# What flow rate for trickle filter?



## JMorgan (28 Sep 2017)

I've just got an above tank trickle filter for my Roma 200, which is actually 175 litres.The tank is quite heavily planted with swords, crypts, java fern and anubias - nothing demanding - is low/medium light with akadama substrate and has a bunch of corys, tetras and a pair of angels.

Having zero prior experience of trickle filters, at least beyond those I've DIY'd for my pond using garden planters, I'm wondering what kind of spec to aim for with the pump?

While all the pumps I'm looking at could be considered low power in that they're less than 40W, as this is going to need to run continuously I'd like to use the minimum power to get the job done. I'm wondering to what extent if any I could use a lower flow rate than typically thought normal (between 5x and 10x) because of the massive amount of oxygen available in a trickle tower? 

Obviously this is a low tech tank without CO2 and most of the info available tends to assume using a canister filter for aquariums and those that discuss trickle filters are either in marine sumps or referring to pond type volumes as well as koi and goldfish level muck production.

In case anyone's interested the filter is on eBay here

I'm also going to play with growing some plants in the top layer (it will have a pre-filter) so ideas on small attractive, possibly trailing, plants that don't grow as big as peace lilies or get as straggly as pothos and which would cope in the low humidity of a centrally heated house very welcome 
cheers
Julian


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## KipperSarnie (28 Sep 2017)

A pump size is given in the eBay listing!
Keep in mind you the higher the pump has to lift to the lower the flow.
You also need a pump powerful enough to fill the spray bar pipe with water otherwise the chambers furthest from the inlet will not receive sufficient water to supply a biological bacteria bed.


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## BubblingUnder (28 Sep 2017)

JMorgan said:


> ideas on small attractive, possibly trailing, plants


I've had several houseplants with their roots trailing in my aquarium including peppermint plants dirt cheap at a £1 from the local supermarket just keep clipping the leaves. Also have pieces of 'Baby Tears' (Helxine) trailing out. The most attractive was Fittonia (Nerve plant) compact bushy just make sure you put just the tip of the roots in the water (green leaved plants are the most robust).
However despite what you say about size my peace lilies are the best you just need to cut off the larger leaves so newer smaller ones will appear & produce a more compact plants. I believe there are several varieties of them so smaller ones may be available.
I agree with you about the Pothos unless you have a large aquarium & put a climbing frame on the back.


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## dw1305 (28 Sep 2017)

Hi all,
It looks good in the link. 





KipperSarnie said:


> You also need a pump powerful enough to fill the spray bar pipe with water otherwise the chambers furthest from the inlet will not receive sufficient water to supply a biological bacteria bed.


That is it, you just need some reaching the last box. The biological filtration capacity of these is enormous.





JMorgan said:


> so ideas on small attractive, possibly trailing, plants that don't grow as big as peace lilies or get as straggly as pothos and which would cope in the low humidity of a centrally heated house very welcome


A _Tradescantia_ would do,  _<"T. zebrina">,_ or _<"T. fluminensis "_Variegata_"">_, would be good. 

Have a look at <"Planted Box Filter">.

cheers Darrel


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## zozo (28 Sep 2017)

JMorgan said:


> possibly trailing, plants



Hydrocotyl tripartita is very small or any other Hydrocotyl will do very good in lower humidity emersed.. Bacopa caroliniana also a trailing plant if grown emersed, comparable with creeping Jenny but smaller.  All rather fast growers too..


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## JMorgan (28 Sep 2017)

KipperSarnie said:


> A pump size is given in the eBay listing!
> Keep in mind you the higher the pump has to lift to the lower the flow.
> You also need a pump powerful enough to fill the spray bar pipe with water otherwise the chambers furthest from the inlet will not receive sufficient water to supply a biological bacteria bed.


Many thanks - I added this filter to my basket so long ago I think they must have added the bit about pump LPH since or equally likely I'd just forgotten. I've got a number of pumps to experiment with but it seems a useful guideline to just aim for whatever strength pump fills the spray bar completely. 

Darrel and BubblingUnder - many thanks for the suggestions. The Fittonia is very pretty, though the care site I found does warn it likes higher humidity. I'll start the hunt for plants once the pump is sorted - the plants on the thread you linked to look stunning Darrel - many thanks. Thanks to Marcel too - just noticed your post.

A further thought on plants - are there any trailing plants - that perhaps in nature grow on the banks of streams, whose leaves are happy enough under water given they'd be lower than the roots? I'd expect them to melt, but maybe there are some species that don't or that are capable of being emersed and submersed at the same time?

cheers


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## KipperSarnie (28 Sep 2017)

Tradescantia ?
Back in the day I always had them in my fish room not sure how the leaves do submerged though.


