BaadPuTthyKat

You know the drill by now lads & ladettes. Hair brained Kat scheme, asks for help, & you tell me the best way to do it, OK? Something close to that would be great too...

Reasoning:- I want dissolved oxygen levels to be ^MaXiMuM^ possible....as quiet as possible. I have around 4.5k litres/hour at the minute, from 1 main compressor & 3x 4 outlet aquarium air pumps. If anyone else has seen Jamesgang's 'Jamaican bagseed' grow, & seen the avalanche of fat buds he's getting, look at the amount of air going into the nutrients... Daltron only uses a waterfall for topping out the DO. I have an 'island' in the tank, as a central point for the float valve, & will/could attach the waterfall to that, but it isn't really very tall (15", & only 4" above the level of nutes.).

OK, so I swapped out a variable 750l/hr pump for a smaller one, as the main circulation. 750l/hr is 5 times as much as I need to move through this system per hour, so a small one is good. That gives me a spare pump which will go to a head of 1.5m (4ft). Item 1.

Item 2 is a 5 inch diameter pipe, ribbed, underground water piping... Either the water can fall down the inside of this, for noise reduction. Or it could tumble down the outside, for max surface area splash. Maybe it would run down it slowly, any ideas? I have a 4ft length of this.

I want to fit 'the contraption' (til you give it a name) in a corner of my main tank. I also want it to be very very quiet. So, how can it be done? Don't run away now you lurker! Lets see just how many different ways there are, to skin a Kat. Daltron? Can it work as part of this float valve contraption, filled with lavarock? Thanks for your .02

I have all kinds of stuff in various locations, so any extra bits or 'instead of..' ideas are good too, I might have something just right for the job. Here's the pic of the section of 5" pipe already in use. Don't need to use the stuff, but it's handy. What ideas you got? PerleeszE...

Attached Thumbnails

 

__________________

penguin

Hey BPK

You're not going to get much more than about 10ppm, no matter what you do. If you've got the cutter to spare, a DO meter would let you know when you've saturated it.

The absolute best way to increase DO is with a sheet of very small water droplets, like a water curtain. This could be accomplished with a small water pump and a short section of 1/2" irrigation tube with pinholes in it, a couple of inches above the surface. Inline mag drive pumps are very quiet, the water action should be pretty quiet and can be further muffled by a layer of insulation around the tank.

One of the NFT contingent (San?) reported using a "fluming pump" for this purpose. You could also use a power head.

Just some thoughts....


penguin

__________________

BaadPuTthyKat

Ta very much Penguin! Is this like.. a series of small irrigation sprinklers? Or do I need high pressure, mm..? Lol, I just happen to have a small collection of irrigation outlets & devices..

Think I'll save the folding, towards a pH controller, rather than a DO meter. I can't imagine it's much less that max already, but I can be sure for the sake of 1/2 hrs work & a very few watts extra during lights on.. Great. To be honest, the pipes are gurgling a bit already from the bubbles fighting their way through there. Each tank has some serious bubbles & the main tank has a 'soaker' hose around inside it, well driven with air. This produces millions of the tiniest bubbles, but it's hardly 'white water' in there.

Excess isn't something I'm shy of, & I think the sheer number of identical sized drops you describe may make a good soft 'white noise'. Tank insulation to be 40mm 'styrene slabs I think.
The curtain sounds the way forward... By the left!...

__________________

JWCyborg

Heyya Kat:

Aquarium hobbyists have been seeking ways of reaching MDO(maximum dissolved oxygen), easily, quietly and consistently for years...

The waterfall method does work...Huge commercial aquariums discovered a problem with waterfalls that was unexpected. In salmon and trout exhibits that had large waterfalls, the fish were dying in numbers that could not be explained. The tanks were kept at low temperatures, and the waterfalls were creating a condition that was driving up the dissolved O to levels that were actually killing the fish...the mechanism that was doing that wasn't the water falling, it was the millions of bubbles it caused.

The was hobbyists who wish to raise the DO levels in homes, who don't want the 100+ decibels that a monster water fall would make, instead turn to a device known as an ammonia tower. This is simply a vessel (Be it square, or tubular) that the water flows in the top, cascades down through bio-material(many forms, but one thing in common. Water drops flowing through them and getting as much air contact as possible).



These bio materials also encourage beneficial bacteria, but discourage algae growth. For the sake of this application, the later being the most important. Algae build up and clog all the little pathways that drops, er, drop.



It was found that not only running the water through the bio towers, but adding air pumps to pump air through the tower as the drops cascade to the bottom...

When the water exits through the bottom of the towers, the DO will be at maximum that the water temp will allow.

I've used this technology for years, in both salt and fresh water, and it works...the noisiest part of the system is the hum from the air pump....

I'm watching some of the folks on this board working to achieve max DO, and there are systems already made to do it...These same tools can be easily made at home as well.

I have a 40 gallon plastic tower that I'm saving to use for my next grow...


Maybe somthing to think about...

BaadPuTthyKat

OK, Thanks for chipping in JW.

I knew there must be an aquarium technique for this... very interesting. I will look into the biota, as they sound quite familiar......

What you have told me, and having built Penguin's suggestion this afternoon & tried it, I was 'en route' to your destination anyway, as it happens. I have air under the lavarock station, large... as well as the tiny bubbles from soaker hose distribution. They are far smaller bubbles & slower to rise than 'conventional' airstones.

I did some math on my air into the nutes... getting near a million litres of air a week is bubbled directly under the roots & in the main tank. I went & looked at the local garden centre pumps & waterfall displays. I have more air/water interface ('white', bubbled water) spread around my system already, than the biggest they had.

Besides, after making a round 'curtain' 36" long, like Penguin described though, I thought it was much noisier overall, & very unlikely I need any more anyway.. I'm sure that with a small enough set of nozzles, it would be quiet, but a heated needle did the job for me so I thought that would be small enough.

Just for the record, I think this narrow guage soaker hose will be all I use from here on, for air 'stones'. A small roll will make a lot of bubble curtains. For my you still need bubbles under the roots to stir the nutrient properly.

__________________

JWCyborg

Yeah, the nutes still need to be agitated...


JW

n_d_shadows

well, a little late on this but one thing that has come to mind is a piece of plexi under your return hose. Force the water to spread itself out as much as possible and increase the surface area of it. The plexiglass could terminate below the water line of the res and the DO level should still remain high while noise from it is nowhere near as loud. Would sound something like a trickling stream. The force of the water rushing in like this should be enough to aggitate the nutrient solution and produce enough DO for your system.

This comes to mind because if a flooming pump will produce enough DO in a DWC bubbler setup, this plexi fall should do the same. In addition to that if you any bit of a plumber (which I'd say not with your slew of leak issues- haha couldnt resist) you could return through the center of your main res and have it flow up, similar to a flooming pump.

__________________
Delta9420’s DIY Raw Salt Fertilizers for Dummies
Deserves a good read