Plankton Friendly Pumps!

[reefnewbie54321]

There is always a big debate about impeller pumps effect of plankton and I dont want this thead to turn in to that. My tank is going to be skimmerless and run of a turf scrubber and if I put all the effort in to alternative filtration to aviod a protien skimmer consuming my plankton then I would like to have peace of mind knowing my pump is 100% planktn friendly aswell.

After some research and reading adeys work I have found a few options but none are commercially avialabe so the point of this thread is to design and eventually build and aquarium plankton friendly pump.

Possible pumps,

Archamedies Screw Pump
Daphragm Pump
Vacuum Pump
Piston Bilge Pump
Airlifts



Screw Pumps would be hard to scale down and must be angled. A 16" diameter tube at 30 degree angle pumps 460 GPM.

Diaphragm Pumps are on ebay all the time and seem like the best possible pump since it has high flow rates

http://www.greatsagehabibi.com/bilgepump.php

Vacuum Pumps ... know very little about and need to do more research

Piston Bilge Pump ... know very little about and need to do more research but supposedly better then a diaphragm pump
http://ozreef.org/diy_plans/water_movement/piston_pump.html

Airlifts are effective when slow flow is needed and do not need to be pushed up higher then the resevior. It can not handle much head pressure and would need a huge air pump

Geyser Pumps are better then airlifts but same type of concept and I am not sure if they can handle much head pressure

Looking for some input and other ideas ... mainly leaning towards a diaphragm bilge or a piston bilge mainly becuase I know it has been done before but I plan on buying an archamedies screw pump kit and see if I can scale it uo and add a beefy motor. I also need to do some more research on vacuum and geyser pumps. OPEN TO ALL SUGGESTIONS!

Thanks for looking,
-Reefnewbie

 

[demonsp]

If you have fish then you want a skimmer. If you mean the plankton you add for coral then you just need to turn skimmer off a few hours after adding.Just let your coral help you decide. They will responde either good or bad with amount you use and skimmer use.

 

[airinhere]

I have been running skimmerless systems (three of them) for the last year with great results. I am just using reguilar Eheim return pumps. I am very confident that they are allowing plenty of the planktonic life (and some of the larger inverts) to get from my sump to my display tank.

The reason I am so confident is that my dwarf seahorses had babies a little while ago. The babies were so tiny that even Scuds looked to be huge compared to them. The babies would get sucked up by the HOB filter on the pico-reef. The HOB filter is clear plastic. I could see the babies that ended up being sucked up by the pump and ended up swimming around in the chaeto I have growing in there.

Highly scientific, no? LOL Yeah, I dont think so either. But it does make me feel much more confident about how safe the trip through a pump system is for the little things growing in our tanks.

FWIW I am planning on using the airlifts for my primary water movement in the prop tanks I am putting together. Problem is the amount of bubbles you have to expect with such a method. Not exactly display tank material I am afraid.

 

[reefnewbie54321]

Well I'm not looking for advice on if I should run a skimmer or not. I have already decided to use an algal turf scrubber based on adeys design. I just want advice on a plankton friendly pump

I am trying to build a Non Photosythetic Tank and these corals main diet is phytoplanktin and rotifers. If I can filter my tank effiently and still save 100% of the food I add to the tank then thats what I'm going to do and ATS's achieve this. Eric Borneman has done studys on skimmate and has proven that there are a considerable amount of plakton that gets sucked up by the skimmer.

 

[reefnewbie54321]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11804105#post11804105 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by airinhere
I have been running skimmerless systems (three of them) for the last year with great results. I am just using reguilar Eheim return pumps. I am very confident that they are allowing plenty of the planktonic life (and some of the larger inverts) to get from my sump to my display tank.

The reason I am so confident is that my dwarf seahorses had babies a little while ago. The babies were so tiny that even Scuds looked to be huge compared to them. The babies would get sucked up by the HOB filter on the pico-reef. The HOB filter is clear plastic. I could see the babies that ended up being sucked up by the pump and ended up swimming around in the chaeto I have growing in there.

