Block built filter debate

[Gazza]

Hi Chrissy,

Would you be pointing the finger at me young lady ill hold my hands up no problem i am always willing to stick my foot in my mouth its just pulling it out thats the problem

I will be totally honest i still have my reservations but as always am willing to learn as i am a relatively newbie to this.Ive had many discussions with dealers and pond builders who have and did steer me away from BB but as i have said before i haven't got the room for BB filters anyway.

Perhaps they are as good if not better than "modern" filters and i would have less maintenance to do,Ive spent the last two years fiddling with filtration and water to try to get the best/cleanest system and pond i can and i would hope to thing my water with my small vortex units is fairly good

[chr1ssy]

Hi Gazza and all

I am not pointing fingers at anyone in particular nor am I suggesting everyone change there filters, its down to personal choice. Who how and where you draw your own conclusions from.

Being a woman when told I am doing something wrong I do take it personally .

It is nice to see more people mixing and sharing information, at the end of the day we are all striving for the same results. Happy Healthy Koi

[Shaun]

Hi Bob
Like a lot of others my settlement chamber has a flat bottom to it with a 2â€Â

[Bob Hart]

Hi Shaun,

Thanks for the pictures and I can see how much muck is settled out in your chamber. I am still skeptical as to whether I really have enough room with a turnover of 5100 gallons/hour, we'll have to see though. My 3 x 4" bottom drain all point upwards as they enter my filter, so that could be in my favour.

How do you 'flush' you bottom drain pipework? I take it to do this you have to empty the sttlement chamber first? I dont know what % of your total water this is, but for me it is likely to be in the 8-10% range. It will take me a good few days to top up at the flow rates on my top-up, so this is another concern.

[greg]

Removed.

[dho]

My neigbour has a big settlement chamber, about 20ft by 10ft, which he only vacuum out every 3 months or so. His water is gin clear and he hardly ever does any maintenance. This settlement chamber is more commonly known as, you guessed it, the bottom of the pond.

Sorry couldn't resist.

More seriously though what is the difference between whether the crap is in the settlement chamber or the bottom of the pond? That is what I cannot get my head round. For me the faster I get rid of the crap the better. Why go through all the effort of putting the bottom drains in only to move the crap a few feet and leaving it there. It is like sweeping the dirt under the carpet, the room is perfectly clean as long as you don't look under the carpet.

I wonder what the wife would think if I swept everything under the carpet and vaccuum under there once a week. I know that is stretching the analogy a bit but the settlement chamber is essentially the carpet that you hide all the muck under. The bigger the carpet the more muck you can hide under there before you will need to clean it but the muck is there all along.

So after 40 years of koi keeping the latest in filter development is to use the bottom of your pond as a settlement chamber and have mid water feeds. Save yourself a lot of money, no bottom drain, no extra settlement chamber. Now that you don't need the extra space for the settlement chamber, what an excuse to make your ponds deeper and bigger, also the bigger the surface area and the deeper the settlement the better it works. No wonder they make the mud ponds so big and deep in Japan. Come to think of it they don't even need a filter. I know fashion comes around every 40 years or so, but I didn't realise filter designs do too.


P.S. Do not take the above ranting too seriously as they are just my loopsided view on this topic.

P.P.S. I have nothing against Block build filters (I have one), just settlement chambers (I had one) in particular.

[greg]

Removed.

[james west]

I would like to say this topic is very interesting, I also have been to ****** koi and seen their filter set-up, yes it does work well, but it does take up a lot of space .my own opinion however, why reinvent the wheel. How would it be approached by industry? This link explains the mathematics of settlement .
http://www.hoffland.net/src/el/3.xml
also their link to gravity filter I find is very interesting approach to the problem of sand filters.
http://www.hoffland.net/src/el/7.xml

shaun, looking at the picture of your settlement chamber it appears to have a turbulent flow…..not the best for settlement.
Gazza / bob, because the flow of water channels from inlet to exit point the debris that drops out of suspension is not technically constantly polluting the water. However when using static k1 we are trapping the debris within the natural path of flow.

If I was to consider using a settlement chamber myself,(as large as Richdons) without baffle plates and plenum, I think I would incorporate a further refinement to it by having an under bed sand filter as the exit to the settlement chamber.
filtering down to 5 microns !!!!
Try these links…
http://www.oasisdesign.net/water/treatment/ ... filter.htm
http://www.slowsandfilter.com/lssf.html

would you drink your filtered water?
the downside to this technology is balancing the flow rate with the effective capacity of the filter design.

I personally have tried over the years most forms of filter design, cross flow filtering (sieves) , home made ozone (Only £100 for transformer) bag filters and sand pressure filters. I am currently using baki shower (with home made bhm, with the centre hole) into an air flocculation chamber to utilize the natural protein skimming action of the shower, then into a large static k1 chamber then into a final settlement chamber, but because the k1 is like a large diffuser the settlement chamber is quite small as the retaining wall for the k1 is wind break material there is no transfer port to accelerate the flow and destroy the settlement. I run a similar set up on the skimmer line but instead of feeding into a shower it goes into a sieve. Both systems sit on a 3’ x 3’ foot print. I clean the sieve most days and vacuum the settlement every 14 days . My tds is 70, kh 1.5 and calculated gh 2.5, ph 7.2, sorry, I don’t test orp. 40 ton pond…9,000 gallons.

