Brewery helps public aquarium to beat the heat

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Residents at Falmouth Aquarium in Cornwall are managing to stay cool in the hot weather, thanks to the help of a local brewery.

Temperature in the tanks rose by 3°C in the heat last week, prompting worried staff to make an emergency call to St Austell Brewery on Friday morning.

According to Chloe Kingston, a marine biologist who works at the aquarium, the inhabitants only had a matter of time before they overheated and started to die, as they wouldn't be able to stand the higher temperatures long term.

But the brewery was only to pleased to help out, donating beer-chilling equipment to keep the tanks cool. The system was installed by Andrew Ferguson, technical services manager at the brewery, on Friday — in time for the scorching weekend.

Chloe told This is Cornwall: "It's a massive relief, I was really worried when I realised our current chillers weren't coping.

"What the St Austell Brewery has done is literally save our fish at the aquarium.

"We have an entire tropical reef system on our ground floor that wasn't coping with the heat, even though their water temperature is usually hot anyway, and we have our Cornish fish tanks that were really suffering because their water needs to be especially cool."

The chilling equipment will stay at the aquarium permanently.

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