Highly scientific, no? LOL Yeah, I dont think so either. But it does make me feel much more confident about how safe the trip through a pump system is for the little things growing in our tanks.

FWIW I am planning on using the airlifts for my primary water movement in the prop tanks I am putting together. Problem is the amount of bubbles you have to expect with such a method. Not exactly display tank material I am afraid.

Glad to hear someone else is running skimmerless ... I cant say that a regular return pump will affect plankton that much but I am just trying to stick to adeys design and he does not recomment regular impeller pumps. I took all the effort in designing a ATS so I might aswell follow through with the design and build a plankton friendly pump.

 

[aninjaatemyshoe]

Are you thinking of adding live phytoplankton or dead?

If you are thinking of adding live phyto for a non-photosynthetic tank (I'm assuming dendronepthya is among the desired species), you might want to reconsider. The shear amount of phyto you'd need to introduce is staggering when you're doing it via live cultures. The problem isn't just that things like a skimmer and possibly impeller pumps will remove/kill the phyto, but that phyto will be quickly devoured by micro fauna in such a system anyway. Sustaining a dense amount requires dosing huge amounts. Furthermore, with live cultures, you're also dosing all the unused fertilizer that you're using to grow the phyto. In order to match the amount of phyto you get in some dead bottled varieties, you're going to be adding much more in phosphates and nitrates to your tank. Consider that Reed's Shelfish diet is 1,800 times the concentration of a dense live culture. Then when you look at how much some people are dosing with that stuff for their non-photo tanks (up to 100mL/day), you realize how incredible it would be to attain a similar affect using live cultures. Say you compare a system that uses Shelfish diet and skims heavily (say 95% of what is added is taken away/not feeding the corals) vs. a system that doses live without loosing any of it to filtration. You're still talking about needing to add up to 9 Liters of dense culture a day to match.

 

[Putawaywet]

I've long been a fan of ATS systems as they are some of the most bio-diverse tanks I've ever played around with. I've have also generally found them to be a bit more forgiving from a husbandry standpoint than their heavily skimmed bretheren.

I'm currently running (at least for a month or two more) a completely air powered quasi-ATS-type of setup. And while I have learned quite a bit from it over the years, they aren't without their own inherent problems just like any other system.

Non-photosynthetic organisms can be quite the challenge as we know so little about their daily food requirements. And with Phyto being just the first link in the natural reef methodology food chain I feel the key is to obtain as diverse a mix of accessory organisms as possible. IMO, zooplankton and their offsping will be the bread and butter of your natural food populations.

Over the years I have seen a lot of aruments both pro and con on the traumatic-non-traumatic pump debate and to this day I'm still not sure where I stand exactly on the topic. It's my personal belief that skimmers do way more damage to microfauna populations than pumps ever will, but still, it's difficult to argue when you see the results with your own eyes.

One of the most simple setups I saw was someone who designed and built a rather large tank employing only airlifts to move water. He had the rear of the tank partitioned off to hold several large diameter airlifts driven by super-sized air pumps. The bank of airlifts created a strong upward flow in the rear compartment which carried a sizeable amount of water back to the main display. As the water was displaced from the compartment, additional water rushed in (from slots near the sandbed) to take it's place. IIRC, he could angle the outflow to direct the water where he wanted it. Obviously, with a system like that he had nothing below that tank.

I imagine you could forego the slots in the partition wall and plumb to the opposite side of the tank to create a full cross current as your airlifts displaced water.

Brett

 

[Putawaywet]

Something else you might consider is is a plunger type of water mover. A pump derreck type of articulating arm that would drive a piston up and down within a cylinder. As the plunger moved up and down water would be alternately taken out of and then back into the tank creating a very modest back and forth type of flow.

