FrankChong
Koi Lover
Oct 17, 2000, 11:39 AM
Post #3 of 4
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T.H. Fong,
I kept Discus the past 8 years until I switched to koi lately. One of the requirements to keep Discus successfully is to have excellent filtration. This is because we fed Discus with live food like blood worm and food we made from beef heart, prawns and fish. There is very high organic waste generated from these feeds.
My filter size is exactly half the size of my acquarium which is 5 ft long by 3ft high by 2 ft wide. The filter size is 5 ft long 3 ft high by 1 ft wide. The filter has five chambers and they are all down flows. First chamber consists of bio rings, second chamber bio balls, third chamber japanese matt, fourth chamber fine matt (looks very much like dish washing pad) and fifth chamber is pump. Into each of these chambers I introduced 4 units of airstones right at the bottom of filter material. My intention at that time is to achieve two purpose.
1) Provide aeration, I hate to see bubbles in the aquarium.
2) To clean filter material.
I achieved both purposes with this design. I only need to clean the filter after two years period (not that I avocate you do the same). The filter material were still clean but there was a layer of fine greyish mud like sludge built up at the bottom of filter chambers. I had to remove this sludge manually, there was no bottom discharge pipe.
It was not possible to make a lot of holes into glass tank.
From my observations made over the years, I know the advantages of introducing air stones below the filter material. I see no reasons to clean the filter material when I can see clearly from the glass tank the filter is not dirty. But do not wait two years to clean out the sludge. It consists of heavy metals very possible to cause chronic poisoning to fish.
Based on my previous experience I do the same for my pond filter. This time I had the advantage to learn from previous filter short coming. I build in bottom discharge pipe for every chamber. Even better, to each of these discharge pipe I fitted solenoid valve. Three times a day these solenoid valves would be activated by a timer to discharge for 50 seconds to remove whatever sludge there is. Hopefully this will be my maintenance free filter. My pond has been in operation since June, still tinkering with some other improvement too early to claim success.
I had also read a lot from other websites debating on pros and cons of introducing airstones to filter. Read a lot and decides for yourself what is good.
I hope the above helps.
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