500 gallon pool filtration.

[jesseballmer]

Hey guys. I was just looking for some advice on filtering a "in door pond" pool. I got pretty heavy bio load in there. I got 2 red tail cats (RTC) about 10 and 12 inches and I got a tiger shovelnose catfish (TSN) 13 inches and a high bred rtc/tsn about 16 or 17 inches. Then I got two 6 inch pacu. A 4 inch red belly piranha. 5 tin foil barbs. 3 dozen feeder fish in case they get Hungary while I'm at work. Oh and a 10 inch bass.
For filtration I I have now is 6 sponge filters a mag pump 500 gph pumping through filter media then some ceramic rings. I have to do a 25 percent water change every 8 to 10 days. To keep water parameters perfect. But I have to change the filter media daily if not twice a day. Just looking for as cheap filtration system that wouldn't need as much maintenance. I've heard of fluidized bed filter I have done a little research on them but would like a second opinion. I'm open to anything. But would like to keep the total cost under. $150 if possible. Thanks in advance to all who contribute.

 

[Wailua Boy]

Add some plant filtration, pothos if nothing else

 

[catman]

I am not quite sure how you have your filter setup, but you can get a rubbermaid tub and have it set up above the pool. You can fill it with plastic pot scrubbers for media and have your mag drive pump into the top. It would help to pump through drilled pvc so the water is spread out when it goes in to the tub. Then just cut a hole a couple inches off the bottom of the tub for the water to exit out of the tub. You can put a prefilter on the mag drive or buy some filter floss or other cheap media and put it on top of the scrubbies for mechanical filtration, and then you can just clean them when they get dirty instead of always replacing them. Hope this helps. Pothos can be a good idea but I would suggest against them if you have a dog or cat as they are poisonous to them.

 

[matthewr262]

This is what I did. The bucket is epoxied in place, at the bottom of the bucket I glued three pvc pipes 4" tall to hold a bucket lid I cut to fit. I used a solder iron to poke a gazillion hole in the lid. The intake pipe goes down to the bottom of the bucket so the water has to come up through all the media, which is lava rock and sponge. The emperor parts are just in there because thats what I filtered with until I built this. The water fill the bucket and flows down onto bio stars and media bags filled with carbon.
My only regret was making the drain pipe at the bottom, I should have raised it 5" to fill the bin a little. What ever diameter inlet you use, gotta have a larger outlet to reduce the possibility of backing up mine is 5/8"id in 1"id out.

 

[duanes]

I have built fluidized beds out of PVC and used aragonite sand as media.
These are bio-filters, and can be buffer reactors, but do nothing as far as mechanical filtration goes. The one in the pic below stands about 4ft tall, is 8" in diameter, and uses about 5 lbs of aragonite as media. The pumpage is @ 1200gph split between the FB and tanks.


My favorite type filtration is bio-fractionation, where dissolved organic compounds are removed before they get a chance to metabolize.
And lava rock is used as biomedia.
Water cascades over lava rock, which fractionates and separates out the proteins, free floating algae, detritus, and even parasites into foam.

for outdoor ponds, the foam simple falls on the ground.
Indoors it can be collected into buckets

I found plans for building it on koiphen.com in the DIY section under Phoam Phractionator builds.
here is a video of it working, click pic to run