Tank renovation - Filtration

[DHyslop]

No, its just something people do to try to get rid of hair and bubble algae.

Dan

 

[cuttlegirl]

Originally posted by Scouse
I thought, well pictured people with big pans of s.water on the stove boiling away!!!

Yes dear, dinner will be ready soon, just don't try the soup in the BIG pot... What would that smell like???

 

[Scouse]

cuttle girl wrote:

Yes dear, dinner will be ready soon, just don't try the soup in the BIG pot... What would that smell like???

Dunno if you've ever seen the film the Time Bandits?? You sound like the big fellas wife on the boat!! Brilliant!!! (if you havnt you've gotta see it!!)

I know!! Never thought of the smell, that would be mingin!!!

 

[Swarvegorilla]

A cannister is only as good as the media and liverock is only as good as the organisms living on it.
I have pot scrubbers and many other types of nylon sponges in many a saltwater tank. Perhaps the best I have found are these large floor mop sponges. Very tough and very cheap. I used them to set up the saltwater pond filter. The marine bio lab down the road used these orange plastic woven bags that they sell oranges and onions in, in the supermarkets around here. I have also seen shade cloth used but as with all plastics make sure no anti fungals or anti bacterials
As far as ammonia and nitrite changing to nitrate.... well a few air powered sponge filters can do that. May not be pretty but they work.
I'd buy plastic army men before I'd buy bio balls..... but then i have bloody buckets and buckets of balls....

Any build up of mulm will produce high nitrate levels. UGF were well known for this, as people were too lazy to do regular cleanings. The same is true for cannisters.

My whole job is ballancing the poo/poo eaters. I recon octopus tanks do bloody well with fbf. Plus they are super cheap to make.

Nothing will stop you doing water changes. Nitrate levels are just a stable indicator of not just the nitrate levels but all the other random crap building up. If you don't test for it how can you know its not there?

Dilution still is and always will be the solution to pollution. Perhaps the biggest thing I have trouble hammering into customers (fresh and salt) is that you clean your filter media in water from the fishtank. Not under the sink in chlorinated water. Keep the poo eaters alive and it matters not what they grow on.

Live rock may keep tanks stable... but it is tricky to use it as bio media. Definitely creates a better ecosystem but seriously an old school platform filter with some colonised filter sponge in it removes ammonia and nitrite far more effectively. As for nitrate reduction... well it varies so much from tank to tank. SOme of my tanks are great but most I still water change. Even a rockpool gets 2 big water changes a day minimum so I try for 20% every 2 weeks on my occy.
Yes thats around a 150L water change.... probably obscene to most of you but me feather worms and squirts love me for it. Keeps my nitrates below 20ppm always. My liverock could be reducing this a lot more but I can't blast it with metal halides at the moment. It's a hot summer here atm and I'm even removing powerheads that are generating too much heat.


ah well theres my late nite 2c

 

[Scouse]

Swarvegorilla Wrote:

As far as ammonia and nitrite changing to nitrate.... well a few air powered sponge filters can do that. May not be pretty but they work.

Intrestin observations there mate, just try to get me head round an air powered filter...whats all that about then? Cant picture one.

Cheers

 

[Illithid]

Air powered sponge filters I have seen were basically a powerhead (but not a powerhead) with a sponge prefilter, but used air to move the water instead of a impeller.

Picture a undergravel filter with a sponge at the bottom of the up tube-same thing but cheap and compact.

I took it to mean any cheap filter that moves water with a sponge (or plastic army men ) that can hold bacteria.

 

[Swarvegorilla]

yea theres a hundred different types. I make my own for koi ponds. Basically you inject air into an uplift tube. The air rises and displaces water which is drawn in thru the sponge. Same principle as an UGF but using sponge makes it easier to remove and clean.

It's all poo in water and the best thing I ever did was go for a tour at the local sewrage farm. Hey even they didn't know someone might want to come for a tour!!
Those guys know how to process poo in water hey and it's kinda funny how all our wizz bang new aquarium filters are old school waste water things.

Brought in a squeezed sponge water sample and had the lab girl give me filter a nod. That'll treat ya poo, she said!
Now if I can just work out how to build a mini water wheel i am good to go!

