White foam

[addy1]

Interesting............oh well I don't have DOC's, never have had them in any of my ponds, all had bogs on them. The tds ppm in the water is my pond currently is 20(per my tds meter) way better than the water that comes from our well.

Addy's pond will of course never have foam. But most ponds will eventually at some point for some period of time. Sometimes just for a few weeks, sometimes for months. When it does appear most people seem pretty unhappy.

I thought you posted in a different thread , wb, that I would never have a doc problem...........so now you are saying my bog will create doc's? :dunno:

 

[Shdwdrgn]

In my case, keeping the organic matter out of the pond is simply impossible. Mine sits directly underneath a locust and a pine tree, both of which drop stuff in the water nearly all year. I net out what I can, but that's probably only half of what gets in there. I have the snails in there now, which should help break down the organic matter faster, and I have floss pads in the filters to try and polish the water, but it doesn't seem to be enough. Last year I had obvious particulates in the water, but that was because during the pond build there was a fair amount of dirt that got knocked into the pond. This year I guess it is the dead leaves and pine needles that have sat all Winter in the bottom and now with the warmth, they are breaking down?

 

[Waterbug]

Interesting............oh well I don't have DOC's, never have had them in any of my ponds, all had bogs on them. The tds ppm in the water is my pond currently is 20(per my tds meter) way better than the water that comes from our well.

TDS meters measures total charged ions. Good for salts (nutrient concentration) but only a minor contribution from dissolved organic carbon. They don't detect most organics.

You don't have DOCs??? I assume you mean something more like you don't have what you consider to be high levels of DOCs? DOC particles range from 0.7 microns on down below 0.1 microns. That's smaller than most bacteria and many viruses. Even most drinking water filters won't remove most DOC particles. Rain water falling from the sky contains DOCs. A pond, outside, with plants, fish, fish food, birds visiting and no DOCs is far far outside the realm of reality. I think it's great you don't think your pond has any DOCs, but that's not the same as actually not having any DOCs.

I thought you posted in a different thread , wb, that I would never have a doc problem...........so now you are saying my bog will create doc's? :dunno:

Drunk post or sarcastic if I said that. Sorry if it was confusing...just kind of assumed you'd know I have no way of predicting the future. For the record...I don't.

A DOC "problem" is a relative term. Some pond keepers want very low DOC levels for better fish health. Most pond keepers only consider DOC levels a problem when they're causing foam. I assume there are some pond keepers who could have a foot of foam on their pond and still consider DOC levels to be OK. The world has all kinds of people.

Bogs hold decomposing organic matter. DOCs are produced by decomposing organic matter. So yes, your bog is producing DOCs.

 

[addy1]

oh well then I have doc's, no biggy. The pond water is perfect, every time I test the levels, the fish are happy, the plants are happy, the frogs and snails are happy, I am happy. Hardly any maintenance. No floating foam, no murk, minimal algae, no green water, clear to the eye and camera water.

Pond life here is good.

 

[kougs]

So this is from another forum, owner is Ethan and this is his New and Improved and Cheaper Phoam Phraxionator. Most of what I'm to post is cut and paste from him. I will add some of my pics from my construction just for clarification. FYI, I did not use the 2” uniseal.

So, I got to thinking one day about how when the water gets down to the bottom of the original Phoam Phraxionator Tower, at 1500 gph, it ends up being less about water crashing down through the media, and more like the water sliding down the media. At this point, I believe that the Docs are likely beginning to settle back into the water column, rather than being drawn out to be a “bubble” to be removed from the system.
I talked with a few friends, asking them “where do the bubbles and phoam begin to form in your pond when you have an issue?” The answer, of course is the waterfall. If you have a waterfall, just the crashing down of the water into the water creates enough disturbance that the bubbles form, and the foam begins. Then, I thought, “why in the world do I even NEED a media for this unit?”

