| Thomas, yes the main water is drawn direct from the bottom drain and pumped over the shower. The water from the skimmer has it’s own dry mounted Aquamax 6,000ltr, this is also returned over the shower. I use Sequence pumps on these ponds without leaf baskets, they handle the fish waste fine, but for outdoor situations a leaf basket would be best fitted before the pump. Bob, Standard showers available in the UK are 4 trays at 1mtr long, they hold 60/70kilo of media, I think Carl uses the same design. Turnover/flow rate should be large as possible, up to 300%. Although they will work as low as 150%; when I say they will work, I mean work in consuming the waste. Much depends on your stocking rate/feed rate. If this is high, you may find the water gets a little heavy in fine particles, if this is the case then you have two means of keeping the water clear; either more showers sets need fitting or some form of fines filtration is necessary. With more showers and higher turnover water with fines will be cleared; it’s just down to the method you wish to use. Standard practice is one shower set per 2,000 gallons, with a low to average stock level, this will cope great. For biological nitrification they are first class, they are well oversized, perhaps up to 5,000 gallons worth. But remember these are also being used a sewerage farm and because of this the points I mention above are important. I use my own design fines filtration with static Kaldnes, this can be seen, as Gazza points out (thanks Gazza) on my website. Ignore the first photos in the article, as they are of my prototypes, the design now used is shown in the bottom photos. These give water like glass. Hope I’ve covered every thing, Maurice. |