You also have reverse Carlson surge devices that are air driven and can displace very large amounts of water.

However, personally, after all my years of playing around with various types of water movement devices, I wouldn't be as concerned with following the exact letter of Adey's model as I would be concentrating on a good integration of my ATS so that it dumped directly to the tank.

Perhaps something that combined a large airlift that fed water to the ATS. I would then use the surge from the ATS as my sole source of flow within the tank.

 

[Fredfish]

reefnewbie54321 (dotta change that name dude, this ain't no newb topic )

You should do a search on putawaywet. He has a really really good thread on the tank he set up and all the issues and variations he went through. Makes for very good reading and gives good insight into setting up a plankton friendly tank.

You didn't say exactly what you were using these pumps for and how much lifting would be involved.

For in-tank circulation, I believe nothing can beat the newer propeller type pumps: lots of water movement, very plankton friendly.

I personally have moved to a model where my refugium is on the same level as the tank. This eliminates all the issues of having to lift water in a plaknton friendly way.

I am the same as putawaywet. I am not convinced that standard pumps do that much damage to plankton. Unfortunately there is no research to support either hypothesis. I too have observed serhorse fry surviving the ride through a powerhead.

There is another guy on these forums h20engineer I think who takes care of the physical plant at the Monterey Bay aquarium who has posted on this topic so you might also do some searches on his name + pump, circylation, etc.

There is lots of info to be found on this board if you can construct the right search.

Good luck and let us know how things progress.

Fred

P.S. I too am running skimmerless

 

[reefnewbie54321]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11804861#post11804861 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by aninjaatemyshoe
Are you thinking of adding live phytoplankton or dead?

If you are thinking of adding live phyto for a non-photosynthetic tank (I'm assuming dendronepthya is among the desired species), you might want to reconsider. The shear amount of phyto you'd need to introduce is staggering when you're doing it via live cultures. The problem isn't just that things like a skimmer and possibly impeller pumps will remove/kill the phyto, but that phyto will be quickly devoured by micro fauna in such a system anyway. Sustaining a dense amount requires dosing huge amounts. Furthermore, with live cultures, you're also dosing all the unused fertilizer that you're using to grow the phyto. In order to match the amount of phyto you get in some dead bottled varieties, you're going to be adding much more in phosphates and nitrates to your tank. Consider that Reed's Shelfish diet is 1,800 times the concentration of a dense live culture. Then when you look at how much some people are dosing with that stuff for their non-photo tanks (up to 100mL/day), you realize how incredible it would be to attain a similar affect using live cultures. Say you compare a system that uses Shelfish diet and skims heavily (say 95% of what is added is taken away/not feeding the corals) vs. a system that doses live without loosing any of it to filtration. You're still talking about needing to add up to 9 Liters of dense culture a day to match.

I have read the article on reefkeeping and understand that 100ml of Reeds Shellfish diet is equal to 47.5 gallons of dense culture ... I know this can not be dosed live nd I didnt plan on it. I plan on setting my tank up very simaler to Chucks except utilize a 48 x 24 scrubber instead of a large down draft skimmer. 2.5 square feet of turf algae can handle the bioload of a regular 120g tank so 8 square feet should be able to handle the bioload of a 120g Nonphotosythetic tank. Phytoplankton is food for not only dendros but zooplankton and other things aswell. I feel I will have a much more dierse tak utilizing a turf scrubber along with a plankton friendly pump which is not for phytoplankton but more so the zooplankton that will thrive from the large additions.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11805634#post11805634 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Putawaywet
I've long been a fan of ATS systems as they are some of the most bio-diverse tanks I've ever played around with. I've have also generally found them to be a bit more forgiving from a husbandry standpoint than their heavily skimmed bretheren.

I'm currently running (at least for a month or two more) a completely air powered quasi-ATS-type of setup. And while I have learned quite a bit from it over the years, they aren't without their own inherent problems just like any other system.