As a side note heard a classic story about these drug dealers who got done in the states. They tipped all these gnarly chems down their dunny. The chems wiped up the bio filtration at the sewrage farm. Made a VERY smelly mess so they sent council workers out and by testing water at ever junction they managed to find the dealers house and take him down. I thought that was pretty cool but then yea....

 

[DHyslop]

So I drew up these diagrams of two bioball options. A standard 5 gallon bucket is used for the chamber. Note I've drawn an external horizontal overflow, that's not set in stone but it would make escape-proofing easier.

Let me know what everyone thinks. Should I go with one of these or bite the bullet with a canister?

Dan

As of about an hour ago my new system is up and running. It closely resembles option B in my graphic, with a few modifications: the pipe that drains the biotower flows directly into the skimmer to reoxygenate the water. It has its own little overflow directly before the skimmer because more water is flowing through than the skimmer can handle.

I will hopefully have pictures in the next few weeks, but I have made a horizontal external overflow which, albeit is quite a bit risky, I believe will make it easier to octo-proof. In the mean time I'm working to reduce noise and microbubbles, both of which are related to eachother and are substantial. Basically I need to find the sweet spot for the T where the drain enters the sump. My 5 gallon bucket biochamber is only half full with bioballs so there is also substantial noise there with water falling from the tray (I'm using a plastic collander that fits right over the bucket rim with a circle of flossy filter inside). I don't want to add more bioballs immediately, so I might mitigate this by getting another strainer, trimming it so it fits in the bucket, and using it upside-down as a plenum underneath the bioballs.

Dan

 

[Swarvegorilla]

noise is always the tricky one
if you can get a larger overflow surface area you don't get 'waterfalling'.
Its explained better here but it helped me cut noise about 50%
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-07/gt/index.php
Sounds like a beast.... how come you don't want to load up with bioballs yet? Or even pour it onto sponge instead of collander.
I dunno prob not helping here, hope the links handy tho, helped me out.

 

[DHyslop]

Most of the noise was from water entering the sump (the black cloud to Mr. Durso's silver lining!) and has been taken care of now.

I think you're right that I can reduce some of my overflow noise by raising the level in the overflow. Right now I'm using Hofer standpipes which are very quiet, but I'm worried limit flow (it works just fine now, but I want some redundancy if one gets clogged) so I'm going to replace them with two dursos tonight, which will also raise the water level in the overflow and reduce some noise there.

The loudest component is still the biotower. The water does indeed go through a spongy prefilter that lies in the colander. I did go ahead and fill it with bioballs (I just wanted to save some money by delaying that action). I will probably just hide the noise from the tower by making a foam box around it.

Dan

 

[Feelers]

Hey Dan what size return pump are you running? I'm kinda getting worried about the whole noise thing, my tank's about 80G, and my return pump is about 2000gph. If this is fed into the bioball tower will it be incredibly noisey? I will be having the tank in my room, so I spose I had better think about this.
I think I'm gonna run 2 dursos, in the corners. But other than that, I'm unsure.

 

[Swarvegorilla]

Ya never know how noisy it will be until you build it.... or how quiet you can get it until you have toyed with it for 6 months.
Reading about this stuff does my head in.... much better on the ground.

 

[DHyslop]

2000 gph? Holy cow, I hope you mean liters per hour! I'm running a Mag 7 which theoretically gives 700 gph at zero head loss. Based on my return-line size, length and elbows, I believe I am actually getting somewhere in the range of 350-400 gph.

I wouldn't run 2000 gph through the sump even with a reef tank! As a ceph-keeper, you only need enough flow to keep your skimmer happy (Aqua-Medic says to run ~150 gph through my turboflotor!) and prevent too many deadspots in the display.

If you're running a pump that big, you're not only going to have lots of noise, but the entire system will be full of microbubbles because of how fast the water is moving through the sump.

Dan

 

[Feelers]

Its rated at 8200Lph, 2000gph at zero head. It will be pumping 2 meters(roundabouts ), which should decrease the flow a little, and I am considering splitting the return. Its a pretty nuts pump , I think it can pump water up to 7.5 meters high, I got it new for about $100USD. Its a Laguna 7.

I was possibly thinking of a "squid" current maker thingy too.
Do you think I should put another baffle into the sump ? At the mo I have three.

 

[bigGdelta]

2000 gph in an 80 gallon. Man, you could just about surf in there.