SO, the testing began. I built the first one, tested it, and dried it out and sent it yesterday to Flounder. I purchased some cheap supplies:
(1) 6” schedule 35 elbow
(1) 6” schedule 35 Tee (had to use a wye as there were no Tees)
(1) 6” to 4” reducer schedule 35
(1) 3’ Length of 6” schedule 35 pipe
(1) 2 feet of sdr 35 4” pvc
(2) 22.5 degree elbows
(1) 6” PVC schedule 40 CAP
(1) 3” schedule 40 PVC cap
(1) 3” to 2” reducer
(1) 2” 90 degree elbow
(1) 2” uniseal

You will need less than a foot of 3” and 2” PVC, schedule 40, and of course primer and glue. You will also need a jigsaw.

Here’s what you do:



Step one:

Drill using a 1/5” drill bit, around 25 holes in the 3” cap. This will be your spraybar. Attach to the 3” to 2” reducer using a short stump of 3” schedule 40 pipe, around 5-6” worth. Attach the two inch end of the reducer to a 4” piece of 2” schedule 40 PVC. Attach this to your 2” 90 degree elbow.


Step two: LIME GREEN


Take a 20” piece of schedule 35 pvc and drill a 3” hole in it for the two inch uniseal. This hold needs to be around 3” from one end. Make sure it is a clean hole, but know that there won’t be any pressure, as the uniseal is just to get the spraybar in place.

My photo

Here's a detail of step 1:

My photo

Step Three: Black

Glue the opposite end of the 20” piece of PVC into the 6” SDR 35 elbow. Make sure that the hole is at the top, not glued into the elbow, and is facing “away” from the elbow like in the example (Green vertical pipe)


Step Four: Yellowish Orange


Next, glue in a short 10” piece of 6” schedule 35 PVC into the other end of the 6” elbow.


Step Five : RED


Attach the 6x6x6 tee (6x6x4 preferable) to the elbow now. Make sure that the tower is pointing up and the T is on its back pointing up.


Step Six: BLUE


This is the hardest part of the unit. You have to cut a piece of PVC into a “moon” to fit between the Tee and the outlet. This prevents major BUBBLE LOSS. It encourages the bubbles to rise up, bringing the docs with them.
I took a 6” Cap, drilled a tiny hole in the top of it and used a jigsaw to cut the piece out of the cap, as it happened to be the exact size I needed to do this. I glued that into the fitting of the tee, and

My photo

Step 7: PINK


SMOOSH the 8” piece of 6” Schedule 35 pvc into it. This makes your “Phoam Phraxionator Phrontal Phoam Phixer Phit tightly”. It fixes the foam to go upwards, and out.


Step 8: Orange


Next, attach the 6” to 4” schedule 35 reducer to the end of that pipe.


Step 9: Grey


Attach a short piece of 4” schedule 35 PVC (BROWN) into the 4” end of the reducer, maybe 6 inches worth, and attach a 22.5” 4” elbow to the end of the that pipe, facing upwards as shown in grey. Add a small 5-6” piece of 4” schedule 35 PVC to attach the next 4” 22.5 degree elbow. Shown in gray, add the next elbow, facing down, to get the water back into a completely horizontal position.


Step 10:


Add the spraybar by inserting the uniseal into the tower, shoving a one foot piece 2” PVC into it, showing around 1.5” of PVC into the tower. Attach the spray element to it with PVC Glue. Now you have a 2” input to pump around 1500-1800 GPH through the thing (there will be some back-pressure on the pump).



It works well.

My photo

Hope this helps

 

[pecan]

I got rid of my foam by just starting my airstone back up. My water has been clear and the levels have been good, just foam that seems to build up more at night. So yesterday I hooked my airstone (I use in the winter to keep a hole in the ice) back up and almost immidiately the foam disapeered. Woke up this morning and no foam.

