Restoring old aquarium former glory future generations

What is the best way to preserve something? Do whatever it takes to make someone care about it. This is one of the many reasons that Aquariums exist. It encourages people to love, respect and understand the ocean, and it actively inspires them to take action to help preserve our aquatic life.

Based on this, it goes without saying that improvements and renovations need to be done at these Aquariums.  They need to be expanding their capacity to hold aquatic life while at the same time, attempting to replicate each species required environments.

An aquarium in South Africa is currently undergoing a revamp and alterations in order to create space, to separate a few of the different species that are currently all in the same tank.

The project, from a construction point of view, requires the removal of concrete blocks. Each of the blocks consist of approximately 300 mm – 600 mm thick reinforced concrete. A total of 400 meters needed to be removed. This was done by using a process known as wall sawing. A Wall Saw is an industrial, remote controlled, light weight, portable machine that runs on an aluminium track. This machine is used in precision cutting from depths of 120 mm to 650 mm in reinforced concrete and is ideal for the surgical demolition of mass concrete and is vibration free.Apart from this, some of the tanks are also being refurbished. The old existing waterproof coating needs to be removed and the tank then needs to be recoated with a new waterproof membrane. In order to achieve this, a newly developed PCD cup grinder needs to be used to effectively remove the old coating. These tools are specially designed with Polychrystaline Diamond (PCD) for the removal of more pliable materials. This would include materials such as coatings, epoxy, triflex, thermoplastics, paint and glue. The cup grinder is used in conjunction with a variable speed Makita grinder.

Diamond Products have a very keen interest in nature conservation, and are therefore delighted to play a small part in the revamping and alterations of the aquarium.