How to attach the 55 gallon drum filters.

[Denis S]

I have curantly build 4 of the 55 gallon drum filters for my pond that is still in progress. I have a pump that is 3800 gph, Its probubly more like 3500gph. I will have the pump pull the watter from the skimmer and distribute the watter to the 4 filters and then it will go to the rubermaid filter/waterfall. Sgould I just attach one filter to the other like in the Immage1. Any help is apreciated

 

[Denis S]

or should i do it like in this picture? And should the pump be before or after the filters?

 

[Waterbug]

It depends on the filters. If all bio or all mechanical they should be in parallel. If a mix the mechanical should be first (in parallel if more than one) and then the bio (in parallel if more than one).

The pump should come after mechanical, but if your only source is a skimmer it wouldn't matter much assuming a skimmer basket. For bio the pump can be either side.

 

[Denis S]

I was going to put in lava rocks on the bottom, then some spunges, then some of the plastic straps that are used around boxes and/or bio balls for all four and should I go with design 1 or 2. I read somwherethat the pump could be too strong for a single barel and that I should seperate the flow to all 4 at once.

 

[Waterbug]

Have you seen the recent thread on filters? The lava rock, sponge, strap thing is a very old style filter. Much better designs in the last 10 years.

To answer your question, yes, since all filters are the same (neither mechanical or bio) the theory would be it's best to hook them up in parallel. However, because these are such poor filters you might improve performance by hooking them up in series instead, or a combination. Pushing 3500 gph thru a 55 gal drum would hopefully keep part of the media clean and useful as a bio filter. But the strapping, depending on actual material, has a hard time holding bio film, so I don't know if that would help or not.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

I'm using barrels in series like your first diagram, it's easier to define what you want each barrel to do. I'm only using two barrels, but have one large cone shaped tank I'm using a vortex settling chamber. This is my first year with it, but I'm finding the settling chamber is working quite well.
I have read that the nice thing about strapping material is it is easy to clean. You basically just stir it up and slosh it around every once in a while to remove the “dust” and it’s clean. It’s very light so complete removal is easy if need be, and has no deep pours or internal chambers where debris or gunk can get trapped like lava rock.
As for it not holding “bio film”, I guess there is some that might be better than others. I am using some Savio springflo strapping which they claim is impregnated with calcium and has a diamond grid surface texture on the surface to encourage bacteria growth. To tell you the truth, it looks just like many other similar sized strapping I have seen before, but who knows, right?

If I was to use lava rock material in a barrel I’d get it up high and set it up as a trickle type filter (not submerged) and make sure you had really good mechanical filtration before it so it doesn’t get gunked up too fast. Removing lava rock from a barrel to clean could be a real pain.

 

[JohnHuff]

If you are doing 4 filters I would say hook them up in parallel no matter what.
1) If there is blockage of any sort, then the water will flow through the less blocked filters.
2) Is a lot of work for your pump if it is in series and there is blockage on any one of them.
3) I think filterage is wasted in series. If the first 3 do their job well, the 4th one will be doing nothing.
4) If you need to do any maintenance or changes, then you will need to shut down all 4 filters if you do it in series.
5) You get a much bigger surface area if you are doing them in parallel.
6) Forgot this one as I was writing 5!
But yeah, I would definitely do them in parallel.

 

[Waterbug]

...then some of the plastic straps that are used around boxes

As for it not holding “bio film”, I guess there is some that might be better than others. I am using some Savio springflo strapping which they claim is impregnated with calcium and has a diamond grid surface texture on the surface to encourage bacteria growth. To tell you the truth, it looks just like many other similar sized strapping I have seen before, but who knows, right?

SpringFlo is strap like in appearance but is obviously made specifically for holding bio film. Definitely not used in packaging. The box strapping stuff the OP was talking about comes in different materials. The fiberglass stuff is pretty good but no longer as common. Polypropylene strapping can be embossed which helps a little. The super shinny polyester strapping is really poor at holding a bio film.

 

[DrCase]

I piped my three filters individual , you get more bang out of the pump, and each drum can share some of the load

 

[Mucky_Waters]

SpringFlo is strap like in appearance but is obviously made specifically for holding bio film. Definitely not used in packaging. The box strapping stuff the OP was talking about comes in different materials. The fiberglass stuff is pretty good but no longer as common. Polypropylene strapping can be embossed which helps a little. The super shinny polyester strapping is really poor at holding a bio film.

So they say.
Somehow I doubt they have gone to the trouble of building completely new machinery specifically for manufacturing SpringFlo strapping. More likely they simply picked the most suitable strapping material, already being produced, and re-packaged that to be sold as "bio-strapping". One bit of evidence for that is Savio's own description of their product saying "The embossed pattern creates millions of dimples to rapidly secure and develop bacteria". Sounds good huh, but the fact is it has the exact same "embossed" pattern that many other standard strapping materials I have seen have.
Also, they say it's made out of “polypropylene and calcium carbonate” which by coincidence is exactly what many other standard strapping materials are made of. So even their own description of their product is telling me that it is just standard strapping material that has simply been re-packaged and sold for another use.

 

[JohnHuff]

Somehow I doubt they have gone to the trouble of building completely new machinery specifically for manufacturing SpringFlo strapping.

It won't be necessary to do that. They can just use the same machine, but use a different embossing head.

 

[Waterbug]

Oh my. I've never used SpringFlo so I've never touched it. Another rip off? Just when I think I'm too cynical I find I'm not cynical enough.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

It won't be necessary to do that. They can just use the same machine, but use a different embossing head.

Even that isn't necessary since they are using the same pattern on many strapping materials that I have come across.

Oh my. I've never used SpringFlo so I've never touched it. Another rip off? Just when I think I'm too cynical I find I'm not cynical enough.

If it helps you not feel so cynical just look at it like you are paying them to pre-select the BEST strapping material for you. As you have already pointed out some types are not as suitable because of what they are made of, or their size or texture.
Many things we buy are like that, if you know what you are buying you can sometimes find it cheaper being used in another application. I use to have an ant problem around my last home and I use to buy a natural ant killing product that was basicly just diatomaceous earth powder. It was about 7 or 8 dollars for a small container, and I found I was going through the stuff fairly rapidly. After about the 3rd container I started some investigation and found, among other things, they actually sometimes used diatomaceous earth as a food additive for cows so I checked the local feed lot and sure enough they had 50# bags of the stuff for like $20. The stuff worked as well as the stuff in the little containers, but for $20 I was able to secure a lifetime supply. So are those little containers a rip off, or just convenient?

 

[JohnHuff]

If it helps you not feel so cynical just look at it like you are paying them to pre-select the BEST strapping material for you.

Feeling cynical is finding out that the SpringFlo factory is located next to a packing materials factory and SpringFlo just dumpster dives every evening for their cast off strapping material and selling them as "extra special deluxe" bio film.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

I happen to be cleaning my shop out today and found some old strapping in a box, I threw it all out, but before I did I had to snap this picture for you guys.
The yellow strapping is from the box, it's a little bigger and heavy then the Savio SpringFlo media (which is the green stuff), but as you can see the the embossing isn't much different then the SpringFlo.