The Twin Tower Skippy filter

[ocracoke]

My "Twin Peaks Skippy" Filter. I upgraded the pond from one of those fixedliners, to a real liner, doubling the size of the pond. I balked at buying a pump twice the size of the old one. Instead I purchased a second pump the same size as the old one. This does a number of things, I can place the 2 pumps in a way to help out dead stops in the pond, I can shut one down to clean the prefilter of the pump and not have to worry about the bacteria in the filter, I can use one pump to feed a spitter to control the flow thru the Skippy filter, aka get the correct "hang time" for the water in the filter via of adjusting the water thru the spitter. Too fast of flow aka not enough hang time and the bacteria can not do their work, you just blow the "crap" you want the bacteria to work on from the filter material right back into the pond, bascially too much of a good thing. A 3 minute hang time is about the right length of time.

The placement of the "twin peaks" input tubes to the side of the tub also makes it easier to place the bag of filter material and the fitting of a grid at the bottom since it forms an X, provides feet, the 4 elbows can angled out a little from the sides. Note: I didn't use a grid because my bag of floor pads fit without needing it. I get a nice uniform flow filling the tub. You can hear it flowing in, until you put the bag of filter material in. I guess it might be stronger if forced it out a standard 2 tee input tube.

I went back and installed a bottom drain after the pictures were taken. It is clear to me that the bottom of the filter needs "back flushing" a few times during the season. I don't plan on cleaning the pads. If the Skippy filter's home in Michigan is like out local pond places, mostly plant nurseries, the ponds and holding tanks for fish are far from trees, all tanks have net shading, none have plants in the water. I get major junk from huge trees 20-25 feet away when the wind is blowing. This is a lot of tree pollen mess. This crap goes right to the bottom of the pond and finds its way into my filter. With the rest of the garbage found in a pond a 5-10 gallon back flush seems like a good idea every now and then, a 2 inch layer of muck isn't needed in a filter and I see no reason to carry this crap at the end of the season when the water gets cold or the start of the season were the filter no longer works because of zero bacteria. The filter materal should have enough junk trapped to jump start things. I do run my filter pumps year round.

I also drilled two 1/8 holes, one hole in each tower, just below the water line. This is to break the siphon when the pumps get turned off. We have a lot of "lights" blinking during the summer aka power goes out long enough to empty the filter. I have not had the holes clog up and I clean/check them with a paper clip every so often. They do create a little current on top of the surface of the water. I open the drain while the pumps are running then quickly turn the pumps off to drain off a few gallons. This helps get the water line below the hole in the towers fast. Turning the pumps off first works but you get a little backflow into the pond until those holes get uncovered. As I say, the holes are just under the water line measured before drilling via of filling the tank with clean water and the tank leveled to get the measurements. I also wanted a way to dump the water if the lights went out for a long time in the winter to keep from freezing.

Note:
I used the input PVC to create a platform for the bag of green scubs filter material. Each leg has an elbow pointing in the same direction. These were glued on with a slight toeing out from the sides of the wall in the bottom of the tub. The tub had a channel in the bottom and this allowed the 4 feet to set in the channel plus giving an angle to allow the water to slightly miss the leg in front of it. Also someone told me those 1/8 holes, to break the siphon of the water, would clog, my water for 4 weeks was so green you could walk on it, those holes have not clogged and has saved dumping 17 gallons, plus the gunk at the bottom of the filter, back in the pond when the lights blink during the summer. The guy who said this had tee-ed his input tower up to open air to break the siphon. He said the inside of that open input tube gets nasty and gunked up. My theory, the sun light is getting down this open tube causing the problem, if not, your hose would get it built up too, I have not seen this problem from years of running a pond. The back sucking is pretty strong too that would help clear the holes if stopped up. The deal is it would not hurt having them.

