| We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Side Drop Filters; Article by Josh.S | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Jun 10 2007, 12:43 AM (2,310 Views) | |
| Josh | Jun 10 2007, 12:43 AM Post #1 |
|
Administrator
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Side Drop Filters There seems to be more people taking the plunge and setting up fish rooms. One of the biggest costs of running a fish can be filtration. There are so many filter combinations to think about, but for my room I have used Side Drop Filters. Side drops are an extremely simple internal filter that runs solely on air. They are usually in one end or one corner of the tank. Larger tanks may need one at each end. These types of filters aren’t the greatest for cleaning waste from the bottom of your tank. They are an excellent biologically filter and do a good job of mechanical filtration. Large waste particles do still build up on the bottom of the tank. This is easily cleaned up during water changes. There has been a push to use power heads to power these filters. This seems to fix the problem of large waste particles building up on the floor of the tank, but these filters are designed to have water run through them slowly that way the bacteria in the filters gets maximum time to do its work. If you are going to run power heads you might have to increase the size of the filter and you will need to increase the gap between the two pieces of glass ![]() ![]() Above is the side view and end view of my Side Drop Filters. Water flows from the bottom of the tank up between the two sheets of glass. It then over flows the inside glass and filters through the filter wool and returns to the tank via the two uplifts (PVC pipe) All you need to build these filters is two pieces of glass cut to the same inside width of your tank and about 80mm shorter then your tank is high. The glass that goes on the outside of the filter needs two 35mm holes drilled in it to allow the return pipe to pass through You also need two 90 degree bends and pipe the build the uplifts with. You need to use PVC pipe not conduit for this. You will also need to ‘re-cycle’ some bread crates to build the piece that holds the filter off the bottom of the tank. There is no set rule for the size of the filter. Mine range between 100mm and 120mm wide. The smallest size being on three foot tanks and the widest being on the six foot tanks. If sufficient air is available then they should be able to turn over the tank 4 times an hour. On the smaller tanks this would be a much higher. The gap between the glasses needs to be 2.5mm. This allows for good water flow between the glasses. It also creates enough suction to help pick up waste from the tank. ![]() Thanks for reading Josh |
![]() |
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · Articles · Next Topic » |




![]](http://z5.ifrm.com/static/1/pip_r.png)






5:39 AM Jul 12