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Redoing the fish room filter...a journal


Noddy65

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OK...almost finished redoing the entire fish room filter...its something a bit different from the traditional african rift lake cichlid filter (it involves a radial filter and K1) ...theres a few leaks, Ill sort them out tomorrow...but so far so good....Ill post some pics when its underway...

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The guts of the new filter...2 x 200 litre Blue Barrels....the one on the right is a radial filter (more on that later) the one on the left is full of K1 media (a moving bed filter)...Ive got a more traditional sump to the extreme left of the picture (more on that later)

Why?...2 reasons really...I wanted to try and reduce my power consumption...the single 160 W pump in this will be replacing around 7 exisiting pumps, using around 800 W....Ive got 2 young kids now and am finding it difficult to manage so many sumps adn water changes...this will eventually have a single water change ability and will (hopefully) dramatically reduce the time I spend doing maintenance.

Idea?...basically stolen from koi pond and aquaculture people....I figured if koi ponds can be kept clean with this type of filter then my tanks should cope ok

overview.jpg

Radial filter...I was originally going to use a vortex type filter but then did some reading about this type of filter...commercial ones are used in aquaculture...it is very efficient at removing suspended solids...the retrun water from teh tanks is run up through the smaller pipe (40 mm) you can se in the middle, the water then runs down between that smaller pipe and the larger pipe (150 mm)...this slows the water down alot and solids drop to the bottom of the barrel..the water then continues on its way through the 90 mm outlet on the right of the pic...There is a drain in the bottom of the barrel and Ill drain it weekly...the filter has been running for a few days and there is already alot of stuff on the bottom of the barrel ....Im also going to put some large filter brushes in the to help hold onto finer floating material

radial-filter.jpg

K1 moving bed filter...super stuff this can process kgs of food a day...its used in sewage systems in the Uk to break down material

k1-sump.jpg

Traditional sump: my bototm rack of tanks was too low to plumb all the water into the blue barrels so they run through a traditional sump full of my old media...all the water will eventually go through the barrels...just not on teh first pass....the water from the barrels also drains into here and the 16000 lph pump is in here to return the water to the tanks....Im going to setup and auto top up system so that when the power goes out (it is NSW :) )....and most of the water overflows (through a bulkhead you can just see on the far left of the pic) it will over flow into a big tub that will then be used to pump back into the system when the power comes back on...Im using a float system to measure water levels

traditional-sump.jpg

The return pip from teh sump: its bassically a big circuit...Ive used Y fitting mostly so that there are no true right angles...I read a paper on water flow through pipes (geek alert) and turbulence and right angles are one of the main things that slow water movement down

y-pipe.jpg

The returns to the tanks...drop down from a circuit up near the roof...again, very few right angles were used here...the water then returns to the filter via bulkheads and gravity out the back of each tank

return-pipe.jpg

Issues: so far mostly small leaks :( and the 90 mm exits from the blue barrels just arent big enough...Ill turn off the system on the weekend...repair the leaks and drill a 40 mm bulkhead into the K1 barrel to increase water flow out of it and into the sump

Im also waiting on my order of filter brushes and the auto water topup system...that still needs to be implemented

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Loving it mike. I really like it when people experiment with new ideas on filtration. There is just so much you can do to make amazing filters like this one. Keep up the brilliant work.

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Very ingenious, should work well. I use a Nexus filter containing a moving bed of K1 media and it works extremely well. And you're spot on about using large diameter pipes and avoiding 90 degree angles on your return plumbing, I used 2 x 45 degrees joined together on mine after being told by an expert that would create about a third of the resistance of a 90 degree.

What is your head height on those return pipes on the ceiling? And what 16,000 lph pump are you using to handle that head height while only using 160 watts?

Cheers, Doug

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi Brad,

I used quite a few uniseals in my new fishroom when I set it up around 4 years ago, I got them from Uniseal at Morningside. I placed the order by phone, paid by credit card over the phone, and they were mailed out. They were quite reasonably priced and arrived within a couple of days. Give them a call on Monday.

Cheers, Doug

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