Anywho this is a bio filter, not a mechanical, I think some people forget this, my filter material filled up with algae, the water returning to the pond was green. but over 4-6 weeks the bacteria worked on the trapped stuff in the pads freeing it to trap more and cleared the water. Sticking quilt suffing will help, if you can keep up with the need to clean it, mechanical, but I don't see a need. UV lights seem like covering up the problem but not fixing it. I am hoping next year the pond clears faster as I installed it mid June. I built this after having green water most of last year and having it turned solid green this year early summer.

 

[sissy]

if it works it works and I am always amazed at how many different filter builds are out there .I know mine works and i have not cleaned it at all this year except when I put in the bigger filter on one side .The other filter is 3 years old

 

[sissy]

I have never had uv light so really not sure if they work but never going to change my filters and what I use ,lava rock but I do want to try haydite in a filter .I sqaw an amazing pond and he used nothing but haydite in his filters for over 20 years and he has it in the water fall that runs between each of his ponds .I use 2 pumps at least if one goes out I don't need to panic and like you said no dead spots .One of my pumps is in a bucket with lava rock on top of it .

 

[ocracoke]

UV lights are just instant gratification. Think about it, if the filter is too small you need to fix that, if the filter size is correct you just need to wait it out, killing off algae is just going to add to the load. Would be better just to trap and filter it out to speed things up while the bio filter works on the pond. I think UV lights can kill parasites, useful in aquariums. Given they burn out, lost effectiveness in about a year and need to be replaced, the bulbs are pricey, they hide an underlining problem, very dangerous to the eyes, I avoid them. I guess if you had a pond in Texas, Arizona, where you got zero shade one might be needed. I have often wondered if UV light kills off good bacteria. If so, throwing that bacteria pill, powder in the pond in the spring, early summer isn't going to make it to the filter.

 

[sissy]

I have a uv on my well water coming in and have tested it several times to see how it is working

 

[ocracoke]

PS, after looking at the pictures I posted, I thought I would add more detail since the pictures were taken during construction and I hope it helps someone else out building one. I kind of winged it.

I removed that metal grate on the overflow, output drain, also the bottom drain, my water was so green that it clogged up the top one fast. Also, the shower drain was an off set one, not str8. The 1 inch PVC tees add a lot of height to the X at the bottom. By turning the offset part of the drain up, the water has to reach half the diamater of the drain before it starts to flow out. This helps get back some of the space lost at the bottom. I also added two bricks to the filter, placing them in a V formation right in front of the drain. the peak of the V is opened about 1/2 inch, about 2-3 inches from drain, the ends of the bricks angle out with a 1/2 or less gap at the input tubes. The reason is I have water hyacinths in the tub. Without the bricks they would clog the drain by current or growing. The bricks are just barely under the surface. I use a bag for the filter pads, so the bricks help push them underwater. You sometimes have to pull out a plant as it starts to grow over the bricks. Interestingly, the Hyacinths stop spreading out so much once they crowded each other out and start to grow tall. I also finished bricking up around the filter to help hide it.

Also both drains have their rubber gasket on the outside, not inside, I didn't use that thin milk carton like one that also comes with the drain. The holes I cut were tight, I had to file the side one, the bit used to cut the hole was a cheap Chinese 9 cm, most US bits are a bit over 9 cm I think. I had to screw the drains into the tub, it was tight and hard to do. Again, here are no gaskets on the inside. The thickness of the the tub is the same as the gap in the threads found at the end off the drains when you snuggle it up aka the threads don't run all the way to the end. This is good. What you do not want is threads going thru the wall/bulkhead of the tub and being installed there. This would happen if you installed a gasket on the inside because of how thick they are, don't do it. Water will wick down those threads. This was the way the two bulkhead fittings were installed on my old pressurized filter.

I wished I had primed the white PVC and painted the exposed towers some earth, brick color. Not sure if the upper part of the tub could be primed and painted to some faux brick look. I needed to get the filter online since it was very hot and the water was the worst green I had ever had. I plan on trying to paint the PVC this fall/winter when I don't really need the filter.