Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

That would be nice. I've got an additional height restriction for structures that don't even require a permit.

Thanks for showing me your system scotty very interesting and very well laid out!

Thanks Jamest

Some really bizarre weather here. We've been getting some Temps down in the low teens and setting records based on 1890's to present. Looks like about 6 to 8 inches of snow with another inch expected but haven't heard the official count. Greenhouse door actually froze shut for the first time yesterday. I had to use some warm water to free it and then put a heater in. Set the electric heater up to maintain somewhere between freezing and 45 F. Water got to 35 F before I decided to heat, it climbed to 36 today. I might have gone one more day without heating but decided not to risk it.

Bluegill and Channel Cats are ok but not eating at the moment.

Door was frozen again this evening.

Going to stay cold for a few more days with lows in the teens and single digits. http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/eugene-or/97401/december-weather/330145

Nothing as bad as the upper midwest but bad for here.

Whats the latest Scotty

Hi Charlie,

I have lots of things to get sorted - couple of filter systems, DWC connections, starting seedlings, setting up a dog kennel/chicken coop combo, building a cover for the Recirculating system and finishing the surround for that as well. That's not even a complete list. Not getting enough done so it's a bit of a disaster area here. Still too soon for Spring planting so not much to look at yet either. Probably just as well considering

The main thing right now is the combination static and moving bed biofilter to replace the Radial Flow Filter in the Aquaculture setup.

Nice one, look forward to pics mate

sounds neat care to describe that one?

I noticed my RFF was underperforming but I was catching a lot of solids in the MBBR which was really packed with media. I was in effect getting the rolling action down below the surface but up above that it was acting more like a static filter. I was using a venturi to move and aerate the K2 and wasn't having any issues with Ammonia or Nitrite. It's much easier to clean the MBBR than the RFF but with both you have to drain the whole barrel to really get things clean.

Look over the nexus 220 or 320 and you'll get the idea. There are some neat videos on YouTube showing the cleaning cycle. Very nice and very expensive filters.

It basically just splits the chambers for moving and static media (other filters do this as well). In their filter there are an outer, middle and an inner barrel with a standpipe going down the center back into the outer barrel. The outer barrel has a moving bed and the inner barrel has a static bed. The water comes into the middle barrel, without entering the outer barrel (comes over the top in a channel). It flows around and down until it encounters slots in the inner barrel that allow the flow in where the static K1 media is and it flows through this area where solids are trapped or drop to the bottom. It goes up and over into the standpipe and to the outer barrel. The flow then heads back upward into the moving bed which is constantly being aerated and does the biofiltration before it exits the filter through a screen and into a pipe.

Back flushing is accomplished by turning off the flow, plugging the standpipe out of the inner tank and agitating the media in the inner chamber with air, which frees the trapped solids so they can be flushed away back through the slots to a drain in the bottom of the middle chamber. You can also flush the outer chamber but since it's always moving it's self cleaning and most of the solids are trapped before this stage.

They also have added a bypass directly to the outflow area from the middle chamber so you don't have to be around and can leave on vacation. Probably be a good idea for anyone doing this. In my case I can bypass this filter completely and send everything to the MBBR I already have. If you do something like what I have, you might clean the filter before you go and maintain a reduced flow or at least aerate otherwise I think the bacteria could die off and cause problems. Either way I'd probably flush it when I got back before hooking it back up again.

One other thing - the size of the plastic media affects the size of the particles that are trapped. Smaller media traps smaller solids and may plug too easily. I noticed Nexus is using a smaller media version of K1 for the static portion of this filter. You can buy this micro k1 but it's incredibly expensive and larger K1 will work. Since I'm using K2 I'll have to see how it goes . I believe they also recommend using a UV light after the filter but don't remember for sure.

Cheers.

http://www.evolutionaqua.com/acatalog/Nexus_220.html Holy cow! And you built your own? How long have you been doing Aquaponics? That is a nice but as you say complicated filter.

It's a work in progress and it won't be as nice or work as well as theirs but it should work well enough and not take up as much space. Just using barrels it will be pretty much a ghetto version. If you didn't care about flushing the extra water it would be easy to do something similar in a single barrel where some of the media moves and some doesn't, like what's going on with my regular MBBR. Actually one way I thought about that might work pretty well is to have a barrel with two buckets joined together at their bottoms suspended in the middle of the barrel. The flow would swirl around the outside and then down to the bottom where it enters through holes in the lid and sides of the bottom static bucket, flows upward through small holes through both bucket bottoms into the upper bucket where the Moving bed is. This upper bucket is being aerated continuously and water flows out and down through a standpipe through both buckets and the barrel (you could have it flow out the side if you wanted). The buckets don't have to be the same size if you want more of one type of filtration than the other. Flushes using aeration. It would probably block faster but I may still wind up doing it this way and it would certainly be easier.



I started a few years before I joined the forum.