REACTORS- Filtration for stingrays

[Tor-Eriik]

Started looking at this thread but it is way to long too totally read through. Started reading about traffic jams and found that weird as that is something I've never seen in mine. Currently I'm using a 50 gallon rubbermaid garbage can with 5 large round airstones fed from an ap-100 pump which only supplies a fraction to the airstones. My inlet is on the bottom and as soon as it comes in it 90's to keep the water circling. My outlet is a prefilter for a sump pump found at the farm supply companies out here that has a 2" npt male connector on it and a mesh style barrel filter housing. My inlet is a partial feed found after my pool sand filter outlet. Everything works great except most my bio actually lives in my pool sand filter so I need to revamp putting my inlet for my reactor before my sand filter inlet and then through a mechanical filter. My sand filter will support more bio than my tank puts out but come backwash time I loose alot of my bio down the drain. I've got at least 5 cubic feet of k1 and biochips in the reactor. When I was backwashing daily and doing large waterchanges for breeding my pool sand filter would loose most of it's bio and the reactor took over and worked perfect. Not sure on the points I'm making but just putting it out there if people have question. And if you don't know me my tank is 2200 gallons and has some massive rays and fish with about 4 lbs of food a day when rays aren't pregnant.

PICTURES pleace? They say more then a thousand words!

 

[Miguel]

of course you have less traffic jams, in a round container..

it is the corners that do it, imho...

 

[DB junkie]

of course you have less traffic jams, in a round container..

it is the corners that do it, imho...

Thinking more about your cube..... The bulkhead fitting that's the drain, maybe an elbow off it and run a drain to the bottom of the tank. Use a "T" off the outlet side of the fitting for a standpipe/siphon break so water doesn't siphon, then drop your incoming water in the corners, airstones in the middle, should turnover really nice, water pushes media down in all 4 corners, air brings it back up in the center......

 

[Miguel]

I have solved it DB.....Just have a slight traffic jam on the upright top corner.

Drainage is going through the bottom, so floating K1 going through the drain is no longer a theme.

I also added about ten big bioballs ( the black ones ) to the mix. Their revolving in the midst of the K! helps diminsihing the risk of traffic jams....

 

[DB junkie]

I have solved it DB.....Just have a slight traffic jam on the upright top corner.

Drainage is going through the bottom, so floating K1 going through the drain is no longer a theme.

I also added about ten big bioballs ( the black ones ) to the mix. Their revolving in the midst of the K! helps diminsihing the risk of traffic jams....

Just like the chips seemed to do in my application.....

I know when I plum the current project reactor I'll likely be dumping water into the corners of the acrylic 55. Will just dump water down on to the "traffic jam" areas and problem solved.

Already have (2) 9" bubble disks plummed through the bottom of the tank so there's no plumming inside the tank. The output is a bulkhead up in the top corner, BUT I cut an acrylic overflow box out of another tank and flipped it upside down, glued into that corner and to the top of the tank and covered the opening at the bottom with mesh. Water is now drawn off the bottom.

 

[DIDYSIS]

Thoughts on which air pump??

The price is not a worry to me, but if I can save the extra watt usage I would like that, I plan to be turning over about 2-3 cubic feet of media and this media is more like k3 then k1 in size about a nickle, the issue I have is that its in my sump (fluidized bed more then a reactor I would call it) so already flowing 4000+ gallons of water through it an hour, Strainers on each side (egg crate) that allow as much water flow through and it while not holding up flow or making it suck water through with higher pressure, But still with all the flow in the 125 gallon sump and just a couple power heads pushing stuff around the media clogs at the end of course. So want to build a pvc air unit and have this power it and push the media around. Right now I am using about 3 feet of the sump as a reactor. I am thinking the larger pump but would love the power power usage of the 3 unit and the 5 might just be over over kill. Thanks all for input

EcoPlus Commercial Air 3 - This unit opperates on 35.0 watts of electricity per hour. With 65 liters per minute total output at 3.9 PSI per outlet. Comes with 6 outlet plastic manifold that uses standard airline tubing. Will run up to 70 outlets

EcoPlus Commercial Air 5 - This unit opperates on 80.0 watts of electricity per hour. With 88 liters per minute total output at 4.2 PSI per outlet. Comes with 8 outlet plastic manifold that uses standard airline tubing. Will run up to 95 outlets

 

[Reedmaster16]

Thoughts on which air pump??

