Aquatic Centre

Our purpose-built 318m2 aquatic centre houses a state-of-the-art aquarium and sea-water system. The seawater is sourced directly from Langstone Harbour; twin switching pumps on a pontoon supply seawater to our compound at a rate of 10 L/s. The seawater is processed via a settlement system with glass media filtration, and serves two independent lines delivered to the aquatic centre. Our processed seawater includes an integrated heater/chiller system with a range of 10°C - 25°C enabling temperature controlled experiments and ambient seawater experiments to concur. Both flow through and re-circulating seawater systems are also available. Our large wet lab is fitted with a flexible plumbing system and a large range of different volume tanks, in addition to our outdoor aquarium tanks (30 -5000L). This facility allows several hundred tanks to be run with either ambient or temperature-controlled sea-water for experimental research or holding tanks.

The aquarium is supported by:

Quarantine rooms for non-native species,
Living specimen preparation rooms,
Five experimental aquarium rooms with independent temperature and light control,
Staff changing room,
Molecular and general laboratories,
A flat roof with access for exposure, observation and monitoring trials.