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  • Page 10 of 11 FirstFirst ... 7891011 LastLast
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    Thread: Low-Profile Shower Filter

    1. #181
      onebluemcm is offline Senior Member
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      Ok, so maybe it's a terminology issue. Perhaps the main point is that regardless of flow rate, a shower open to air is much less likely to have any real denitrification function, the cycle ending at nitrate. A shower that is sealed and can develop more of an anoxic environment could potentially be populated with bacteria that can denitrify NO3. It just so happens that the "trickle" part in this case is because there needs to be a lot of dwell time for these bugs to pull the oxygen off NO3, so these denitrifying setups have a trickle flow.

      This is just my understanding, it all started with this, and seems to be legit (the basic process anyway) from other reading I've done:

      http://www.mankysanke.co.uk/html/goo...de__pt_16.html

      (the mention of "blue" and "mauve" refer to a diagram in the link)

      "Trickle towers must only have a trickle of water through them. This is important because the incoming water will contain oxygen which will allow normal ammonia and nitrite bugs to live in the area in the media bed coloured blue and they will use all the available dissolved oxygen in the incoming water. Reducing the incoming flow to a trickle will confine their activity only to the top few centimetres of the bed. The real work of removing nitrate will be done by the facultative bugs in the area of the media coloured mauve. Since all the available oxygen will have been used by their cousins above, they will have to switch to facultative mode and obtain their oxygen supply from the nitrate in the water. Although we are cruelly starving them of oxygen in a trickle tower, they will repay our unkindness by removing nitrate for us!"

      Maybe this is more hypothetical than practical, interesting discussion regardless.

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    2. #182
      icu2's Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by onebluemcm View Post
      Ok, so maybe it's a terminology issue. Perhaps the main point is that regardless of flow rate, a shower open to air is much less likely to have any real denitrification function, the cycle ending at nitrate. A shower that is sealed and can develop more of an anoxic environment could potentially be populated with bacteria that can denitrify NO3. It just so happens that the "trickle" part in this case is because there needs to be a lot of dwell time for these bugs to pull the oxygen off NO3, so these denitrifying setups have a trickle flow.
      I'm not sure how much of a "seal" you mean but personally I've not seen any harm in locking the shower boxes together, putting
      a top on the shower, and enclosing it in a shed. The falling water seems to pull air into the filter by itself through whatever little
      spaces there are and it doesn't go anoxic.
      Just mho.
      --Steve



      Koiphen 2021 Koi Person of the Year!

    3. #183
      onebluemcm is offline Senior Member
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      Quote Originally Posted by icu2 View Post
      I'm not sure how much of a "seal" you mean but personally I've not seen any harm in locking the shower boxes together, putting
      a top on the shower, and enclosing it in a shed. The falling water seems to pull air into the filter by itself through whatever little
      spaces there are and it doesn't go anoxic.
      Just mho.
      Well I think the point is it would be a separate unit to try and remove nitrate, and this unit by itself needs to be sealed precisely because, to remove nitrate you have to starve the bacteria that can pull oxygen off NO3 of free oxygen. For a regular, primary shower filter, you would clearly not want that anoxic, as you said.

      Here we are getting this post off topic too. I guess enough is enough. It's not meant to be a primary filter, more like an ancillary unit that if the conditions are right, can remove some of the nitrate on it's own, independent of the other filters.

    4. #184
      DRnNY's Avatar
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      Any updates on how the filter is working for you? Have nitrates gone down any? Have you changed the flow rate any? Just curious...
      Click for Levittown, New York Forecast

    5. #185
      jnegr is offline Junior Member
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      Very nice, I just read all 10 pages

    6. #186
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      In short, I've concluded that as expected, this shower filter does not reduce nitrate. That's neither good nor bad, it simply is, and the main point was reducing power costs, which has succeeded.

