New member - Biofilter recommendations please?

[rjohns39]

Hi and welcome to BYC We're so happy you've decided to join us

 

[Boppo]

Glad to meet you. Welcome to BYC. Best wishes with your lovely sounding flock!

 

[Boppo]

I have to say, I enjoy mightily your expert use of emoticons! Well handled. Best wishes with the duck poo!

 

[TwiggyEggshells]

It's a bit of a beast

 

[DobieLover]

It's a bit of a beast

Unless you have a sizable amount of mechanical filtration in front of that it's not going to work!

 

[swampfox440]

What you actually need is a cyclone in front of a bio filter. The water comes out of the pond goes into the cyclone, leaves the cyclone and goes into the biofilter. From the biofilter it goes to the floating plant tank where the nitrogen is consumed by the plant roots. The roots of the plants in the plant tank need to be aerated. The key is having a large enough cyclone. I would use a 55-gallon plastic drum and weld the cone to the bottom after you cut the bottom out. Put a full port 3" dump valve on a 90-degree elbow at the bottom of the of the cone. Use a sump pump with 1-1/2 check valve to move the water from the pond to the cyclone. The inlet pipe should be 2/3 up the drum and enter perpendicular to the tangent of the circumference of the drum. Make an outlet on the cyclone about 6" higher than the inlet. The outlet feeds the rest of the system by gravity.

 

[TwiggyEggshells]

Unless you have a sizable amount of mechanical filtration in front of that it's not going to work!

It's mechanical and biological in one. Auto-motor cleaning

 

[TwiggyEggshells]

What you actually need is a cyclone in front of a bio filter. The water comes out of the pond goes into the cyclone, leaves the cyclone and goes into the biofilter. From the biofilter it goes to the floating plant tank where the nitrogen is consumed by the plant roots. The roots of the plants in the plant tank need to be aerated. The key is having a large enough cyclone. I would use a 55-gallon plastic drum and weld the cone to the bottom after you cut the bottom out. Put a full port 3" dump valve on a 90-degree elbow at the bottom of the of the cone. Use a sump pump with 1-1/2 check valve to move the water from the pond to the cyclone. The inlet pipe should be 2/3 up the drum and enter perpendicular to the tangent of the circumference of the drum. Make an outlet on the cyclone about 6" higher than the inlet. The outlet feeds the rest of the system by gravity.

Brilliant, thank you. Next steps will be guided by this - just need to get the motivation up for this next stage in the process

 

[DobieLover]

It's mechanical and biological in one. Auto-motor cleaning

I'm not trying to bring you down or anything but that filter is designed for a fish pond. Fish do not produce nearly the amount of waste that ducks will. It is not going to handle the load but you can give and try and see what happens. The filter will likely clog up very quickly.
Additionally, most of the waste will settle out on the bottom of the pond and not make it into the filter in the first place. The only way to remove debris on the bottom of the pond is to slope it all to one low spot and install a bottom drain there that is pumped to a settling tank where the heavier solids will collect then the rest of the water exits the settling tank through a coarse filter media before going to that little fish pond filter.

 

[TwiggyEggshells]

I'm not trying to bring you down or anything but that filter is designed for a fish pond. Fish do not produce nearly the amount of waste that ducks will. It is not going to handle the load but you can give and try and see what happens. The filter will likely clog up very quickly.
Additionally, most of the waste will settle out on the bottom of the pond and not make it into the filter in the first place. The only way to remove debris on the bottom of the pond is to slope it all to one low spot and install a bottom drain there that is pumped to a settling tank where the heavier solids will collect then the rest of the water exits the settling tank through a coarse filter media before going to that little fish pond filter.

I really appreciate the advice, thanks Dobie Just for a bit more info (and because I'm hoping you might tell me what you think); the filter is fed by a separate high-powered pump. It's designed for Koi, which are a lot heavier poo producers than most fish, and we've gone for a model that's designed to filter 10x the volume of the pond we actually have, when used with koi. These are the specs:
Decorative Ponds: up to 20000 Litres
Ponds with a small mix of fish: up to 12000 Litres
Ponds with a small mix of koi: up to 10000 Litres
Maximum Pump Flow rate: 10000L/h
Power of UV-Clarifier: 18W
Voltage: 220-240v
Cable Length: 5m
Dimensions: 380 x 380 x 740 (mm) (L x W x H)
Filter Compartment Volume: 38 Litres

What do you think? Xx