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## zozo (28 Sep 2017)

JMorgan said:


> A further thought on plants - are there any trailing plants - that perhaps in nature grow on the banks of streams, whose leaves are happy enough under water given they'd be lower than the roots? I'd expect them to melt, but maybe there are some species that don't or that are capable of being emersed and submersed at the same time?



As said Hydrocotyl sp., Bacopa sp. Lysimachia nummularia, further you could try Anagallis tenella, Mazus reptans, Hypericum elodes and some Myriophyllums if available..There are likely more, hop into a pondshop early summer, i've seen more but didn't try them all and do not know them all by name. But the ones mentioned i tried and are very happy with growing emersed and partialy submersed.

What grows on submersed wont melt nor suffer any defficiencies if the plant has enough emersed growth at the same time and enough nutrition. Some nutritious elements are mobile in plants. Co2 is not mentioned in this list but it likely is mobile as well.. At least that's my educated guess, with what i experience growing like that all parts stay equaly healthy.


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## JMorgan (29 Sep 2017)

I really should know better but I thought to pop in to homebase this morning because I knew they were having a sale. Since a sale at homebase just reduces some items to being very expensive instead of outright extortion I didn't have high hopes, but was gobsmacked to discover that in combination with selling off their entire houseplant section to make more space for Christmas crap, some brilliant management bod had decided to take the dumbing down to a whole new depth such that at least a couple of dozen different species of houseplant are now labelled "foliage"!!! Not even a pretence at trying to give the plant its correct name . . . . "foliage" is all you get, presumably just in case you hadn't noticed the things have leaves . . . 

Anyway I'll get to a proper garden centre over the weekend armed with my list from this thread and see what I can find.

Marcel thanks for your suggestions - I have some kind of Bacopa I'm pretty sure - I'll have to check my collection of plastic tabs and have a hunt online


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## JMorgan (22 Oct 2017)

I thought I'd update this to describe my experience with the trickle filter:

Sadly for now its back in the box, though I plan to use it very soon over a 1000L IBC tote I'm setting up in my shed to over-winter my goldfish as their pond is a little too shallow at 2' to be absolutely sure they'll make it through a Yorkshire winter. A mild one would be fine, but if the law of averages apply we're due a harsh one!

This is because in order to get the water pumped to the end of the spray bars I had to buy a new 60W 2000+ LPH pump. I'd imagined having a prefilter actually in the tank and then the pump, once primed, moving the water to the spray bars. For whatever reason the pump refused to prime with the prefilter in the tank unless I had it well below the level of the base of the tank, massively increases the head height and consequently reducing the flow so it no longer reached the end of the spray bars.

It worked very well with the pump actually in the tank without prefilter, but that was only done to explore options and was never going to be a long term solution because the return to my tank was then far too powerful not to stress some of the livestock even with the pump at its lowest setting, though the _corydoras aeneas_ absolutely loved it and immediately spawned! Also without a prefilter there was no mechanical stage before the spray bar which isn't ideal: The bar would get clogged and the physical waste would be sprayed over the "grow beds" I had planned for the top layer of the trickle filter.

Obviously if anyone didn't intend to plant this top layer then it would work perfectly well. especially in a larger tank where there would be space for both prefilter and pump and the force of the return wouldn't be an issue.

I'm currently mending a 330L tank that I intend to set up as a riparium - using the trickle tower outlet as a kind of waterfall feature over rocks could work very well. 

Another option I will explore in future, would be simply to remove one of the spray bars. I'm not sure of the maths but clearly its going to reduce the required LPH by roughly half. While it would also obviously reduce the area through which water was trickling, I'm not sure this would matter very much with the holes suitably angled.

Another option would be to replace the spray bar altogether and this is what I think I'll plan to do should I set this up again. The spraybars that come supplied have a kind of double row of holes that is consistent throughout the length of the bar. The allows such a huge amount of water to exit through the first section that very little gets to the second and nothing to the later stages. I don't think this is a good design - had the holes increased in number or size progressively a much more even flow could be achieved with a much less powerful pump.

My goal with the trickle tower was not really to improve filtration, which is already perfectly adequate, but to play with the "grow bed" idea and get some plants growing emmersed without having to use the tank lidless or cut crazy shapes in twinwall poly carb sheeting to accomodate the hang on shower caddies I've done previously.  What I may explore next is the DeBruyn filter idea or a version thereof, simply because it is air powered and since it's 100% DIY I can set it up from scratch how I want it and use it exclusively for plants because I won't be trying to replace the existing filter.

Hope that helps someone who might be planning something similar.


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