DIY Radial Flow Separators

DB junkie

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Well here's the rest. The filter that took this guy's summer. :( Took 3+ months to finally get to this point. Whole lot of work, lots of leaks, and a new found hatred for plumbing. :irked:

The 180 is the time out tank. Usually has male rays in it. Currently a hospital tank for fish that like irritating the wolves, and in turn need time for their wolf inflicted wounds to heal. :grinno:

The RFSs drain into a 55 gallon tank with 200/100 socks. From there about a third of the water drains into a 90 gallon reactor. This reactor has 3 discs mounted in the bottom of it. The 3 valves allow independent control of each disc. That reactor drains into the 300 gallon rubbermaid that houses the 2 wet/dries with moving beds in the bottoms of them. Each of these towers also receive roughly 1/3 of the water from the sock tank. These are to deal with the issue of meds that mess up most reactors. With the wet/dry above the moving beds there is no way for the K1/chips to dry out. These are boiled by the crashing water and a few air stones in the towers. An entire Pond master AP100 is used on this system without venting anything as the 90 gallon reactor alone has 15 cfm worth of diffusers in it.

Each return pump runs through a 110 watt UV sterilizer on the way back to the tank.

There's room on the shelves, above the 300 gallon tub and next to the 180, right next to the window. I'm hoping to get a 4x3x1.5 on the bottom rack for pups, and there will be a 3x3 above that which will be used for a plant filter. Hoping that will house enough plants to do something. IF not the pup tank will go elsewhere and both tanks will be used for plants. I need to try to cut water changes down since RO makes so much waste water already.

Last is the reading on one of the return pumps. 2 should make for a 8,600 gph rating right at 300 watts, although I'm sure my plumbing ruins that rating.... lol

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Reedmaster16

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Great job with the plumbing bro. Nice clean runs along the wall.

How much nicer is the acrylic moving bed than the barrels :D. So great to be able to see the motion, media maturation, and any debris that may accumulate over time.

The RFS and the other gravity stages probably bottleneck a bit backing up the overflows/standpipes and add a descent amount of head loss. If you dialed those pumps back a bit UV's kill rate will be higher and the RFS should technically catch more. Plenty of time to tinker with/optimize everything now you've got all the huge stuff outa the way.

Nice job again man, all that hard work definitely paid off. Everything looks really great!
 

DB junkie

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Thanks Reed! All the RFS credit goes to you.... I had no idea what they were till you came along!

I'll never use a barrel again. Love my acrylic tanks for reactors. Could watch them for hours..... lol.

I'm pretty sure I bottlenecked the RFSs when I had to stick a 90 on the outside instead of 2 45s. I'm sure my (2) 2" to one 3" job didn't help things. It's all good, it's in the basement. I'd actually prefer loud to quiet down there, easier to tell if something's wrong.

I'd say I'm about 2/3 done. Still need a big enough sock tank to allow 2 sets of socks. Was going for 2 55 gallon tanks but came up 1/2" short. :( Still need to get the plant filter/s going, and now having second thoughts on the 180 up there. Have a 6x3 that might look better up there. :(

Oh well, at least the reactors are working right, no problems there..... :)

Thanks again man!
 

DB junkie

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glad to see this thread finally up and the system working. good job db
I apologize for not giving you the heads up man..... I know you've been very patient with me getting any pics up. I appreciate that, and I will do my best to dig up some pics of all the stuff that didn't work and also post them here.....

I did find it interesting that I was able to prolong the life of my air pump diaphrams by several months by having more resistance in the diffusers. I started out with drilling holes in PVC instead of diffusers and after rebuilding the pump I switched to typical diffusers and was able to go another 4+ months and I even rebuilt before failure so I'm guessing it may add another 6 months to the already short life (around a year) of the diaphrams.
 

rotccapt

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do you think that this would work on say a 5 gallon bucket scale for a 300 gallon tank? i really like the idea and i might try it out soon
 

DB junkie

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do you think that this would work on say a 5 gallon bucket scale for a 300 gallon tank? i really like the idea and i might try it out soon
Will depend on flow rates, but I'd guess no, too small. I'd guess a 5 gallon bucket would be ok for up to 75 maybe, but I'm guessing it will still work....

I'd guess a nice trash can using a 5 gallon bucket as the redirectioning tube would be more appropriate for a 300...... I think my 55 gallon drums are too small for the flowrates I have, but didn't want to invest a bunch in larger containers till I knew the concept worked well enough to justify, which I definitely think it does. :)

-------UPDATE----
Been a little over a week and appears there's already plenty of crap sitting in them, ready to clean out again......

May be time to start working on a flushing system if I ever get some free time......

Really thinking there's a lot of potential in this concept. :)
 

David R

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Glad to hear it is working well, I agree that this is a concept the aquarium hobby needs to explore more. Traditional mechanical filters with a piece of wool/sponge/sock can certainly be improved on!
 

David R

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Sorry if I missed it somewhere, but what sort of GPH are you running through each drum? Obviously slower flow is better as it will allow lighter particles to settle, but I'm wondering if I could get away with one 55g drum for my set up running ~8500LPH...
 

DB junkie

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Sorry if I missed it somewhere, but what sort of GPH are you running through each drum? Obviously slower flow is better as it will allow lighter particles to settle, but I'm wondering if I could get away with one 55g drum for my set up running ~8500LPH...
I'm running about 4K gph (rated) through each drum....... I wish I had the room for 2 more drums but I don't at this time.
 
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