TAMPA - As it does about every two months, a 400-foot barge that hauled molten sulfur from Texas made a slight side trip Wednesday to The Florida Aquarium to disgorge 300,000 gallons of saltwater.
The barge, owned by Mosaic Fertilizer, uses the saltwater as ballast and pipes it to the aquarium, saving the attraction about $400,000 a year it would cost to either create the saltwater by mixing minerals with fresh water or hauling the water from the Gulf of Mexico.
The aquarium uses about 2 million gallons of saltwater a year, losing it mostly to evaporation from its open-air tanks.
The water is piped from the barge's ballast tanks into a pair of holding tanks that contain 150,000 gallons each. The water is filtered and treated before being added to the aquarium's display tanks.
The barge slurps up the saltwater 100 miles out in the Gulf where the bottom is 10,000 feet down, said Tom Wagner, aquarium spokesman.
The barge refills its ballast tanks from the channel after delivering the saltwater to the aquarium.
The fresh seawater goes through four days of filtering and is treated to eliminate parasites and other creatures.
Though the aquarium is on the water on Channelside Drive, the attraction does not use the water at its back door.
"It's not very good quality water. There's a lot of stuff in there," Wagner said.
Saltwater aquariums without access to seawater have to manufacture their saltwater, using fresh water and adding the proper mix of salt and minerals to mimic the ocean water, Wagner said.
The aquarium has more than 20,000 fish and about three dozen separate saltwater display tanks.
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