Multi bay and plant filter combined?

[addy1]

sending you a plastic bag for some! lol

Good man you have there jw! sounds like mine

 

[vertigo72]

Thanks for the tip on watercest; I just bought some watercrest at the supermarket and pending completion of my filter, I planted it in my iris marsh (which is overflown by water), to see how they do. Are they supposed to grow in earth or would some medium/fine rocks work too?

Anyway, I started building my filter and am making good progress. I will post pics later, but the first 2 drums are almost done. I picked up some 220 Liter (thats 50 gallon?) tanks. Connected them with 110mm sewer pipes, currently adding bottom drains and stuff.

The first one will be a vortex filter, and I will probably end up putting 2 of those.

Question: how fast should such a vortex rotate? Is fast good or bad? If its bad, I will put both in parallel rather than serial.

Havent decided on the other barrels yet, but Im currently thinking something like this:

- 2 vortex prefilters (in parallel?)
- 1 barrel with some brushes (and floating plants)
- 1 with rough lavarock and floating plants
- 1 or 2 with finer lavarock and some other white stone (forgot the name, but they are supposed to be really good for bio filters) and well, watercrest on top :yikesu:

I dont plan on using any plastic filter media, for the simple reason that its ridiculously expensive IMHO. In my local koi shop they sell them by the bucket for, I dont know 20-30 dollar or so? but God knows a lot of buckets fit in my 220L barrels. Its probably one of the most asked questions, but still, any tips on a cheap filter medium instead of rocks? Im on a budget here :lol:

 

[addy1]

A lot of people use the black irrigation hose chopped up, pot scrubbers, air conditioner filter pads, strapping, etc. Plastic rabbit fencing, from the box stores. etc

 

[stroppy]

i use the strapping stuff and its great ...you can buy it in huge rolls on ebay and its cheep ..the water cress just stick it on the top and hold the roots down with rocks or large pebbles

 

[vertigo72]

A lot of people use the black irrigation hose chopped up, pot scrubbers, air conditioner filter pads, strapping, etc. Plastic rabbit fencing, from the box stores. etc

You mean those hoses with a spiralling metal wire in them? If so, GREAT. They are rubbish (they shear so easily), and I bought a ton of them before finding out how useless they are. Now I got a good use for them :yikesu: and a day's worth of cutting to look forward to lol.

As for the vortex question, anyone know? From my experiments it seems thin 32mm inlet tubing really makes the vortex spin a lot faster than when using the other extreme at my disposal (110mm sewer pipes). Now what I read is that the speed differential between the inflowing water and the vortex is what causes a 'collision' and that makes heavy particles sink. Thing is, when using thin pipes the vortex spins faster but so does the incoming water, so I got no clue if the speed differential is bigger. Im inclined to think slower is better here, less stirring up dirt, but it would be nice if someone could confirm that?

Also the shape of the vortex; the professional ones all have a large cone at the bottom. And interestingly, its a straight cone, not a parabolic shape as I would have thought. So I assume that shape is only to make sediments slide down to the drain center or does it serve a purpose in how it.. well, works? I got a hard time mimicking a proper cone, but if the only problem is that the dirt settles all over the bottom of the tank, I think I can live with that.

 

[vertigo72]

I have another question: I tried making my own vortex filter by making a glassfibre cone inside a regular 55 gallon ton. It looks rather well, but its not waterproof. Should I be concerned about water getting under the cone (still contained in the barrel) ? I read about still water being bad, as it breeds infections?

Im thinking of either drilling some proper holes in it so there is some circulation (but dirt trapped underneath is likely to stay there forever, or trying to waterproof it with rubson rubber paint or something

Any thoughts?

 

[addy1]

Wish I could help, but I have not made one and don't use one, so no clue. Still water just gets yucky, but if it is always trapped there maybe it would not matter. And most likely not a large amount of trapped water.

 

[vertigo72]

Status report: 3 barrels almost done, I will be adding one or two more in the next weeks, time permitting.

First one (right) is the vortex.



You cant see it well, I coated the cone with rubber paint, but its still not waterproof. I also dont think it will help making particles slide down . I ended up drilling some holes in the cone to let the area between the cone and the barrel flood. Oh well. Also dont mind the weird tubing, I just used some leftovers to control the water height.



This is the middle one, which will be filled with either brushes or maybe PVC rings. I also created a small cone in this one, same principle, except I filled the area below the cone with PU foam. Not a terrible success either, but it will do.





Lessons learned so far:
1. Dont use concave tons like I did !
2. off the shelve vortex filters really arent that expensive :banana:
3. there is no reason to have inlet and outlet tubes on different sides of the barrels. Not sure what I was thinking.
4. Making something properly waterproof is damn hard.
5. using sewer pipes with rubber fittings is a nightmare. Incredibly hard to fit, even harder to remove.
6. Off the shelve multi chamber filters perhaps arent that expensive either heh.

 

[DrDave]

Why didn't you post the photos on this forum? The website where they are takes a very long time to load them.

 

[addy1]

We all learn lessons as we work on a pond

 

[sissy]

some hard lessons some easy to solve .We all learn from our mistakes and we still make more no matter what.How big is your pond or how big is it going to be

 

[j.w]

Hmmmmmmmm, DrDave it took me only a few seconds to load up those pics

 

[addy1]

Yeah loaded fine for me too

 

[DrDave]

Not everyone has the same speed even with cable.

 

[vertigo72]

some hard lessons some easy to solve .We all learn from our mistakes and we still make more no matter what.How big is your pond or how big is it going to be

See post #1. About 40-50k liter i guess,

As for the upload, just a habit. If it loads slow its because they are pretty huge (4000x something).