Filtration rates, flow, and other questions

Ya is a great thread....

I guess my question was really around reducing maintenance intervals of external canisters... Air in one is obviously not good but how about...column airation, powerhead filtration, removing fine filter material...

Does anyone have tips to share about delaying the dreaded cleaning process without adversely affecting water quality ?

 

Yeap - big peace of open cell sponge on the intake of the canister's pipe - 10 ppi is good I would not go smaller than 20 ppi - nice block say 100mmx 100mm x Z length. This should give you 5-8 months of maintenance free cansitering depending on the fish and plant stock, also what and how much you are feeding.

 

Yes. Get an eheim Professional 3e. It has a prefilter built into it, it ups the flow rate to compensate for clogging filter media. It has programmable flow rates. You can set it to stream mode, which has 10 seconds of fast flow and 10 seconds of slower flow. It comes with all the filtration media too... I got one today, and I am immensely impressed.

 

Hi

I've read this thread through and through and have the following sump design being built.....

My only question now is: the sump is 90cm (L) x 45cm (W) x 45cm (H). It is going to service 4 tanks of 50cm x 50cm x 50cm. What is a good flow rate? In a previous post prof Bellstedt said that if your sump's surface area is large enough, and the water has sufficient oxygen, you don't have to circulate 3 - 5 times per hour.

Any advice on an optimal flow rate?

Thanks!

 

Personally, i dont like that kind of design, but that is just me, if it works it works....

 

No other feedback?

 

Sean can you PM with pricing ?

Thanks mate

 

I know it's a late reply, but @PappaBear, why don't you add a chamber before the filter media for the water to settle?
Or are you going to make a spray bar to evenly distribute the water over your media section?

 

@Whipme

Yes, the water will be "sprayed" by means of spraybars on the filtration media. will also be putting a airstone or 2 on top of the filtration media.

 

Jaco,

You have now sent me a PM, but I want to reply to your post here.

This thread is 21 pages long and we have thrashed the flow rate to death, it depends on the volume of the filter media that you have, read again please, and I think I am getting pretty close to closing this thread for this reason. The filter bead that you propose is quite large so you can use a lower flow rate.

I do not like the design of your sump, because it does not have enough volume to compensate for the overflow volume from the tanks. If you have a power fail you have the potential of a flood or your filter medium will be pumped dry half the time.

You need quite a fine foam in order to filter the water properly. If you have the overflow from your tanks pounding onto that foam, it will allow fine particles through it and your water will remain murky all the time.

I want to suggest that you add an additional compartment into which the water flows as in my original design on page 7.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Wow, excellent thread. Thanks so much to everyone who added to it, especially you Prof :amuse:

Just one question, how much noise does that homemade siphon make? Thanks.

 

really good stuff
just shows if i had to listen in class what could be achieved science prevails over conventual wisdom

 

What a read!! And I was about to do a DIY sump the wrong way. Thanx for all the contributing parties for all the info.

 

OK wow what a lot of reading...
Just to add my 5c worth in here. Not sure if someone already did "Got tired of reading" but here goes

DIY Nitrate reductor
You can turn a small Canister into a DIY Nitrate Reductor, visit MASA for a Thread posted by Nemo's Janitor.
There is also another way of doing this in the same thread by using 20m Airline pipe 1 X Air line Tap and one really small Powerhead.
I will personally be doing the 20m Airline thing as this seems cheaper than using a Canister.

In the event of a sump being used and you want exact head-loss calculated to be sure you have the flow rate you are looking for use a Head Loss Calculator.

 

Phew, that was a good few hours of reading...and will more than likely have to study some posts a few more times. Thank you to everyone that provided input and shared their knowledge. I certainly have a better understanding now than I did before

 

@TomK......after reading through this the word that sums it up nicely taking everything into account is "velocity" You explained it nicely, I think thats what most battle to understand, confusing the "water velocity" with the flow rate in litres per hour. A Hah

 

Anaerobic filters:This thread has been very informative but I have an academic question regarding anaerobic filtration. How would you do that? I would suppose you would pull water from after the bio filtration as it is now lower in oxygen and separate a portion of that flow into a separate canister with very low flow. This could create a low flow low oxygen environment. That would go back into the sump before your chemical filter? Thinking of a sump here.

 

a sump with a deep sandbed think would be the easiest?

 

All I can say right now is SJOE......

 

@Ryno.....what substrate do you recommend for a DSB.....same as marines ?