When things go wrong!!

[Walks-In-Storms]

i cant see your angle on bottom of bucket. to get solids to settle you need to have a 45deg angle at bottom, otherwise your bucket will not swirl...

or are you gunna put it in soon?

Yes - didn't I say that? I thought I mentioned a spiral like the one "Biggles" made so nicely by welding plastic. Actually, however, the two swirl filters I have in the garden right now (photos are somewhere here also), work with excellent effectiveness - they only have two spigots inside and aimed to strike the sides of the tube at a downward angle. Gravity and water surface tension do the rest. Also, I've run the siphon in the photos in my fish tank already, learned that it filters solids very well without the cone or spiral - same principle of physics the reason. Adding the angled surface is another experiment - I'll let you know what happens (don't I wish I could weld like "Biggles?").

Thanks for you interest and remarks.

[llewelynj]

lol dont we all wish we could weld plastic....
sounds like your on track...

[silloth52]

hi tim

here are a few pictures of my radial flow filter ,easy to make and works well
collects about 10mm of solids every 10 days from my trout tank
placed between my trout tank and sump

[Murray]

Here are a couple of photos of a blue barrel ( orange actually) that was made into a simple filter. The filter had the water enter from the pump about halfway down the barrel and had a nozzle fitted inside to induce a rotation of the water.

Brushes are suspended from the screw top lid to enhance bio-filtration

The 40mm outlet fitting can be seen near the top of the barrel. This will allow clean water from the top of the water column to flow to the grow beds or to the DWC troughs as required.

It cannot be seen here but there is a tap fitted very close to the bottom to facilitate drainage of sludge and sediment that may gather there.

[toraman]

It all started with an innocent sock...

So easy to happen, perhaps a sock on the inlet to each growbed would be safer as well as lessen the frequency of cleaning. Maybe until you make the filter or perhaps this might be good enough.

I must do this myself, I did try the sock on the outlet too but clogged too quickly. I have the problem of not being able to find a spot to install a filter with the solutions I've seen so the old grey matter is clunking away on the problem in the background.