      Longer status update: The shower filter is working fine, the proof being that ammonia is always near zero. The filter blocks have a very light brown tint, with virtually no gunk or blockages, no doubt due to the RDF. I'd post a picture but it looks just like it always has. Like the moving-bed filter that was used before, nitrate level is higher than I'd like in the summer, no doubt due to only doing ~10% water changes a week, since this is SoCal.

      The FlowFriend pump draws about 120W, roughly a third of what the previous pump drew, yet we still get "you're using more power than your neighbors" notifications. I'm considering rerouting the skimmer directly into the RDF in order to eliminate that circuit's electrical draw, but suspect the skimmer won't work due to insufficient flow. I should try testing it to confirm that either way. If it works, it's unclear what to do with the sand and gravel filters, whether to keep the second pump and its power consumption, or try running the pond with no SG filters and see if the water gets cloudy. All in the name of low power consumption.

      Oh, and we continue to get tons of string algae, some as long as 6-8 feet. I wind it up on a wooden pole and it's pretty nuts how much comes out. The Profi drum does the best it can, the hair algae get's conveyed only partially into the waste tray. As a result, a big sheet of it ends up hanging off the tray, in addition to a huge ball of it orbiting inside the drum. I can't fault the Profi; my DIY RDF did the very same thing. Hair algae is just tough to deal with.
      Last edited by kimini; 06-28-2019 at 03:44 PM.

    7. #187
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      Quote Originally Posted by kimini View Post
      In short, I've concluded that as expected, this shower filter does not reduce nitrate. That's neither good nor bad, it simply is, and the main point was reducing power costs, which has succeeded.

      Longer status update: The shower filter is working fine, the proof being that ammonia is always near zero. The filter blocks have a very light brown tint, with virtually no gunk or blockages, no doubt due to the RDF. I'd post a picture but it looks just like it always has. Like the moving-bed filter that was used before, nitrate level is higher than I'd like in the summer, no doubt due to only doing ~10% water changes a week, since this is SoCal.

      The FlowFriend pump draws about 120W, roughly a third of what the previous pump drew, yet we still get "you're using more power than your neighbors" notifications. I'm considering rerouting the skimmer directly into the RDF in order to eliminate that circuit's electrical draw, but suspect the skimmer won't work due to insufficient flow. I should try test to confirm that either way. If it works, it's unclear what to do with the sand and gravel filters, whether to keep the second pump and its power consumption, or try running the pond with no SG filters and see if the water gets cloudy. All in the name of low power consumption.

      Oh, and we continue to get tons of string algae, some as long as 6-8 feet. I wind it up on a wooden pole and it's pretty nuts how much comes out. The Profi drum does the best it can, the hair algae get's conveyed only partially into the waste tray. As a result, a big sheet of it ends up hanging off the tray, in addition to a huge ball of it orbiting inside the drum. I can't fault the Profi; my DIY RDF did the very same thing. Hair algae is just tough to deal with.
      I can relate to the string algae in the RDF. Mine was bad for a few weeks until I nuked it with peroxide. This is what the inside of my RDF looked like...




    8. #188
      TylerDurden's Avatar
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      Kimimi,

      Im not sure if it was covered but where did you source your pvc?

    9. #189
      kimini is offline Senior Member
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      ePlastics in San Diego, used to be called Ridout Plastic
      Last edited by kimini; 07-07-2019 at 09:05 PM.

    10. #190
      kimini is offline Senior Member
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      7 July Update:
      Surprisingly, string algae has slowly been getting less invasive. Before, there were strings of it more on the scale of seaweed, sometimes as much as 3 to 6 feet long. Now it's not much longer than maybe a foot, so what changed? Nothing, other than the weather, which has been warming up, and nitrate is increasing, not surprising since only 5-10% water changes are made per week. Pretty sure this is just another example of how our pond systems are a living, breathing thing, subject to changes during its aging. This one's just over 2-yrs old now, so time will tell if it stays away, which is fine with me since it keeps clogging up the bottom drains.
      Attached Images Attached Images  
      Last edited by kimini; 07-07-2019 at 09:09 PM.

