Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The best sort of help,my daughter gets great pleasure rearranging the plants in the DWC..
Sorry about your greenhouse woes,still onward and upward as they say...

Dasboot,

Yeah I don't think I would trade the aggravation of her helping for anything. And the GH is just a minor setback. As they said about Lee Majors "we can rebuild it, and make it stronger"

My mind often drifts off and thinks of stuff that I had previously seen and how it could be modified to the task at hand. Today I had a though of a cheap, low wattage, poor mans drum filter. Is there any reason this would not work? The belt material could be any flexible mesh screen. So the micron size you specked out would determine how fine a particle you would capture. But with a finer screen you would have to speed up the revolutions of the belt, so it did not have time to clog. The belt would be continuously moving. The motor would be preferably on a rheostat, for fine tuning purposes. The spray bar would not have to be anything really special. Just a pvc pipe with tiny holes drilled in it for even coverage.

Yep that is a good filter design but takes up more room than a drum filter for the same capacity of flow.







Because they are really good at filtering water with a high concentration of solids they are often useded to dewater the solids from RFF and the backwash from all sorts of filters.

I can easily see someone making one and using it in there BY and manually advancing the belt every day or two as it clogged but do you really want to?

brilliant yer wandering mind is

Stu,

I knew I could count on you! Sadly it has already been done Oh well like they say great minds think alike . I was thinking that the top design would be more compact footprint wise, as it would be a vertical drop through system. So possibly smaller than a drum filer. Besides being simpler. Plus way less expensive. With a small solar motor (just enough wattage to turn the belt while loaded) It would cost nothing to run. With nighttime backup power of coarse. (before I was corrected STU love ya man) Constantly running to give a full revolution every 4hrs or less depending on the fish load, and how fine your filter screen is. Overkill but it could not clog and back up that way. Plus keeping it maintained would be a breeze. As there is almost nothing to break. No computers, sensors, you get the idea. Is there any reason given the proper filter screen to do the job. That this could not replace in a normal BY setup the whole line of RFF and the 2 other screen and shade cloth filled barrels drums that usually go before a DWC? That would simplify the system while at the same time leave sqft for more GB room.

Boss,

Thanks for the compliment. Generally I am a build it and see if it works as well as I think it will type of guy. Numbers, formulas, and me don't get along But since I have this vast repository of knowledge on this site to pull from. I don't have to waste money building an idea if it has either been proven not to work, or some physical law that stands in the way of success.

Stu,

Plus it is a way to design around manually cleaning out the screen and shade cloth barrels weekly. I.E. no swimming in fish poo. Which might just be priceless.

Boss,

Have you started to use that liquid liner that you talked about on you thread yet? If so what is your impression on it.

Stu,

Help me understand why these filters must be so huge. To be able to accept the same flow rate as a conventional drum filter. Their must be some hydraulic reason, or some equation that could plainly show the limiting factor. As I was thinking about your comment today I have been tooling around the good old net. And I came across this design. Not the same exactly. But the same basic principle as my top drawing. Water dropped though a filtering screen. Very compact footprint (L x W x H) 65 x 37 x 99 cm 25.5 x 11.8 x 35.4in. Aqua-Forte Ultra Sieve III at 7900gal/hr more of a KOI guy gadget than AP. What am I missing? It has to be some sort of math.

Is that a filter shaped like 1/2 a skate board ramp?

If so again a good simple filter design but they have an inherently high head loss. Not a problem if electricity is really cheap for you. Possibly not a problem I'd you have a Ras system with the side flow having a lot of head loss and ramp filter used only on the side drain.

Personally for all BYAP GBs are better. If you don't have the space for enough GBs then use an RFF followed by a GB.
If you want to concentrate your plant production in NFT or DWC use a RFF to capture the solids and divert them to a MT but then use a small GB or equivalent to polish the rest of the water and be a bio filter before the flow goes on to plant production components.

I've been doing some work on RAS system lately and the thing I'm reminded of with every calculation is how much simpler AP can be when you do away with as many of the traditional RAS components as possible.

I am just trying to find a way to do the traditional RFF, mesh, and shade cloth in a much smaller footprint. With the added bonus of being more self cleaning. To safe me time more than anything else. I saw the Ultra Sieve III and figured I could build it quite cheaply. And let it be gravity filled from my top side drain. so relatively clean water as is. So I could use a 90 micron screen to one step polish the water off going to my DWCs. My SLO will deliver most if not all of my larger solids to the MBs were they could be better used. The sieve screen I found from a manufacturer here in the US relatively cheap. So I just thought a longer design than what they had off my top side drain. Gravity fed off a 3ft long (length of a 55gal drum) waterfall. Made by ripping a slot in a 2in pipe. 2 uni seals for the drains and whala! Poor mans version. One drain to DWC other to MT.
http://sieves-meshes.dualmfg.com/viewit ... are-pieces?

I just had an AH HA moment. So you are telling me to just run my RFF(s) to MBs to DWCs. Forgoe the screen and shade cloth that I am trying to design around. Because in this configuration it is unnecessary.

If the solids are going to GBs why not do away with the RFF entirely?

You would probably want a second gb after the first to polish the water because sometimes fnd beds pick up a few solids when they empty.

The whole point of my deep GBs was to give the system the volume of gravel that was needed for solids processing and to make up the extra growing space required with DWC.

Personally for our use in AP I don't see the need for screen filters.. reason being 1. more energy cost... 2. large investment cost... 3. too many moving parts to worry about for repairs..

A RFF in series with a net filter is pretty pretty cheap which just takes about 5 mins to clean may 1 once a week... and if you size them bigger and design them well... their cleaning can length to once ever two week...

Why complicate it further with expensive stuff especially if you are now getting your feet wet in aquaponics.. understand its complex first then complicate after.

Don't know if you have already seen this filter. But it seems to be a good one. Can be modified to work for us. my home made pond koi filter: http://youtu.be/Ul_oPDh0gh4
I wouldn't move all my solids to a grow bed. If you do you are at some point or another going to overwhelm the growbed and create anaerobic conditions which could hurt your plant growth and fish. Point is to remove solids from system, mineralize separately then introduce the nutrient rich water To system minus solids.