That was easy enough and free

 

[Shdwdrgn]

kougs - very cool, thanks for the info! I'm guessing my pond isn't nearly as big as your's, so I'm not sure if I need to build with quite as large of pipe. I have a good selection of 3" and smaller pipe on hand, so I built up a unit today using 3" and 1.5" pipes. After thinking about it for awhile, I thought I might have an idea on churning up the water better. Instead of using a 90 degree elbow (black pipe in the above drawing), I used a second T-pipe with 3" openings on all sides. The T was positioned vertically and I put a cap over the bottom. This creates a small chamber that the water drops into, which should be a lot like water pouring off a waterfall into the pond.

Since I just did a water change last week, I don't really have any foam on my pond right now, so it's hard to tell if this change is working. I do see a little foam trying to form inside the chamber, so maybe? I plan on stirring things up from the bottom of the pond tomorrow, which will release a lot of organics back into the water circulation, and should make the pond foam up again. Guess I'll see if this new contraption works at that point.

 

[Shdwdrgn]

My take on a foam fractionator...

The large pipes are 3". On the left I have a straight pipe, about 18" long, going into a 3" tee. The bottom side of the tee has a short (3") piece of pipe connecting the tee to an end cap. Moving to the right of the tee, another 3" piece of pipe connecting to a 3" tee with a 2" side channel. To the right side of this tee I have a 3.5" disk of PVC with the bottom 1" cut off, then another 3" pipe connecting the tee to a 3"-to-2" adapter, then a short length of 2" pipe to drop the water back into the pond. At the top I have some elbows and short pieces of pipe to route some of the water flow from one of my filters into the spray head.

Detail of how the white disk is placed inside the end of the tee. The water level fills the pipe a little over half way, and while the water flows freely underneath this disk, the foam floating on top of the water is held within the tee and builds up until it pushes out the side port of the tee.

After assembling all the pieces, you can see that the 3" x 2" tee has been set at a 45 degree angle. Depending on your water flow and amount of foam being generated, you may need to position the tee straight up. The spray head was made from a 1.5" pipe cap drilled full of 1/8" holes. Note that 1/8" is too small and keeps clogging from the debris sucked up by my pumps. I am going to have to make a new spray head with 1/4" holes and see if that works better.

A view of the assembled unit sitting beside my filter. Because of the way my filter pipe is split, I'm probably pushing around 750gph through the fractionator.

After running for a couple minutes, you can already see foam building, despite not having any foam on my pond right now. This seems to be about the level of foam that it currently maintains. As mentioned above, I just did a major water change on my pond last week, so there isn't a lot of particulates for the fractionator to work with. It still looks promising, however...

The concept seems simple enough, but I'm still not sure this setup is generating enough foam to actually float out the particulates. I'll just have to keep an eye on it and see how it goes. By the way, since this is a trial project, all of the pieces were simply tapped together. There is no glue on any of the pipe pieces, so I can pull it apart again and try different ideas if needed. Despite the lack of glue, this unit does not leak, so there may not be a reason to ever glue it together.

Criticism welcome, because this is all new to me!

 

[kougs]

I guess so long as it is generating the foam, it's all good. Very nice job on it.

 

[Shdwdrgn]

I drilled out some of the spray-head holes to 3/16" today, and had foam coming out the top within a minute. Guess that's working a lot better now! It looks like this is a very slow process, however, and will take time to clear the particles out of the water. I hope it helps, because my water is still fairly murky this year.

 

[Shdwdrgn]

Just wanted to follow up on this... I still have to clean out the spray head about once a day as the pumps are pushing through algae and such. However the pond is noticeably clearer already. The water doesn't have that brown/green look any more, and the foam coming out almost looks like clean soapy water at this point. I'm just going to leave it running and see if has any affect on algae in the water as well. We're supposed to get up to 90 degrees on Tuesday - gonna be a warm week, so I'll be on the lookup for the green water to start up.

 

[addy1]

fantastic, glad to hear!

 

[kougs]

Kewl, Happy it's working

 

[j.w]

Very good news!