Building a HUGE Pond Filter - Part 5 - Static Beds / Pipe Fixings

Hello there, welcome back to another edition of the mega pond filter build. In the last video we took a look at the moving bed and we more or less finished that. I'm going to show you how I have finished that off in the start of this video and in this video we're going to concentrate on the static beds. So these are going to be the beds with the media that does not move. This media is going to be to catch a bit of muck if there's any left but it's also going to be to support Aerobic and hopefully anaerobic bacteria and whilst the moving bed will strip out the ammonia and nitrite because it's all aerobic activity, I'm hoping these next two chambers will start the anaerobic process. I'm not going super porous with the media. But I am using media that can support aerobic and anaerobic bacteria if it's packed in quite tight and it'll also work in filth as well. So this can get really mucky and still work very well. Okay then, just before we start building this next chamber where we're going to have a static bed, I just want to show you how I finished off the moving bed module. Remember the one back here Here is our brush module. probably just be able to see the brushes in there and that one had five outlets and they were all cockeyed they were all over the place so i've put a board on here and a board on here screwed in to keep everything nice and level and also in the end of the last video we had all five outlets coming down at the 90 degree bend but that really would have only shifted the media here So, I added a 45 on two of these ones, just off centre, and what that allows the water to do is come down on this side of our outlet, so we've got one and two outlets there. Hopefully you can see, we're going to have water coming in here, here, here, here, and here, so we're going to have really good turnover of media. That should move every single bit of media in there but now we need to do the transition between the moving bed and the static bed or the first of the static beds anyway and we've got one two outlets to work with so now all we need to do is just put the inside flange on I'll screw that on and then I'll put the other fitting on the outside okay that's both of those fittings properly screwed in and sealed in now but the side of this tub is not straight It looks pretty straight on there, but if I slot a pipe in there, you might be able to see that it's sticking out the back, really cockeyed. There you go, that's not coming out at 90 degrees. You see it's going way over in that direction. Now we can pull it to enable us to get it into there, but we've got the problem there, and we're probably going to have a similar problem on the other side as well. So in order to combat that, I'm actually going to seal the pipe in here. And here using the silicon not the solvent cement. I will use solvent cement in here to make sure that this is absolutely solid because obviously we're going to beriving on with this to try and straighten it up and I don't want to dislodge it if it's got silicon in. Hopefully get it straight enough it'll just slot into there and the silicon will seal it. Once it's in I might be able to silicon around it but I don't think there's going to be much space so I am going to use quite a lot of silicon in here. And from the inside of this tube, I can get my hand in to kind of smooth the silicone out once everything's all in there. That is going to be absolutely solid very soon. And that's the other one in as well. So now we've got the two outlets permanently fixed, ready to push into here and here, which will be siliconed. And I'll just let you have a look on the inside of here. You can see the silicon's come up here, it's come around here, created a total seal. But that is our solvent glue. So you can see that's all the way around there and that has also created a total seal as well so the water is not going to get out anywhere. Okay so that one matches up pretty well. You just see the pipe there going into that fitting. Well it's not not fixed in it yet but it's marrying up with it nicely but unfortunately on this other side you can see that one's cockeyed. It's simply Simply because this tube isn't flat. It will bend in, I think I'll try and fit this one first. And then that one will push more or less straight in. So I'll concentrate on doing this one first. I'll put a good bit of sealant around the inside of here. And then I'll push this in until it is not all the way in, but it's kind of in the hole, if you know what I mean, ready just to be pushed in. Then I'll marry that one up and push that in. Obviously, both of them will be well sealed. Um... And it should work. Okay, that's one side in. Now we just need to encourage this side to go in. I think we're in there. We'll reach over and pull them together. Again. Sounded good. Sounded good. Okay, right, so that's the first one. You can see the silicone's squished out there. I'll reach a wet finger in and smooth all that out just to make sure it's not left messy like that. Let's check the other one. One sound as well. That's good. Good. So now we've got that transition done between the moving bed and our first static bed. And I'm pleased with that because that was an area that I was worried about, especially with these tubs not being straight. Okay, now it's onto the outlet for this tank and I'm going to put the outlet on this side. There's only going to be one. It's going to go through to this other tank which will be dragged back here. So it's going to go in there and down and then our outlet is going to be on that side. So the water is going to have to travel a long way before it comes out of there. I actually forgot to say that there's silicon on this side, there's also silicon on that big flange side as well, on the outside. And we're going to fit a small piece of pipe here, which is about 80mm, or three and a half inches long, in here with a solvent cement. Absolutely fused together so the water's not going to get through