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Comment by Craig Shevlin on September 24, 2014 at 9:38am

How is your basement system doing?  I am about to start a system in an enclosed Arboritium with my tanks in the basement.

Craig

Comment by mary scholz on December 4, 2012 at 8:35am

hope your wife knows where her panty hose are going to. ha ha. thanks for sharing

Comment by David Palmer on November 29, 2012 at 2:50pm

Interesting setup. I'm new to this as well, but I've done some research on the web and can shoot a couple ideas past you. Take it for what it's worth.

Just passing water through the buckets is probably not going to give you much nitrification. For the bacteria to do its job in converting ammonia to nitrates, it has to have contact with the water. This is called the retention time. Bio-filter designs for koi ponds recommend a 10 minute minimum retention time. If it takes 10 minutes for your pump to fill the buckets, then you have 10 minutes of water retention. More minutes to fill, then more retention time. You don't need an auto-siphon.

The way I get the water to stay in the filter is to put the output pipe up high so that it works as an overflow. You can use your existing outlet on the bottom of the bucket by adding a pipe from the outlet to an inch or two below the top of your bucket. Thus the water will fill the bucket before being able to enter the pipe and go out through the bottom sides. You might also add a pipe from your inlet that goes to the bottom of the buckets. This way water is added to the bottom of your filter and drains from the top.

If your pump is running too fast, then you can add a T connector to the pipe going to the buckets / bio-filter. The extra output pipe goes back to the fish tank, but with a cut-off to limit how much it drains from the pipe. By adjusting the cut-off, you can adjust the rate at which water goes into the buckets.