The Autonomous Aquarium
I actually think that this one will not be that hard to do. The concept of an autonomous house has plenty of literature written on it, and my objective for the aquarium is not even 100% autonomous, but rather, maintenance free (no cleaning and no feeding). I would still supply electricity (to operate the heat lights and pumps), but nothing else.
Conceptually, I have it down to 3 tanks in a series circulation. The first contains the main residents (or test subjects), the 2nd contains the vegetation to 'scrub' the water and to culture invertebrates, which would sustain the higher order 'feeders' in the 3rd tank.
I've obtained some damaged tanks which after repair will be stacked vertically in my basement. Tentatively, I'm looking at an open 50g flora tank gravity feeding a 60g fauna tank, which gravity feeds my 'standard' aquarium (100g). This will be all about ratios and finding the compatible mix of creatures which would sustain themselves. Essentially whatever food products the tanks start with will be the nitrogen food chain available (with heat and light artificially provided). Using a 210g ecosystem is to simplify the process, but if successful, it would then get scaled down to hobby size.
If successful, the production version would look something like a long thin box (like a powerfilter hung off the back of an aquarium), providing a plethora of additions to the food chain. With the volume restrictions, the feeder would probably not meet 100% of a normally stocked tank's requirements, but even 50% would be a remarkable achievement, considering you are using the wastes in the tank to feed the fish with highly nutritious live food.
As this project also does not hold promise of any income in the short term, I work on it as a background task, always noting potential candidates to use in the system, while I'm going about researching related subjects.
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