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Filtration
- Do It Yourself |
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An
Article by Andreas Iliopoulos
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The average commercial
filters either have limited capacities, or they do not have
the utilities of a self-made filter. So what does an aquarist
do when he has to support a tank with a larger water volume
than usual? What can you do if the tank you want to support
demands some functions that the filters on the market do not
have?
Or perhaps there are filters that look capable to run your tank, but
their cost is more than you can afford.
Then: Do It Yourself.
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First of all, you have to know what kind of tank are you going to run,
which filter type are you going to use, and which way are you
going to install it in your system.
There are three types of suitable filters. One type can be put inside the tank, while two others can be
installed outside the aquarium.
These filters can be built in one narrow side or in the
back of the tank and covered (there are many ways and
materials for such purposes) and can easily be made from glass
plates.
The inside self-made filter can be an ordinary internal filter with at
least four compartments (maybe five for marine tanks). The
inlet of such a filter can be at the lower part of the water
column, or both the lower and the upper parts, or, finally, we
can manage the filter to utilize the entire water column.
We achieve this by letting the water pass through openings at the front
glass plate, then through screens in the filtering area. We
can force water to pass trough the media compartments with a
snake like movement, either vertically or horizontally. The
advantage of the horizontal way, if the inlet of the filter is
the entire water column, is that we may run the tank with the
water at a very low level, as long as the water pump that
returns the water to the tank after its travel through the
media is submersed. We can use this utility in order to make a
special treatment (bath or dip) or just to use less drugs for
less water volume.
The first chamber is used for mechanical filtration, so we fill it with
aquarium moss or suitable sponges. We put the chemical media
filtration in the second chamber and porous materials, for the
nitrifying bacteria colonies, in the third one. The last
compartment houses a water pump with a turnover rate of three
to five times the total water volume per hour. The volume of
the biological substratum must be at least 17% of the water
volume we have to deal with.
For a marine tank, a fifth compartment must be in between the mechanical
and the chemical media compartments, as well as have the
skimmer installed in it. An efficient skimmer device must have
twice the capacity of the water volume we want to skim and the
venturi skimmers are preferable.
We
can maintain wet – dry procedure within the tank if we force
water to pass through the biological chamber from a higher
level through a narrow opening and via the screen with holes
drilled on it. We
can make the water travel both vertically and horizontally in
this case, and the volume of the biological substratum can be
from 2% to 8% of the total water volume instead of the 17%
that we must use in the first case. |
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We can install such filters
outside the aquarium, either over or under the tank.
The over tank filter is by nature a wet – dry one, because the water
that is driven from the tank up wards to the filter body
returns to the tank with the help of gravity.
So if we force water to pass from the top side of the filter through a
screen with holes drilled on it, and we put three traces so
that water can pass through them, and have one filtering media
under the other (the first with mechanical media, the second
with chemical media and the third one with some suitable media
to get colonized from nitrifying bacteria), keeping some
distance between them, then water shall return to the tank
from the bottom side of the filter from a hole we have drilled
on the bottom glass, forced by its weight. The media are not
submerged but water drips like rain through them and continues
to drift back to the tank. Always, the outlet of a filter like
this has to be twice the inlet, and if it is designed to be
covered, then an air hole has to be drilled on the cover glass
to suck air into the media container.
The same way, we build a
sump (this is the name for a filter placed under side the
tank). In this case we drive the surface water through an
overflow to the first (mechanical) chamber of the filter. We
have to calculate the water volume that is driven in the
filter through the overflow, so we shall build the filter tank
big enough to hold this amount of water without the fear of
overflowing and turning our house into a pond in the case of
power failure, which would cause water pump that returns
filtered water back into the tank to stop.
So, after the mechanical filtration, the water passes through screens to
the chemical media chamber, the biological substratum, and
finally to the water pump’s compartment that is employed to
return the filtered water back into the tank.
We
can build (for marine tanks) a skimmer chamber in between the
mechanical and chemical ones, and, of course, we can build it
(as mentioned above) in a way that the biological substratum
is not submerged but in a wet – dry condition.
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| If you
decide to run your tank this way you will have the opportunity
to build a powerful polymorphic filter suitable for keeping
your system clean and clear with less money that you would
spend buying and installing one or more of the available
commercial filters. |
| MCH
short notes about the author. Andreas Iliopoulos is
a friend of
MCH since the very early stages
of its development. He is one of the very few people who have
kept almost every kind of fish under varying conditions.
Struggling with his own site didn't allow him the time to
write some articles for us. After a close "pressing"
(phone calls, E-mails, meetings, discussions and finally,
threats) for some time now he finally took the correct decision.
We hope that many more articles will follow this one. Welcome
on board Andreas. |
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