Non-photosynthetic organisms can be quite the challenge as we know so little about their daily food requirements. And with Phyto being just the first link in the natural reef methodology food chain I feel the key is to obtain as diverse a mix of accessory organisms as possible. IMO, zooplankton and their offsping will be the bread and butter of your natural food populations.

Over the years I have seen a lot of aruments both pro and con on the traumatic-non-traumatic pump debate and to this day I'm still not sure where I stand exactly on the topic. It's my personal belief that skimmers do way more damage to microfauna populations than pumps ever will, but still, it's difficult to argue when you see the results with your own eyes.

One of the most simple setups I saw was someone who designed and built a rather large tank employing only airlifts to move water. He had the rear of the tank partitioned off to hold several large diameter airlifts driven by super-sized air pumps. The bank of airlifts created a strong upward flow in the rear compartment which carried a sizeable amount of water back to the main display. As the water was displaced from the compartment, additional water rushed in (from slots near the sandbed) to take it's place. IIRC, he could angle the outflow to direct the water where he wanted it. Obviously, with a system like that he had nothing below that tank.

I imagine you could forego the slots in the partition wall and plumb to the opposite side of the tank to create a full cross current as your airlifts displaced water.

Brett

I will agree that skimmers cuase more damage then pumps but I am already going skimmerless so I might aswell go all the way and use a nontramatic pump just to be on the safe side. Even if the pump only kills 10% total organisms its still 10% that could have been utilized in my tank. Its not like it will cost mch more then a regular pump ... just a little more effort and some DIY skills.

As far as flow I have already intergrated adeys surge device to flow in to my tank and provide a 5g surge every 10 seconds. The oerflow will lead to an equipment sump wich then will be fed up to the turf scrubber via a plankton frienldy pump. The ATS's dump bucket will be triggered and flows in to the tank via 5 bulkheads drilled on to the left side of the tank provideing strong undirectional laminer flow.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11805790#post11805790 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Putawaywet
Something else you might consider is is a plunger type of water mover. A pump derreck type of articulating arm that would drive a piston up and down within a cylinder. As the plunger moved up and down water would be alternately taken out of and then back into the tank creating a very modest back and forth type of flow.

You also have reverse Carlson surge devices that are air driven and can displace very large amounts of water.

However, personally, after all my years of playing around with various types of water movement devices, I wouldn't be as concerned with following the exact letter of Adey's model as I would be concentrating on a good integration of my ATS so that it dumped directly to the tank.

Perhaps something that combined a large airlift that fed water to the ATS. I would then use the surge from the ATS as my sole source of flow within the tank.

A piston pump is seeming the most pluasable and effective way to do this as of now. Adet described a motorized hand bilge pump in his book but people who have done it said the diaphragms split and one oerson converted it to a motorized piston pump. It was a very effective design and could be reacreated at a low cost.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11806125#post11806125 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Fredfish
reefnewbie54321 (dotta change that name dude, this ain't no newb topic )

You should do a search on putawaywet. He has a really really good thread on the tank he set up and all the issues and variations he went through. Makes for very good reading and gives good insight into setting up a plankton friendly tank.

You didn't say exactly what you were using these pumps for and how much lifting would be involved.

For in-tank circulation, I believe nothing can beat the newer propeller type pumps: lots of water movement, very plankton friendly.

I personally have moved to a model where my refugium is on the same level as the tank. This eliminates all the issues of having to lift water in a plaknton friendly way.

I am the same as putawaywet. I am not convinced that standard pumps do that much damage to plankton. Unfortunately there is no research to support either hypothesis. I too have observed serhorse fry surviving the ride through a powerhead.

There is another guy on these forums h20engineer I think who takes care of the physical plant at the Monterey Bay aquarium who has posted on this topic so you might also do some searches on his name + pump, circylation, etc.

There is lots of info to be found on this board if you can construct the right search.

Good luck and let us know how things progress.