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    11. #191
      ricshaw is offline Senior Member
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      Quote Originally Posted by TylerDurden View Post
      Kimimi, Im not sure if it was covered but where did you source your pvc?
      Perforated PVC sheet?


      member

    12. #192
      kimini is offline Senior Member
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      Drilled it myself due to the unique hole pattern, something I'd rather not do again!

    13. #193
      Grumpy is online now Senior Member
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      The FlowFriend pump draws about 120W, roughly a third of what the previous pump drew, yet we still get "you're using more power than your neighbors" notifications.
      I remember this a thread a couple of years ago about solar panels: https://www.koiphen.com/forums/showt...8-Solar-panels

      Isn't the 120W draw within easy range of "cheap" panels, even if you only used that power source without batteries during daylight hours? Having said that, I don't know of an off the shelf controller that would switch power sources smoothly...

      I still think your low head shower is a great option in some situations, it may not do everything yet, but still reduce power consumption for many ponders.

    14. #194
      kimini is offline Senior Member
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      I'll build a temporary pipe adaptor to feed the skimmer straight into the RDF. The suspicion is that there won't be enough flow to sink the floating rim of the skimmer, but it's worth a try. A middle ground is to move the skimmer pump (that feeds the SG filters) to the output side of the RDF. That would increase the flow somewhat through the bottom drains and the skimmer, but of course doesn't remove its electrical usage out of the equation. All it really accomplishes is ensuring that both the pump and SG filters don't get junk fed to them.

      Regarding solar, that's a really big and complicated topic, but yes, it's certainly possible. Realistically, it would get maybe 6-hrs of sun a day, so at best (full sun), it would cut 25% off the bill, but only that portion used for the pond, which is maybe half our bill, so that's ~12% of the overall bill, or only about $27/month. That has to be weighed against the cost of the panel(s), inverter, and switch, plus depreciation. I'd have to work that out and see what's what.
      Last edited by kimini; 07-08-2019 at 01:08 PM.

    15. #195
      kimini is offline Senior Member
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      Well, seems like (at least as of now) I've joined the elusive "showers eliminate algae" club... maybe. Rather than reprinting it all here, here's a separate thread with my disbelief. https://www.koiphen.com/forums/showt...h-for-no-algae

      Note though, that nitrate levels are just as high as they ever been (40+ ppm), and happens every summer.
      Last edited by kimini; 08-13-2019 at 04:08 PM.

    16. #196
      kimini is offline Senior Member
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      2021 update: The shower/trickle filter continues to operate well. I was going to take a picture of the media, but thanks to the RDF, it looks exactly the same as it did in the earlier pictures above. Back some months ago, I had to temporarily empty the filter and move it in order to kill off some roots growing below it. While handling the filter media blocks, I was disappointed to discover that I have to add myself to the list of grumpy people will are/have had their ceramic filter blocks start dissolving in the water. They're literally doing exactly that: the ceramic gradually becoming thinner. When new, I could "probably" stand on a block without it getting crushed flat, but not now. Simply lifting them out of the box, I could tell that they were on the edge of collapsing. At best, I might be able to get replacements, but I'm already soured on them, and will reluctantly try finding feather rock again. I say "reluctantly" because it's simply not available around here, at least not in small pieces.

    17. #197
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      sorry to hear about the media dissolving. Hammer drill with a large wedge/spade bit worked well for me to break down the feather rock into small pieces.

    18. #198
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      Awesome build! Thank you for sharing the details and pictures!

    19. #199
      kimini is offline Senior Member
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      Didn't see where I mentioned it before, but several times since the filter went online, I've tried turning off the UV to see what would happen. As suspected, the water slowly started becoming cloudy and green over several weeks. So, for my case at least, this shower/trickle filter does not eliminate floating algae.

    20. #200
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      I purchased a solar power grid last year due to our power consumption. It’s paying me back rapidly. It appears at this point that’ll happen in a 3 and a half year period.

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