it. And then on the inside of here, I'm just going to slot a 90 degree bend. This one isn't actually going to be fixed though, it's just going to be pushed on. And it's pretty solid without being fixed. It doesn't have to be sealed because it's just all inside the body of water here. And that's going to direct the water down to the bottom of our tub. So it has to go through all the media and possibly some more brushes before rising back up and out of the outlet. I actually put way more of this on than is necessary because I don't want even a little pinhole where the water could possibly get through. I want everything to be totally sealed. And if that means that the glue splats out a little bit on the sides, a bit like this silicone has done, then that's just what it's got to be like. You don't want to be trying to hack it apart to seal it. Got to be done right first time. Okay, solid. That is the transition complete. That's it. Pushed in, quarter turn, stuck. That's that part of the tub finished, so now we're going to concentrate on this side, where we're going to put another transition between here and here. We're just going to do that in exactly the same way as we did the one through here, so I don't really need to film that. I'll just get it in place, and then we'll come back. Okay then, we've got the inlets put in there, with a 90 degree bend on each of those to direct the water flow down, and these are the trays that I'm going to be using to hold the media. and the media is going to be alpha grog which I shall show you in a minute. I need a few more of these trays, ideally they all want to be that height so I need another one, two, three, four, five, six in there and I also need to fill this one as well. I'm in the bottom of here, I've got the bottom of a plastic pallet that arrived to me so I thought I'd put that in there to make a false floor. Well I may swap that into here because if there is going to be any muck it's going to be in the first one. By the time the water gets to here it should be crystal clear and if I can't get enough of those big trays I'm going to use these small ones. So I've drilled a few more holes in there make them really perforated and they fit in there pretty well so if I can scrounge some more of those I could fill all this up but I might be able to get some of those big trays. I did say about getting some today so hopefully that'll come off and I'll be able to get those big ones. So we've got our two inlets in here both firing down obviously it'll go all the way through the media and everything and then it'll come out that far end into the next one and drop down into here as well so the water is going to be down there it's going to be milling around it's going to be coming through all of this media and then it's going to be dropping out of this side. Just step around to give you some sort of orientation as to where we are. There you go, that's our vortexes, so the water comes in here, through all the vortexes, right to the back there, which you probably can't see, where our moving bed is, and then into two static beds, and then out, and I've took the liberty of attaching a pipe that runs along here, and then it drops into this tank, and this will be the one that we're concentrating on in the next video, because I'm going to add another shower filter in there, and install a pump, which will pump to the two shower filters, so that'll be where the water gets re-oxygenated. And if you notice on the downcomer I've put some air intakes there as well just as little venturi turbo units just to make sure that the water gets aerated when it comes into here. I've also added an outlet on there as well so the water will come straight down there a 90 degree on here and back to the pond. So that's the static beds just about done. I really just need some more of those plastic crates of either type and some filter media. I've already got some filter media but nowhere near enough I'm probably going to need the best part of a ton to fill these two and also to fill the last one because I don't want to waste any space so in that last chamber where the two shower filters are going to be it'll have a pump sitting in the bottom but it'll also have loads of crates of filter media as well and all of that stuff will be alpha grog because it'll be sitting in water and possibly still catching any remaining muck. that's got this far through the system and that's the alpha grog there it's a ceramic filter media looks pretty much like lava rock and the majority of its surface area is external so it tends not to get clogged it works very well in filthy conditions so it's a great one for koi filters and if you're interested in having a much closer look at alpha grog you can check a video out that i did quite a while ago called looking inside filter media where i cracked a bit of this open and looked inside it with a microscope and that basically shows you what this stuff's all about very hard excellent external surface area internal surface area is not very good but it's extremely cheap works well in filth and it's going to enable me Right, basically to put about a ton in here, which will do an incredible filtering job on the pond. Plus, because all these bits don't pack together perfectly, these chambers here should be absolutely alive with shrimps and water lice and all sorts of things crawling about on here, eating organic matter away. Ultimately, getting washed back out and feeding the fish. So not only will these static beds help towards sorting out the ammonia, nitrite and maybe the nitrate in the pond, but they'll also be almost like a breeding ground for invertebrates, which will hopefully constantly feed into the pond because there's going to be a lot of water going through here. These things, when they're swimming through the water, are going to end up going back to the pond eventually. And if not the adults, then certainly the eggs. It's going to be constantly repopulating the pond. It's going to be great. Okay, so we need to permanently fix these pipes