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Our Ocean tank is the largest tank within the Aquarium.
It is home to our Sharks, Rays and Rescued Sea Turtle JC. Although most of the maintenance work is completed from outside the tank, on a regular basis members of the animal team get into the water to complete required maintenance tasks.
Some of these tasks include;
Sometimes our visitors are lucky to see this first-hand. However, if you click on the video below you can see some of the tasks we carry out.
Apart from the general public seeing day to day activities of our Seal Sanctuary. We also complete a number of tasks behind the scenes.
Some of these tasks include;
Lab Work is an essential task that is carried out daily with in the aquarium.
Lab-work consist of elements such as;
Some of this lab-work can be seen during your visit in the Aquarist Viewing Lab.
Other lab work will consist of animal nutrition, feeding plans, tank temperature recording through our Seneye system. (These can be seen live on the TV in the viewing Lab)
Pump maintenance is an essential part of our animal care teams daily activities.
We pump our water directly from the Strangford Lough into our pumphouse, where it then goes through a filtration process to ensure the water is cleaned before entering the tanks.
Pump maintenance activities include changing of filter socks, clearing debris from the pump wastage baskets, cleaning any salt that may have accumulated around the pump and carrying out inspections on all pipework for each of the tanks.
During these inspections staff look for leaks, salt build-up, clean and lubricate components as required.
A huge part of our behind-the-scenes work involves administrative work. This includes;
We have recently invested in upgrading our quarantine facilities for both native and tropical livestock.
Quarantine facilities are used to treat sick and injured livestock, but they can also be used for breeding of livestock for our nursery tanks.
Quarantine facilities are most commonly used when new livestock is brought into the aquarium. The livestock will go through a 3–6-week quarantine process to ensure they are healthy and not carrying any diseases which can affect healthy livestock before going on public display.
