Scum-Free Fish Tank

Reported June 2008

BETHLEHEM, Pa. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Maintaining a saltwater aquarium can be an expensive hobby. Just setting up a 55 gallon tank can cost about $1500s -- and that's without fish! But a group of young engineers are using a rare earth magnet to build a better environment for ocean life and help precious species thrive in captivity.

To keep your aquarium a healthy place for fish and other salt water creatures live, you need to know the science behind a thriving set up. Coral needs an ocean-like environment in order to survive.

"As you can imagine on a coral reef, there's wave action," Greg Appleton, a tropical fish importer, told Ivanhoe. "Water flows back and forth and back and forth and this is very important as it draws nutrients to the corals and removes wastes away from the corals."

Aquarium enthusiasts use a series of pumps to create the undulating sensation of waves, but traditional pumps can cause a bad side effect. "These pumps create heat and these corals are very sensitive to water temperature," Appleton explained.

That's where mechanical and environmental engineer Tim Marks and his partners are making a difference. They've created a new pump that is literally split in half. "The pump is revolutionary in the sense that it takes the motor outside of the aquarium," Pat Clasen, cofounder of EcoTech Marine, told Ivanhoe. "It couples the propeller on the inside with the motor on the outside and they clamp together using magnets."

The magnets are made of neodymium, the strongest rare "Earth" magnet readily available. The magnets hold the two sides together through glass up to three-quarters of an inch thick. "Actually, all of our pumps wirelessly communicate," Clasen says. "It's kind of like Bluetooth. So they can hear what the other pumps are doing and synchronize their efforts."

And with the motor on the outside, the heat dissipates into the air, not over the delicate reef, keeping your aquarium a healthy home to everything that lives in it! Ecotech says the "vortech" pump, as they've named it, is catching on. They've formed a company to market the product and are generating about $200,000 a month in sales.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., the Materials Research Society, and the American Physical Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Tim Marks
Engineer, EcoTech Marine
(610) 954-8480 X102
ecotechmarinesales@gmail.com

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. IEEE-USA
Washington, DC 20036-5104
(202) 530-8353
http://www.ieee.org
ieeeusa@ieee.org

Materials Research Society
Warrendale, PA 15086-7573
(724) 779-3003
webmaster@mrs.org

James Riordon, Media Relations
American Physical Society
College Park, MD
(301) 209-3238
http://www.aps.org
Riordon@aps.org

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