Happy Birthday to Me!!

What does every almost-thirty-year-old animal lover want for their birthday?... penguins or course!!!!.... and what-do-you-know, I got 'em!!! Our new penguin exhibit opens to the public on March 26!

After a lot of waiting, and even more planning and building, our gentoo penguins flew in from Galveston this week. No not quite like this video, but on a large metal bird instead :) Our CEO Brent Anderson and I were able to go down and tour Moody Gardens Aquarium back in October while preparing for our penguin exhibit. The staff there were more than accommodating, and answered every random question I could think up in the two days we spent there. With a plethora of info and a few suggestions about our soon-to-be exhibit, the TLPA staff got to work.

To give you an idea of what we needed to keep these cold-loving birds happy, the entire exhibit area, including off exhibit holding areas and filtration, is held at 40-45 degrees, and is essentially a very large walk-in refrigerator. Pretty much everything for the exhibit was done in-house, only electrical and HVAC were done by other companies. Since these birds live in very clean air in the wild on islands off the southern coast of South America, the air needs to be filtered to 1 micron and all areas are positive pressure to keep all fungal spores out (just think of being blasted with freezing, smelly air when you open the exhibit door.....let's just say I'm glad we hired an aviculturist to take care of these cute stinky birds).

Below are some pictures and explanations of the exhibit as we were building it, as well as a short clip of them arriving and exploring their new home.

With these penguins being our CEOs pet project (he's been planning this for years), we got pretty much everything we asked for from the husbandry side of things. The tank is a 24 foot half-round custom fiberglass pool with a 5' x 16' viewing window. Water is pulled from skimmer boxes as well as a bottom drain and a dedicated vacuum line used to clean the exhibit bottom. The plumbing was mostly done by myself and a few of the husbandry staff. Penguins don't really care about water quality the way fish do, but they sure eat a lot (these 11 penguins will eat substantially more than the rest of our entire collection!!), which means they sure can cloud up the water quickly if if is not heavily filtered. Here are shots of the four large sand filters, the 2 two-horsepower pumps, and the back of the tank. You can see that we cut the concrete to plumb all feed and waste lines in and out of the exhibit area. (Yes, they trust me with a jackhammer amazingly enough). These areas were filled when we did the main pour for the exhibit.



We planned a reclamation system to re-filter the exhibit water after we backwash the main exhibit filters and re-use it as needed. I'm glad we are trying to conserve as much as we can, I am even using the effluent from our Reverse Osmosis filter to mix the penguins salt water with. Most of the water we use in our exhibits goes through these units which pull out almost all of the dissolved minerals in the water we get from the city. It used to be drained to waste as it is not suitable for fish use, but since we use straight food grade NaCl instead of a marine salt mix for these birdies, it is perfect for penguins keeping the pH up over 8.2 in newly mixed water, yay!


The interior of the exhibit is a main concrete pour for the flat land area and supporting columns, and cement covered styrofoam for all of the rockwork. The fake rocks took forever to build, as this concrete needed to be put on by hand in three or four layers. The portions under the water are mainly molded sheets of ABS plastic seamed together with epoxy and plastic zip-ties with concrete around all areas that needed extra support.

This is right before the main pour. The big hole in the back wall is for the HVAC
Here's a shot after the main pour and with much of the rock finished. This was right after the first fill of the tank and filtration. You can see some of the rock before and after being coated and painted.




Once the system was well rinsed, and flushed completely, we filled her up with salt water and prepared as best we could to have 11 curious birds running around trying to destroy things. Here is the tank ready for their arrival! (the front of the exhibit is still yet to be completed, it will be an antarctic research station facade).




The birds came in this past Thursday, and Maggie, one of the penguin keepers from Moody Gardens even flew up with them and spent a few days with our staff making sure we were ready, and that the penguins settled in well. Our Vet also made a trip out to see the arrival and do a quick health check before we put them in.



Their first glimpse of their new home!


Once all were placed in the exhibit, it took a few minutes for them to get in the water, but once they did, they only came out long enough to shake off and jump back in. I can't believe how active and animated they are!


Here is a short video our PR dept. made up right after their arrival. I have a feeling our parking lot is going to be very full for a few months :)

Thanks for reading!!

-Evan