Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I was going with the Sweetwater brand, but then saw a review of Gast, that said they were more reliable and lower energy consumers.

I presume this is to blow back your filter, i use my 1200 w wet and dry shop vac for the job. Not running more than 5 minutes for full filter clean so little energy used each time. The first time I used it, it forced the matting and shade cloth up so it did not clean properly. Had to fix supports to hold the filter material in place then worked a treat.

No, it's an air supply for the RAS they are usually 70-100 cfm http://pentairaes.com/sweetwaterr-regen ... -duty.html

That's some blower, have fun. Cheers

Sweetwater is a great brand. I've seen some last over 20 years!

Sure you need something that big Chris?

Also be prepared for some noise

Yeah, I know they're noisy. Thinking about mounting it outside the building in a small vented box. No, I'm not sure about size. The Pentair guy said it was too SMALL based on the 4- 1000 gallon tanks, 6- 250 fingerling and 6- 125 gal fry tanks. But, I'm going to start with this one. and check D.O. closely.

They size with a fairly large safety factor so not surprised.

Shoot me a PM with your max stocking density (weight) in each tank and Ill take a look for you tonight

Thanks Rhino!

See if you can get yourself a second hand bouncy castle blower, you can sometimes pick them up for bugger all and they shift a lot of air, not sure of the depth they can pump to but holding up a castle with a lot of kids jumping up and down would indicate they have some capability. I often thought about running a line into the pond to test them but I reckon it would scare the crap out of the fish:)

I thought about it Sleeoe, but those blowers aren't rated for continuous duty, and have a potential for oil contamination. Not worth the risk for eventually almost 7000 fish.

@coachchris

where is this gast review you found ?

ironically enough after collecting over 200 blow specs every gast spec beat any other blower by 2x the performance / watt

I have ordered a few gasts from USA
The only gast I could find in Au where the R1102 @ 90 watts ..
this small beast is not much use below 1 foot water depth however
but 200+ lpm for under 100 watts is pretty good ~ 3lpm per watt
strangely enough these R1102 floating around are HOSPITAL surplus !!!

the R2103 gast pump I found to be the most economical @ 150 watts !! and does 3.3 lpm / watt @ 20 inch
I am only after 12' depth so I will be getting over 4.7 lpm / watt @ over 700 lpm


but if you're after 1hp ~750 watt range R4P series it's twice the performance of sweetwater blowers

http://www.gastmfg.com/support_documents/LTD178rB.pdf

40 inch 1415.84235 lpm 750 watts 1.88 lpm/watt
30 inch 2123.76352 lpm 750 watts 2.83 lpm / watt
20 inch 2265.34776 lpm 750 watts 3.02 lpm / watt

random sweetwater series 2 blowers @ 20 inch
20 inch 453.069552 lpm 300 watts 1.5 lpm / watt
20 inch 1132.67388 lpm 690 watts 1.64 lpm / watt
20 inch 2406.931995 lpm 1610 watts 1.49 lpm / watt
20 inch 3737.823804 lpm 2760 watts 1.35 lpm / watt

your link was dead now but assuming it was for S41
I must admit it reached 2 lpm / watt around 20" and dropped below 1.5 lpm / watt after 30"
but I have 2x different charts for that same pump with completely different specs :S
also keep in mind we are 50hz and they mostly list the 60hz curve

so that s41 poops out in AU around 38" vs 52" @ 60hz

how ever i just noticed something i missed the s41 seems to idle around 450watts

currently I have 245 blowers on my spreadsheet now