now. They're just in loose. There you go, you see, that's just loose. But what I've done, I've lain them exactly where I want them, and then I've marked them with a permanent marker. So you can see a mark on here and a mark on here. So when I permanently glue this together, and I slide it into position, I know exactly where I want it to fit. Same with that one, I've got a mark there and a mark on that piece. Same with that one, mark on there and a mark on there, so that this is pointing down. And that's quite a useful tip, that one, because if you don't do that, sometimes you can put these in cockeyed, and once they're stuck, they're stuck. So we've got this one to glue up, we've got the drains for the bottom of here. I've taken the pipes out, I've allowed this to dry out, because these did have a little bit of water inside them. So that's nice and dry, and that's the pipe work that came off there. All of these just feed out into a common pipe and then on the end of this pipe I'm going to have a tap so I'll be able to leave this turned off which will allow these all to fill up with water. When I want to drain these out I'll just have one tap on here so all of that needs gluing. What else have we got to do? Oh yeah this pipe that feeds out from the vortexes into the brush chamber. At the moment it's only held up in the middle there with a bungee cord. I need to put Maybe there's ropes or something going up here. I do have nails hammered in up here, which I can hang ropes from just to support this. So that's another job that needs doing. Really, I don't think there's much more other than that that needs doing. I've got these bottom drains all glued in, so they're permanently fixed now. So they really want to be turned off, so I can fill this system with water. That one's off. What about this one? Is this one off? That one's off as well. So really, once I get the drains fixed on there and the inlet's done, I can turn the taps off on those particular points and then fill everything with water to test it. With this I'm not going to show you me gluing every single bit. You've seen this in a previous video. I'm just going to make sure that these are well stuck and then when I get all that done I'll fire the camera up again and we'll see what it's looking like. And remember don't skimp on the glue because you only get one chance at this and you don't want to make an arse of it. Has to be done right All right, first time. Okay, now because this one is going to be for draining purpose, okay, now because this one is kind of a, well, it's a bit of an extra attachment, that's going to have a piece of pipe permanently fixed to it, which will enable me to swill all the tanks and everything down, so I need to have some sort of hose attachment on here to have the hose attached, therefore I'm going from two inch down to inch and a half, like so. And then I've got a hose tail that I've cut off, that's what it's like before it gets cut off, and that'll just glue into there. Then I can attach my pipe and put a clip on to keep it secure. See how that's gone black? That's because this stuff just melts the plastic together. That is just permanently stuck now, there's no way at all you would get that off. But we've got this one here which is going to be to feed in from the pond, and I'm going to use two inch pipe on that one. So I can't use something like that because it only goes like half inch, three quarters, one inch, inch and a quarter, inch and a half. I need one that takes two inch. But luckily, I do have one. This is kind of like a multi-use fitting, this one. It's got a female thread on the inside if you want to put another hose tail on there and take it from two inch down to inch and a half or something. Or you can just slot this straight into a fitting and solvent weld it. Put your pipe on there. Now I didn't want a quick 90 degree bend on there because that'll slow the flow down a little bit. It'll add resistance. So I put a 45 on there, but that's sticking out a little bit too much. So I'm actually going to put a little bit more pipe and then another 45 to take it down here. So you'll have a nice slow swept bend here, which should allow maximum water flow through there. I want maximum volume coming through there. Yeah, that's going to work out good. It's a lovely long swept bend. When that goes in, it's just gonna Direct that more or less under here because I want the pipe to come from the pond underground Underneath this structure and then just come up the side I don't want it out here and all over the place where you're tripping over I want everything out of the way and out of sight, you know one good champion Right now as far as actually getting a pipe into here goes I don't want to have a permanently attached hose tail on there Because it means I need to put one on every single one of the drains And there's about six or seven drains. So what I'm going to do is put another one of those step down hose tails that I've cut back to inch and a half. That's a step up to two inch. That slots in there quite snugly and I'm not going to glue that in there. I'll fix it onto a bit of inch and a half pipe with tape and a clip and then I'll leave a 30 meter length of this pipe handy just hanging up somewhere nearby. When I want to drain anything off I simply plug that in, open up the tap, And then I can take this away and I can water my garden with it. Really simple. It's actually quite a tight fit in there. So considering that there's no pump actually pumping the water out of here, this is not going to come out. You know the water's just coming out of here by gravity. So that's quite a good solution for that. Okay guys, it's been a couple of weeks since that last clip that you've just seen on this static bed part of the filter. So I can't remember how far I got. In that video, I should have looked through the memory card, but I didn't. So now, helped on by Angus, I'm going to be putting the media inside those static beds. You can actually hear water running as well. I've rigged up the