# any one ever use a fluidized sand filter?



## n21981606 (Aug 8, 2010)

i travel a lot for work and usually end up bored sitting in my hotel room. well one night after looking at diy filters i came across this 




im just wondering if anyone here has done this, and if they have noticed less fluctuations in there water.

any info welcomed


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## kev416 (Aug 22, 2010)

I have used FB filters. A well designed one will restart after a power failure and will not blow the media out its reaction chamber when in use. It's good for high density breeder tanks or in wholesale/transhipping where you want to remove ammonia as fast as possible usually in a single pass through the filter. My bed used sand blaster beads. If you look at some of those FB videos you will see a turbulent media/water interface. That's not a good thing. It will toss the media out the exhaust port. You need a sump in that case to catch it. You may want to attempt a moving bed filter with Kaldness media. It works well without the media refluidization and exhaust difficulty if you are designing a FB system for yourself.


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## n21981606 (Aug 8, 2010)

kev416 said:


> I have used FB filters. A well designed one will restart after a power failure and will not blow the media out its reaction chamber when in use. It's good for high density breeder tanks or in wholesale/transhipping where you want to remove ammonia as fast as possible usually in a single pass through the filter. My bed used sand blaster beads. If you look at some of those FB videos you will see a turbulent media/water interface. That's not a good thing. It will toss the media out the exhaust port. You need a sump in that case to catch it. You may want to attempt a moving bed filter with Kaldness media. It works well without the media refluidization and exhaust difficulty if you are designing a FB system for yourself.


Thanks for the input. I saw some of the different media used in the FB systems. I was thinking of some different types and figured id try the sand. I do water purification for Dialysis and labs and figured I'm up for the challenge. I was going to use a flow button of like .5 gpm. I think I only needed like .25gpm to lift the sand and I was going to go from there. Some of the vids have the media cycling like crazy but I think slow and more contact time is the key to having it work correctly.

I'm not at home all the time and have an auto feeder. I want to try to keep the water parameters steady, so if I'm away for a bit the fish will have a better chance. I figured since I have all the PVC available, I might as well try it out.


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## kev416 (Aug 22, 2010)

The ones I built were quite big. I like the way the blaster beads behave. Being formed under heat they were round and floated within the reaction chamber. Silica acts very similar but required a little more pressure than the beads. I used a 1/2" PVC gate valve to control the lift and a Y check valve to stop any back siphoning during a power failure. I take it you are thinking using a drip emitter on a smaller design? Is that what they call a flow button? You'll have to do some trial and error. It's true that the better the contact time in the reaction chamber the better the cleaning but on a very low flow the problem will be on a restart whether the media can be relifted. Also slower flow allows more media in the chamber which is great. On a smaller design if you poured the media in initially while everything was flowing to establish the bed height there's a chance that all the media will lock off on a power failure if allowed to settle. I'm sure you understand what I mean. Be interested to see how your design progresses. Good luck with it. P.S. I forgot to add that my smaller units were open top acrylic units sitting in the aquariums. That's how I could add the media directly to the reaction chamber. Yours may be closed so disregard what I said. You'll figure it out. LOL


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## kev416 (Aug 22, 2010)

Low cost moving bed filter. (Well not that low cost... being the media is expensive.)


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