Electric eel powers Tennessee Aquarium's Christmas lights
A special system connected to an electric eel named Miguel Wattson's tank enables his shocks to power strands of lights on a nearby tree.
www.nbcnews.com
My goal for X-mas next year.
- Thread starter Bruce Spiegelman
- Start date
www.nbcnews.com
rygh
Guest
That would be fun!
Electric eals are pretty amazing. Especially to an electrical engineer like me.
Up to 500 Volts at 1 Amp is huge. 500 Watts!
Unfortunately only for a couple of milliseconds, then 10 minutes or so to recharge, so they are not going to power your Tesla.
And they do timed and controlled pulses.
Small little pulses to make nearby fish twitch and reveal themselves.
Medium sets of pulses to make prey convulse so they can't swim away.
Large pulses for defense or killing.
Electric eals are pretty amazing. Especially to an electrical engineer like me.
Up to 500 Volts at 1 Amp is huge. 500 Watts!
Unfortunately only for a couple of milliseconds, then 10 minutes or so to recharge, so they are not going to power your Tesla.
And they do timed and controlled pulses.
Small little pulses to make nearby fish twitch and reveal themselves.
Medium sets of pulses to make prey convulse so they can't swim away.
Large pulses for defense or killing.
When I was 13 I had my first job at a local pet store in Williamsburg, VA. I was in charge of the maintenance in all of the aquariums except two. We had two display only tanks. One had an electric eel. My recollection is it was a good 6' in length. The other tank had a half-dozen black piranha's. I wasn't even allowed to feed those tanks. 
I grew up in Colorado, Connecticut, VA, Michigan and then off to Louisiana and Texas before CA.
I got kicked out of a lot of States.
tankguy
Supporting Member
Cali is next Bruce. I hear Oregon is nice
Canada.
sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
Find some place in Canada with hydroelectricity, those places tend to be really cheap to run reef tanks
Wlachnit
Past President
Wow... that’s a @&$load of ion exchange!