The price is not a worry to me, but if I can save the extra watt usage I would like that, I plan to be turning over about 2-3 cubic feet of media and this media is more like k3 then k1 in size about a nickle, the issue I have is that its in my sump (fluidized bed more then a reactor I would call it) so already flowing 4000+ gallons of water through it an hour, Strainers on each side (egg crate) that allow as much water flow through and it while not holding up flow or making it suck water through with higher pressure, But still with all the flow in the 125 gallon sump and just a couple power heads pushing stuff around the media clogs at the end of course. So want to build a pvc air unit and have this power it and push the media around. Right now I am using about 3 feet of the sump as a reactor. Any ideas as you have played with it more, I am thinking the larger pump but would love the power power usage of the 3 unit. Thanks

EcoPlus Commercial Air 3 - This unit opperates on 35.0 watts of electricity per hour. With 65 liters per minute total output at 3.9 PSI per outlet. Comes with 6 outlet plastic manifold that uses standard airline tubing. Will run up to 70 outlets

EcoPlus Commercial Air 5 - This unit opperates on 80.0 watts of electricity per hour. With 88 liters per minute total output at 4.2 PSI per outlet. Comes with 8 outlet plastic manifold that uses standard airline tubing. Will run up to 95 outlets

I still run that same air pump (eco 3) for my 50g reactor. I have another that runs some of my airstones as well. They've been going for over a year now. It was a good value for the price and output but I will soon be replacing them with higher end quieter pumps. One of the eco 3's has become rather noisy the past couple months but I expected it due to it being a cheaper pump. No complaints though on the purchase, it worked well for what I planned to use it for.

I run a alita-40 on another reactor and a pondmaster 100 on the big tank filter. All the air pumps supply air to both reactors and air disks so there should be plenty of output from any of the above models. The alita is rather expensive but you get what you pay for. The k1 bumping against the side of the container is louder than the air pump, in other words its extremely quiet. If you buy a pump that is pushing more air than needed be sure to have an air bleed valve on the air manifold to bleed off excess air.

 

[DIDYSIS]

ya I know they are not going to be the facy super quiet, 2 times the price air pump, but it will still just work, and its just going to go under my stand and I insulate the stand well so its quiet enough for me currently and the filter socks provide a bit of noise already and the water jets that I keep a touch above the water surface. Glad to hear you have had good experience with it so far. I am like you if it does what I want and is a bit cheaper I will have no complaints. I am just not ready to spend 200.00 on a really nice quiet pump, I have a large air blower here that would be great but its a 1Hp unit and uses about 850 watts of power, crazy amounts of air, I will save that for some other project later on someday maybe.

 

[burbon44s]

Another option for air, which i think I'm going to try, is a small 30 gal air compressor from the hardware store. Crank the internal regulator up to 100 psi to keep lots of air in the tank, then use a external regulator to keep the pressure lower for use. This way the compressor only runs like 3 mins every hour. That should keep electric bill a little lower.
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[DIDYSIS]

Problem with that is that an air compressor is made to turn on when the pressure drops below that set level, so it will actually run more or less all the time. And even a small one at 2.6 amps and about 325 watts and 65.00 an air pump is going to be cheaper and better, and have you ever heard how loud a compressor is?? Maybe I am thinking of mine but think of that thing charging up at 2am in the morning. Love the creativity but I will not be the one testing that idea out.

Another option for air, which i think I'm going to try, is a small 30 gal air compressor from the hardware store. Crank the internal regulator up to 100 psi to keep lots of air in the tank, then use a external regulator to keep the pressure lower for use. This way the compressor only runs like 3 mins every hour. That should keep electric bill a little lower.
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