Life sustaining pump

[cayates]

Hello,

I am not a mechanical engineer myself, however I am researching pump designs with untouched water flow. For example, when pumping water that has organisms contained inside which would be killed by an impellar, diaghragm, etc.

I found a large-scale pump which is used to pump tons of fish from the sea. However, I am looking for a scaled-down version for much smaller organisms. In particular copepods, amphipods, and other tiny marine organisms.

If this sort of pump exists, or could be invented, I believe it would have wonderful success in the aquarium market. Specifically, copepod-dependent species (such as Seahorses, Dragonettes, Wrasses, etc.), where the aquarium is "fed" by an external "copepod factory" which has water pumped to the main tank.

The main way around this is to use a gravity-fed water flow, however as you can imagine this introduces many complications.

The pump would have to pull the water from one container to the other, without the water going threw any kind of device which could crush or blend the organisms.

Any suggestions as to where I could find research on this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

 

[25362]

Would transfer pumps of the sucking rod or syringe type be of help ? The flowing stream would be in contact with air not with the plunger. Is this what you had in mind ?

 

[cayates]

Yes, that sounds like it would do the job. I will research those, thank you.

 

[25362]

There are, of course, other fixtures that may be considered such as eductors, "blow eggs" (as for acid movement), air elevators, etc., in which there is no mechanical moving part, except the pumped water suspension and air.