Just a thought

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H

Hdeuce

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Apr 1, 2008
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Syracuse
If you ran a pump to pump water out of your fish tank into a series of 5 gallon buckets stacked one inside another with holes drilled in them at variouses sizes starting larger and getting smaller as you go down until the bottom bucket which would have no holes or media and would be connected to another pump to pump the water back into the tank wouldnt this be an inexpensive way to filter a large tank well ..

For example first bucket 1/4inch holes in bottom containing the plastic scrubbies people use for media so often.
Second bucket 1/8 inch holes containing a series of bio bags stacked and layered.
third bucket 1/16 inch holes filled with activated carbon
fourth bucket one 1/2 inch hole drilled in side attached to a hose sealed and attached to a pump that pumped water back up through another hose into the tank ...


Any body see any reason this wouldnt work ?
 
if a power outage first pump goes out and 2nd pump goes out, 1st pump will start reverse siphon depending on water level and over flow sump, but you could add a check valve but 2nd thing you have to match what you are pumping out of the tank to what is getting pumped back in, which sounds easy but if you get 2 600 gph pumps same make and all..hard for pumps to match there partner pump especially if debis gets in way, but you could add ball valves to adjust but you would constantly be going to the valves to adjust, and you would be restricting flow on your pumps which in long run would run them dead, this is why the safest way is to just use gravity that doesn't break siphon. but very good idea would work just fine if all holes were same size depeneding on how many drilled, but i say best bet is too get some sort of overflow system for that idea..
 
wat if the buckets were filled with water then attached to the tank directly and placed under the tank wouldnt gravity push the water into one end and then automatically create a suction to pull the water back trough the other hose and into the tank ?
 
the water has to go up over the glass so gravity would already have to be obtained, if i'm getting what your saying pump goes off you have hose running directly to the sump, but that line needs to have some way to get water over the edge/ useing pump in first place, and if it were to make it over it would overflow sump, depeneding on how far you put overflow tube in and how high your water level is and sump level seems like it would be hard to find a constant medium.
 
well , if i drilled a hole in the side of the tank then another in the bottom of the tank wouldnt the gravity from the water flowing out through the first hole suck the water back in through the side hole ?
 
thats a good way of looking at it I can't think of anything wrong with it not sure if water weight comes into play there or height or angle of return tube
 
if your talking like a complete sealed circle of flow and filtration I think it would work but has to be completey sealed so no air can get in, but also have to think maintance on sealed system how can you clean sealed system
 
im loving the input guys every time you give me input it makes me thing a little bit further and try to correct problems in my design. what about shut off valves on the hoses that enter and exit the tanks followed by quick connects to disconnect underneath the shut off valve. this would let you shut off the flow before disconnecting or unsealing the system and if you turned the outflow valve on before the inflow valve then the complete sealed circle would still flow correctly .... right?
 
if you turn inflow valve off first then outflow valve disconect system, acess water might drain, out of sealed filter unit, and when start flow again would say inflow valve first then outflow to somehow purge the air thats in the system, still think pump is needed to get good flow threw everything, and to achive the vertical height, but in power outage seem like system will just shut down and level out just fine, never really thought of a system like this good ideas though.
 
Are you still talking about using a pump? If not we're talking perpetual motion and we know where that leads us. Without a pump the water will find a happy medium and stop flowing unless convection cooling or heating is involved which is a very low flow and the differential would be not be good for the fish.

But keep going :D.

Dr Joe

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