Moving Bed & Algae Scrubber combo filter

[amwassil]

LOL! Correct, no intention to eat turtles. Be sure to start a new thread to document your project. I'm sure all here will be most interested to follow your progress. And, you're welcome!

[amwassil]

Dec01 Water params

1. pH: 7.2
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): 40+
5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.0

For some reason the pH dropped to 6.1 before my Nov01 tests. I didn't do anything about that until today. From my recent experience with the two drops in another tank, I added some baking soda to raise the pH, hoping that will stimulate the algae. I'm getting a nice crop of hair algae each week, so maybe it's already eating the nitrates but it was so high to begin with I can't measure the decrease accurately yet.

[amwassil]

I just upgraded the MBBR attached to my 80 gallon fish tank from a 5 gallon bucket to a 10 gallon Brute garbage can. This in preparation to adding a new algae scrubber design to the system. Here's the new moving bed filter:



In the first photo it is not clear, but the pump is suspended and not touching the wood underneath it. The second photo shows the water return from the filter via 2" ABS pipe. Third photo shows the overturning Helix media and the screen over the outflow pipe end. The media is nicely colonized, as you can ascertain from the brown colour. I will soon turn off the Marineland C360 and let the MBBR take over completely. When I do that, I will monitor water params daily until I'm assured that the MBBR can maintain them.

I've almost completed the new algae scrubber, which I will describe in a separate thread. I haven't finished it yet because I am still deciding how best to put it inline with the MBBR. Most likely I will pump water from the Brute to the scrubber and dump the scrubber directly into the aquarium. I'd prefer to dump the scrubber back into the Brute rather than directly into the aquarium, but I want to incorporate a filter sock to catch algae debris and that would take up a fair amount of space which might interrupt the water movement within MBBR too much. But I haven't made a final decision yet and if I can figure out how to build a compact sock filter unit, I may still end up dumping the scrubber directly to the Brute instead.

[SantaMonica]

That's a good size can. I like large filters.

[amwassil]

I think I have figured out how to attach my new scrubber directly in/out of the MBBR, using a 2" diameter ABS pipe to hold the filter sock under the return. Unfortunately, although I have pretty much finished building the scrubber except for hoses to/from the MBBR, I can't continue until I move my two dwarf gouramis back to their permanent tank. The temporary bowl is sitting in the space I need for the new scrubber and I don't have any other place for the bowl. Hopefully this coming week I'll be able to rearrange things a bit to accommodate the new scrubber.

[Gigaahxl]

I absolutely LOVE seeing great design and engineering put to good use with inexpensive materials. Bravo. The suspended pump is excellent. I assume both the suspension of the pump and its seperation from the system on both inlet and outlet by rubber hose is for noise and vibration. I'm certian that is effective. Can you give me an idea of how effective you feel it is? Love it.

[amwassil]

I absolutely LOVE seeing great design and engineering put to good use with inexpensive materials. Bravo. The suspended pump is excellent. I assume both the suspension of the pump and its seperation from the system on both inlet and outlet by rubber hose is for noise and vibration. I'm certian that is effective. Can you give me an idea of how effective you feel it is? Love it.

Thanks. Yes, the silicone tubing makes everything much quieter and eliminates about 90+% of pump vibration. If you haven't looked at previous posts, in post #24 of this topic, you can see the suspended pump of the bigger MBBR that's attached to my turtle tank. I had originally used reinforced poly tubing. I was not happy with that because it transmitted the vibration pretty much full bore. Noise is a big concern for me because I work all day in the same room with these water pumps. I'm a happy camper now. The sound of falling water is louder than the sound of water and air pumps.

[amwassil]

Jan01 Water params

1. pH: 7.0
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): 40+
5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.0

[amwassil]

Feb01 Water params

1. pH: 7.0
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): 40+
5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.0

Dolomite has proven to be a disappointment. I think the stuff dissolves too slowly for the calcium and carbonate to buffer the pH and keep calcium levels up. So I'm now trying powdered cuttlebone. I just break off a piece and grind it into a powder with my mortar and pestle. The stuff is quite soft and grinds up very easily. I mix the powder in a little aquarium water to get it saturated before adding it slowly to the aquarium in front of the filter outflow pipe. The water gets a bit cloudy but clears up within an hour or two. I'll report at the beginning of next month whether or not it's better than the dolomite.

[amwassil]

Feb07

I added a filter sock to the drain in the scrubber box when I cleaned the scrubber last week. It has cut down on the amount of algal fragments getting into the MBBR and the turtle tank. That reduces the amount of algae that ends up clogging the Hel-x media, which I've been picking out manually each week, and the amount of algal debris in the prefilter in the tank input. So I'm happy with all that. Here's a photo of the sock attached with rubber bands before I cleaned the scrubber yesterday: