UK HQ Your time

Seawater Filtration & Pre-Treatment for Research & Aquaria

A staged filtration and disinfection train that turns raw coastal seawater into clean, biosecure, life-safe water for research tanks, aquaria and species cultivation — sediment, plankton, larvae and pathogens removed without harming the stock.

Raw Seawater Requires Conditioning Before Use

Coastal seawater carries suspended sediment, plankton blooms, larvae, fine colloids and a constant pathogen load — and its quality swings with tides, storms and seasons. Feeding it untreated to a research tank risks turbidity that starves seagrass of light, fouling that blocks downstream plant, and disease that wipes out stock. Reynolds & Bauhm designs the staged pre-treatment train that protects both the organisms and the equipment: coarse-to-fine filtration to strip solids and biology, disinfection for biosecurity, and the controls to hold output quality steady as the raw water changes.

Staged Pre-Treatment, Coarse to Fine

Each stage protects the next — we include only the stages your raw water and species require.

#StageTypical ratingRemoves / purpose
1Coarse screening1–3 mmWeed, debris, larger organisms at the intake
2Media / sand filtrationdown to ~20 µmSediment, turbidity, much of the plankton
3Fine bag / cartridge10 µm → 1 µmFine sediment, larvae, cyst-stage parasites
4UV disinfection40–100+ mJ/cm²Bacteria, viruses, parasites (biosecurity)
5Ozone (optional)contact + residual destructColour, fine organics, disinfection
6Temperature trimtitanium HXSet-point conditioning before the tanks

Key Treatment Stages in Detail

Media Filtration

Pressure sand or multimedia filters carry the turbidity load with automatic backwash. We size bed area, media grading and backwash so the filter recovers fully — even after a storm or algal bloom spikes the raw solids.

Fine Filtration

Bag or cartridge polishing to 10–1 µm removes the larvae and fine particles that sand filters pass — the stage that makes water suitable for larval rearing and seagrass clarity.

Disinfection, Done Safely

UV (and optional ozone) gives biosecurity between sea and tank. Critically, any oxidant residual is fully managed/de-gassed before water reaches living stock — disinfection that never becomes toxicity.

UV Systems

Stable Output, Variable Input

Turbidity, flow and pressure instrumentation with automatic backwash and dosing keeps treated-water quality steady as tides and weather move the raw seawater around.

Biofouling-Resistant Design

Non-metallic and duplex wetted parts, dead-leg-free pipework and clean-in-place provisions keep the train itself from becoming a fouling or contamination source.

Biofouling Control

Polishing for Sensitive Work

Where larval rearing or analytical work demands it, we add 1 µm / sub-micron polishing, activated carbon for trace organics, or RO for make-up and salinity control.

Need raw seawater turned into tank-ready water?

Tell us your intake, raw-water quality and what the water feeds — we’ll design the filtration and disinfection train, sized for the worst-case sea conditions and your species’ tolerance.

Related Pages

Explore closely-related topics, equipment and guides

Industries We Serve

Our expertise spans multiple industries with sector-specific water treatment solutions.