Fred

P.S. I too am running skimmerless

I have read his thread about his EcoWheel tank. If I could have affored one I probably would hae went with one. The head presure will be 4 ft. tall and I doubt an airlift would cut it. Most likely going for a piston driven pump. As far as in tank circulation the will be tanken care of by the surges. I will definitly look up h20's threads and make sure to keep everyone updated on my progress

 

[aninjaatemyshoe]

I think the biggest issue you're going to have by trying to go completely away from impeller-based pumps is to provide for adequate flow inside the tank. These non-photo tanks seem to be better served with very high laminar flow. Most azooxanthellate corals and sea fans are accustomed to such flow and some seem to not thrive at all without it. Something like an RCSD or other surge device, while often very good for something like an SPS tank, is probably not appropriate for non-photo corals. These kinds of corals are almost always in high flow but wave protected areas. Are you averse to using propeller-based pumps like Tunzes or Koralias? I would think they would be better than impeller pumps in regards to killing plankton. They don't create nearly as intense shear forces as impeller pumps.

 

[reefnewbie54321]

If I can build a big enough piston pump then flow will be covered. I am building a 48 x 24 ATS scrubber with a 7 gallon dump bucket mounted over the tank. The return pumps water from the sump to the ATS dump bucket wich triggers it to surge 7 gallons in the the ATS. 7 gallons will fill the ATS and trigger a float wich then opens a soliniod valve draining all 7 gallons to my tank but before it reaches the tank it will travel through an Oceans Motions 4 way and be directed through 4 different bulk heads placed all on the left side of my tank randomly. So a 7 gallon surge every 3-10 seconds (depending on how a tweak my ATS)

Dendros need non directional laminer flow ... the 7 gallon surge will achieve this. Surges are very strong but not constant so a 7 gallon surge can achieve the power of a few tunze streams but just for a brief moment until the surge is triggered agian. I feel that this will be more benificial to the dendros but only time will tell. If not I do own 4 Maxi Streams that output 2000gph each...

 

[MinibowMatt]

the airlift pump would probably be the easiest, most reliable, and cheapest.

A simple piece of PVC, and a HD air pump and good airstones...
balancing the size of the PVC, against the Height of the rise, and the power of the pump will be your biggest issues to overcome.

 

["Umm fish?"]

Even if the pump only kills 10% total organisms its still 10% that could have been utilized in my tank.

Remember, an organism doesn't have to be alive to be utilized. Something will eat any dead organisms that float around your tank.

What you're looking to avoid are pumps/filtration that completely kill off the population of zooplankton that you are targeting. As long as whatever you choose leaves enough of the individuals alive to repopulate to avoid a complete population crash, then you're good.

 

[chris melb]

Im wondering how plankton friendly impellor pumps are also. Ive read from Adeys book that artermia newly hatched dont make it through impellor pumps but i have seen on numerous occasions larger brineshrimp and as of today mediumsized mysids that were seeded orginially in my lower tanks, somehow make it and survive up in the upper tanks- they must have not only survived the impellor pump but also survived the trip up 1.6meters of piping :eek1:

Having said this im curious to find out also how we can maintain the same plankton populations that are found in the reef, particularly phyto and more sepcficially calanoid copepods obviously protein skimming would have to eliminated. But also you would have to look at the number of plantkon predators that are in your tank. i.e i can see one fish would likely reduce a calanoid population in any tank in short period of time, as they are pelagic their whole life stage.

 

["Umm fish?"]

_Everything_ past a certain size eats calanoids. I think that it'll be hard enough just trying to maintain them as a culture, let alone in a tank with hundreds or thousands of predators.

 

[subarcticreef]

I'm in the process of building a plankton friendly tank/system and I will be using Czech air lifts/jet lifts. One can easily achieve a flow of 500+ gallons/hr with these very simple designs. There are several films on YouTube showing how to build them. They can also be ordered from Swisstropicals.com at a very low cost.