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  • Results 1 to 5 of 5

    Thread: Trickle Tower Build

    1. #1
      treybest is offline Junior Member
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      Trickle Tower Build

      I am a long time lurker and have gotten many great tips from the folks here so I thought I would post some pictures/instructions for building a trickle tower that I made last summer. I was not sure until recently how well these things were working, but I had to take this one out of service to repair a leak and we noticed the water clarity started suffering after about 3 days of having it off line. The water leaving my sand and gravel filter comes into the top of the tower and falls through layers of shredded plastic water bottles to the bottom of the drum where I put 2 bags of lava rocks, and goes out a shower drain to a minature foam fractionator and then back into the pond. When I took the shredded plastic out of the tower I noticed that you could see by discoloration the path the water was taking and it was only going through a small portion of the plastic. I solved this by taking a plastic planter base from home depot and drilling a bunch of 9/64 inch holes in it. Now the stream hits the planter base and spreads out, dripping over most of the plastic media and hopefully working better. Ok on to the build:

      Step 1 Take a plastic drum and install a shower drain that takes 2" PVC pipe. I used PL Pro Line to seal around the shower drain.
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      Step 2 Attach the drum to the foam fractionator or return line to pond. I live in a little town and our hardware store only had 4" pvc pipe, so that is what I made the fractionator out of. I am not sure how much the fractionator affects the water clarity, but it makes a rope of dirty foam most nights so I am sure it is doing some good. On either side of the fractionator I stacked 2 cinder blocks for the drum to sit on.
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      Step 3 Drill a bunch of 9/64" holes in 3 plastic planter bases, we got ours from home depot and you can put them together and drill all the holes at once. Note to men: criticizing how fast your wife does her share will result in you being left to do all the holes yourself.
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      Step 4 Spread 2 bags of lava rocks in the bottom of the drum and place one of your drilled planter bases in the middle of the lava rocks.
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      Step 5 Take half of whatever media you are going to use to grow your bacteria on and put it on top of the planter base/lava rocks. Like I said earlier, I used shredded plastic water bottles it was a little time consuming running them through the shredder but they were abundant at work and free. On top of this layer put another planter base, then a second layer of media, and finally the last planter base.
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      Just adjust the pipe coming into the tower so the water stream hits in the middle of the planter base and you are done.

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    2. #2
      Sweetwater is offline Supporting Member
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      First, welcome to Koiphen.

      Nice job on the build and on the photo journal. And thanks for the heads up on the comments to the wife. For sure I would have been guilty of that one.

      Are you hoping to decrease DOCs with this? Sounds like it is doing a good job of that. Do you have any expectation of decreasing Nitrate? I would think it may need to be a little more anaerobic for this. Looks like a good design. Thanks for posting it.

    3. #3
      Spaun is offline Senior Member
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      Cool. Do you have a picture of the finished product?
      Click for Southgate, Michigan Forecast

    4. #4
      treybest is offline Junior Member
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      Keep in mind we are novices at the pond business, but I was having a problem with cloudy water last summer after we got the filtration working right and took care of the green water. I assumed it was some type of algea bloom that I could not filter out and thought I might be able to starve it out if I got enough benifical bacteria growing. There are not a lot of koi ponds in Southeast Texas and we kind of just figure things out as we go. Things would have gone a lot smoother if I found koiphen before we started the pond. In the fall of 2012 we found our selves empty nesters and my wife came up with the idea of a pond or water garden for a couple project. It has been a lot of fun and a little frustrating at times. Like the first big rain where we found out if you put wood mulch around the pond, the run off turns the water tea color.
      Spaun I did not take a picture of the finished project from the outside it just looks like a blue drum with a couple of pvc pipes running into/out of it. I will take one tomorrow after I get home.

    5. #5
      Rich L is offline Senior Member
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      Quote Originally Posted by treybest View Post
      Keep in mind we are novices at the pond business, but I was having a problem with cloudy water last summer after we got the filtration working right and took care of the green water. I assumed it was some type of algea bloom that I could not filter out and thought I might be able to starve it out if I got enough benifical bacteria growing. There are not a lot of koi ponds in Southeast Texas and we kind of just figure things out as we go. Things would have gone a lot smoother if I found koiphen before we started the pond. In the fall of 2012 we found our selves empty nesters and my wife came up with the idea of a pond or water garden for a couple project. It has been a lot of fun and a little frustrating at times. Like the first big rain where we found out if you put wood mulch around the pond, the run off turns the water tea color.
      Spaun I did not take a picture of the finished project from the outside it just looks like a blue drum with a couple of pvc pipes running into/out of it. I will take one tomorrow after I get home.
      Good job!

      Towers need lots of oxygen! Air turnover is a must. The easiest way I can see is ports along the bottom. The falling water will bring the new air with it and the old will be able to exit through the ports.

      Oxygen proximity is the secret to TTs. The water should just wet the surface so the oxygen in the air, is right next to the bacteria.

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