pump that I was using for that pressure filter and the shower filter, that combo that I showed in a video probably a couple of months ago. That one is now rigged up to this filter. It's only a 12,000 liter an hour pump. And it's lifting quite high, it's lifting probably 6 foot or more, about 1.8 to 2 metres, plus all the length of the pipe, and it's still moving quite a lot of water, so I'm very impressed with that, but that pump is actually going to be used in the very last chamber, which is going to have the shower filters, so I'm really just running it at the present time to check for leaks, and there has been a couple of leaks. Most noticeably. On the drain in the last vortex chamber there's a slight weep there and in the joints between the moving bed part of the filter and the first static bed there's a little weep down there as well but I'm not concerned about those because they will seal. This has only been running a couple of days and already that slight weep is slowing down. The muck that's going through the system will seal it up quite nicely. It's quite a common thing to have on big filter systems, you get a slight weep. If you try and fanny on and fix it, you tend to end up just making things worse. Best just to run it and let it seal itself. So now all we need to do is put some of this media, which is the alpha grog, Into the two static beds. And it looks like I'm going to have help from Angus. There is literally a ton of it behind me 66 bags of 15 kilo alpha grog. Now I don't think we're going to get anywhere near a ton into this system but I bought a ton because it is very cheap media. I'll show you what it's like and then I'll quickly video myself filling up a couple of containers, switch the camera off, fill up all the rest of the containers and then bring you back. And another thing you might notice is I've got lights in here. I've installed a couple of strip lights. Above these parts of the filter and a big one up here. Obviously this place needs a good tidy up but it's getting there, you know. Okay so that's the moving bed. Obviously it isn't moving yet, there's not enough water to drive it but I have filled it with the media. There you go. So by the time I get the big pump that media should have a nice skin of bacteria on it and it should move quite nicely. So water goes from the moving bed into the static bed and in here I've got some big perforated plant trays what you would normally get plants delivered to garden centers in. I've managed to procure quite a lot of these off Richard from Douglas Brothers which sadly had closed down. One of the best koi places in the country but he had a lot of these so he gave me some and they're absolutely perfect and in here We can get about a bag and a half of alpha drog into each one, so that bottom one's got 20 odd kilos, that one's got 15 kilos, so there's another half a bag to go in there, there's another 20 kilos, another 20 kilos in there. I'll fill all these up, I'll work out how much is in, and then I'll get back to you. Now you might notice we've got a little gap here. But I've got some spare brushes that'll slot in here and just really ensure that everything settles out very well and the water doesn't just fly through here. Okay, so that's that chamber done. I can now turn this off, stop the water just draining straight out of there. Now our water will come in here and in that one there, go down to the bottom before rising up through all the grog and out here into our next chamber. And in here we've got two crates, two crates, two crates, and two crates. So we've got eight crates in total, each one has a minimum of 1.5 bags. So that's three, six, nine, twelve, plus I've got an extra one across the top, so that makes 13 bags of media in here. Right, pump's off at the moment, but that is our two static beds full of the alpha grog. And I managed to get roughly 40 full bags of alpha drog in there. That's 40 times 15. What's that? 500? No, that's not right. Not 500. Yeah, 500 and something kilos. God, I'm going to have to work that out. My maths is terrible. That's going to do a hell of a job. Wait to see all the empty bags. God. And what's left on the pallet. Not much. That is where it's ultimately going to go. So it's going to drop out. Let's have a look. Let's have a look. Where are we? So it's going to drop out of here, into here, underground. This is just a fill in. I just left this exposed just to check these joints. They actually aren't leaking. That's not what the water's from. I opened this up without having the pipe in here before. Totally filled this with water and it all went away back into the pond. I wanted to quickly drain it. So that's what the mess is of. Anyway, it's going to come out underground. And then it's going to rise up the side and it goes down here. And in here we've got a 90 degree bend on the bottom which is going to swirl the water around and around and around so it stays in here as long as possible as well. And in here that's where our Blagdon 12,000 IQ pump is going to be, the amphibious one. That's what we're running the system on at the minute. As I say, we're going to go for a bigger one. And in here we've got our stainless steel filter and we've got our plastic filter. They're both shower filters, they're both going to be filled with very porous media. Some of it will be pumice, most of it will actually be the bio-home. I want this to absolutely destroy the nitrate. Then the water will drop back in. Got an outlet here which takes it just out the side and then ultimately that goes back uh to the pond it basically just runs through a four inch pipe with a 45 degree angle which shoots the water that way so hopefully it's got to travel a long way before it gets back to the pump which will be in the deep bit and if anybody's wondering what this long brush is here this is actually a spawning brush i managed to scrounge that off my mate Andy from Dramatic Aquatics and it just goes in there just to fill in that side bit I knew it would come in for something and these last