I am monitoring the condition of the static k1 as to the frequency I will need to flush it. I don’t wish to flush too often as it is only catching fines and is not the primary mechanical filter. My aim is to leave alone as long as possible, after reading the report on green water on koiquest. The feed water into it is massively aerated from the flocculation and I have the option to turn on ozone if needed, but I am trying to let it find its natural balance.

This does appear to work well for me, and after spending large sums of money on equipment that doesn’t live up to expectations, ie answer, pressure filter, custom designed systems,etc. I am happy with current setup.

[dho]

This thread is getting more and more interesting.

I have no doubt that settlement chambers work. My problem is the size of them in order for them to work. My other problem is that I do not like the idea of all the fish doings sitting there for weeks on end. When I was running my undersized settlement chamber I was getting a covering of about a couple of cm even though I clean it twice a week. So even if I had a settlement chamber twice the size(that would make it 8ft by 4ft by 5ft deep) and clean it once a week I would still have 2 cm of crap all over the bottom. Maybe if I left it a little bit longer the fish poo will disintegrate but I have never been brave enough to leave it for longer.

James, were you serious about a under bed sand filter. You haven't been talking to George from the YKS have you.

[james west]

Dho, no not totally serious about underbed sand filter, though they have been the answer to in pond filtration in the 70’s. Out of pond within an enclosed system the debris that builds up on them is actually beneficial to the filtering process, but the down side is the physical surface area needed to process the flow rates we require. Catch 22, high flow rates for biological, low flow rates preferred for mechanical other wise it gets pounded into a soup. Set your flow rate too slow and you get too much settlement in the pond.
But what a bonus if space is no object, then filtered water suitable for drinking and a parasite trap!!!!

What I like about the gravity sand filter option offered by hoffland is all the benefits of a sand filter in a small foot print plus the self flushing process would also act like a foam fractionator. So what to do with the backwash water, too much to return to waste, don’t like the idea of feeding it straight back into a plain settlement chamber, as they suggest, because of the “soup effectâ€Â

[greg]

Removed.

[Gazza]

Hi Guys yes this is a great debate and well done to all for taking part i think we are all learning

Hi Shaun yes we can see how much settles out in you system how long does it take to be like that and how often do you Hoover

James it sounds like you i like trying many ways of filtration and something that can be great fun and very worthwhile.I understand where you are coming from with the settlement and the K1 theory about water going over or through but at the end of the day the water is still in contact with both but agree perhaps the media that the water is going through could be worse especially if left to long.I have static K1 and this is cleaned regularly but i do know this could be left for longer if i needed but i personal like to get the waste out of my system ASAP which on a small filtration system is a good idea...i think

Is you water naturally soft James as thats a nice TDS and shame you don't test ORP as it can be a very useful tool no mater what size pond.

Greg i think food can make a difference in waste but most good systems will deal with it once its settled down but i do agree there are some that defiantly do make toooo much waste


Even with my small filtration set up my system can handle a fair amount of food and fish and i think a lot of this is down to my maintenance and keeping on top of things as i do believe that the smaller filtration system be it Nexus,BB,Vortex,MB system need to be maintained correctly like anything if you want quality water and healthy fish I have taken in four fish this year for a friend who is building a new pond these are all nice size fish which where from 45cm-60cm (which are considerable larger now )due too this and wanting to test some food rates out i have been feeding rather heavy.

My pond is 4500gls and in total there are 17 fish in there with the smallest being 45cm and the largest at 75cm so a good head of fish and during the sumer i started to run out of food and although i had not scientifically measured this out we was feeding nearly a Kilo a day..........yes i did say a Kilo trust me i couldn't believe it myself as i buy food in 15kg sack and had to borrow some from Bob as the two i had bought run out in a month basically See both i and my wife feed the fish and she had been taking our son out more in the summer to feed them as he like throwing the food in as well

Now in all that time i had no spike or any change to the water parameters (which i check on a regular basis) and i also run some monitors 24/7 for ORP/TDS & PH and all stayed spot on and the pond stayed clean without the use of any chemicals,clays etc just clean good water and maintenance.

[Shaun]

Hi Bob
Yes you are right I have to empty the settlement chamber first to flush the bottom drain pipework, When I started building the filter and putting the pipe work in I was going to have a T piece on the 4â€Â

[Bob Hart]

Shaun,

Thanks for the update mate.

Greg has described how he flushes his bottom drain pipework without draining the whole settlement chamber and I'd probably have to do similar to Greg.

[Shaun]

Gazza
The build up in the settlement is one week,and i dont hoover i just sweep it towards the waste with a soft brush works fine if i dont want to empty the whole settlement.
Regards, Shaun.