Sea Life Centre undergoes renovation to improve water quality

Seal Life Centre in Brighton is undergoing renovation to improve water quality, with hundreds of valuable marine creatures requiring protection through careful water monitoring.

Hach Lange instruments have been carefully monitoring water quality at the Sea Life Centre as it goes through a renovation project. The centres are placed throughout Europe, and champion the cause of marine conservation through education, awareness and, wherever possible, direct action.

With hundreds of valuable marine creatures to protect in Brighton, water quality and water monitoring became fundamental parts of the new renovation. Curator Carey Duckhouse said: "The recent building work presented challenges, but we have been able to protect water quality with a monitoring regime designed to quickly detect any deterioration in water quality and to provide the highest level of vigilance for our most sensitive species."

Each tanks at the Brighton attraction are equipped with strict water quality apparatus to ensure that the marine life living inside enjoys surroundings comparable to their native habitat. All tanks have their own filtration system, including a pressurised sand filter, a biological filter and a carbon filter where appropriate.

With the more sensitive species, such as seahorses, octopus and jellyfish, the tanks also have an ultraviolet treatment system to ensure that the quality of the water remains constant.

Dissolved oxygen (DO), temperature and salinity levels are the key measurements, with DO measured three times/day in the main ocean tank, and salinity and DO twice per week in all tanks.

The centre uses a hand-held HQD water quality meter for this purpose, which uses sensor technology such as an optical LDO sensor which improves the reliability of oxygen measurements.

Ms Duckhouse said: "Even subtle changes in water quality can stress marine organisms, which makes them more sensitive to disease, so a range of other parameters such as ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, phosphate, copper and iron, are also measured with a Hach Lange DR 2800 spectrophotometer."

Posted by Joseph Hutton