few brushes that I had spare just go in here that's where the outlet comes in and that actually points towards the wall down like that so the water has got to come a long way through all this media before it gets back to here which is our outlet and this adjust this up and down and ultimately what that is going to do it's going to set the water level in this one That one and that one. So it's going to set the water in two static beds and the moving bed. Ideally, I want the water to be just above the level of the filter media. So I've turned the pump back on. It's busy filling it up. And hopefully before the noise starts, I can explain about the alpha grog. This is basically... It's almost like a synthetic lava rock, very similar to the one that you guys use in America and also in Canada, certainly North America, except this is a ceramic media. As far as I know, it's actually a byproduct from a foundry process or from the pottery process or something like that. It's incredibly cheap. And in the right conditions, it is excellent. I mean, some people use this in shower filters and it works okay. It's not too good for the nitrate because the majority of the surface area is external. But in a situation like this, where we've got it basically sitting in more or less static or slow-moving water in filth, it works very well because it doesn't get clogged up. It hasn't got that very porous structure. That gets clogged up, and because it's packed into those crates, areas between the individual pieces of media will develop anaerobic zones. So it is a good one for a big traditional static koi filter, or something like this, which is more or less a lake filter. And if you want to have a closer look at this, in fact, a look inside this, I did a video feature on this called Looking Inside Filter Media, so I'll put a link to that in the video description. That compares the Alpha Grog to the BioHome in various forms, to cheap Chinese media, to the red lava rock you guys use in North America, to the white pumice. I'm actually looking inside all those different types of media in that video, so it's a very, very important video because it allows you to understand what makes a good media. And I explain what the media would generally be used for, its strengths and weaknesses, and all that sort of stuff. It's a good video. I don't know why it hasn't done very well on YouTube. Maybe it's because people don't care about filter media, but to me... It is the heart of your filter. It's the most important thing you could possibly add to any system. You get the choice wrong, and the whole system is just balls up. Poor water quality and unhappy fish. Filter media is everything. Everything. Okay, guys, this is just an update on the last update. The filter has actually been running a couple of weeks now, and I have added some more media in the static beds. We've got more trays here which will enable me to finish off this section with the shower filters because quite a few of these trays are going to be full of media and be used inside this big container. I should get another 250 kilos or thereabouts in there. I've got all that in the back so most of that alpha grog will go into that section to finish it off. I'll get the pump in there. get those filled up with good media and that'll be shown in the next video so these are the static beds I had some mesh bags lying around so i filled those with more alpha grog and laid it in there just under the water level so now these two have 750 kilos of media in which is a hell of a lot and as you can see the water is clearing you know as it comes through here it's clearing The ring, by the time it drops out... gets into here swirls around through more media and it goes through the shower filters and by the time it gets back to the pond it should be pretty damn clear right let's just jump back onto this moving bed still just got the 12 000 liter an hour pump so consequently there isn't much water coming down these pipes i've raised this one up just to give these ones a little bit more water flow and i've actually put an air stone in the bottom of here but it's very central so i'm going to Basically, alter that probably in the next video to make a better airflow and that should really improve how that moving bed's working. Because at the minute, very centralised. When we get the big pump, obviously it'll be pushing it down here, it'll be pushing it down here, here, here and here. So it should be okay. But in this box is another 200 litres of moving bed media. So, not only do I need a lot of water coming down, I need a lot of air coming up to drive all that. One thing I am going to do is alter this brush chamber, which you can see pretty well now that we've got it illuminated. That's full of brushes, but I'm going to put an exit pipe on here, which will be two inches. Once I get all of these bags of media out of the way, it'll come along here and it'll actually drop into this eight foot long aquarium. And in here I'm going to do something unusual and pretty special which a lot of people might be interested in but I'm not going to reveal what it is at the moment. Not sure if you can see but we've got a couple of stand pipes there so we do have two outlets which ultimately go straight down under the ground and back to the pond. So ultimately all the water is going to be going back to the pond and it should be damn clear. Talking of clarity of water, you'll probably notice there is a little bit of a colour change in here. The water is clearing. The filter's been running, as I say, a couple of weeks and already there is a little bit of a difference. It's easier to see on a night when you shine a light in, but you can see under the water a little bit now, so hopefully that will continue to clear when I get the big pump in. It should make even more difference and ultimately clear. This pond, because when it's clear, it's beautiful. Thanks very much for watching. If you've liked this video, give it a thumbs up, share it wherever you want, and I'll see you next time.