C

Grunt sculpin


Mosshead sculpin


Tubesnout


or for the adventurous, Wolf eel


Photo's from hmsc.oregonstate.edu
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