Big Aquaponic Greenhouse - Part 13 - Radial Flow Settler

welcome back to our aquaponics system build today we're gonna go over the build of our radio flow of settler these videos are brought to you in part by our patreon supporters our top supporters are true aquaponics calm green light planet net glass bottle outlet calm and grow pockets calm thanks to your support also don't forget to subscribe to our Channel and give us a thumbs up now that the fish tank is all built we have an outlet here that will then run into our radio flow separator a lot of people call these a radial flow filter but technically it's a separator because the solids drop out of the solution instead of going through a filtration membrane or something like that so it's really suspended solids just dropped down to the bottom of this tank you'll notice that this tank is taller than the fish tank and obviously we're not gonna pump up and fill this I'm gonna cut this tank down below this water line essentially and it only really be filled this far with water when I ordered these I wasn't exactly sure what the dimensions specs online weren't all that great so I wanted to make sure I got one that was tall enough to maximize my space instead of just buying something that was way too short so that's why this is so tall and we're just gonna sacrifice the top of it by doing that I probably spent you know another twenty or thirty dollars per tank but for me it was worth the investment to not take the chance of getting a tank that was too small this tank also isn't like what most tanks that you find it actually has a full drain outlet on the bottom meaning that there's no shelf where the outlet hole is at the bottom a lot of tanks including the one that I currently have in the dome comes down with its cone shape has a little shelf and then the fitting goes on so all the cells come down that actually sits on that shelf with these full drain tanks and he solves that go down there's no place for the set and I'll then be able to go out the outlet on the bottom much much easier this tank it's not quite a 60-degree angle I think it was 55 degrees which was close enough but really it was the only tank that I could find and have a custom manufacturer in the blue like this so that's enough rambling about that let's get started start chopping this thing apart and making a settlor out of it I'm gonna mark this at about the 95 gallon mark try to get a nice straight cut around it I also wanted to add that this is sort of a experimental filter that I'm playing with as are most of my things so if you're trying to reproduce what I'm doing buyer beware you'll probably work just fine but I'm not always one to do everything exactly by the rules I think what I might do is save this top clean it up a little bit and I could use it as a lid for this if I decide to put a cover on it normally a drain out of the bottom of this would just have like a two inch fitting with a valve so you could drain out the setup I'm gonna go from a two inch down to a one inch and that's gonna head off over to the inline mineralisation tank it's also fairly important to make sure that out of the bottom of these tanks that you put these hose clamps on because the plastic and the tanks a little bit soft and expansion contraction or heat they can soften up and the fittings can get loose and start leaking so it's a good idea to put this basically as a strap to help contain all that I'll tighten that up once I get this adjusted into its proper location while I'm installing the radio flow settler I'm also doing the inline mineralisation tank at the same time even though I'm not showing it on video I'll do this as a separate video plus I'm also rough plumbing in the main line where all the water is going to be flowing out of the tank in these other tanks so it doesn't always match what's on plan so I want to make sure that in this really tight area that all the different fittings that I have will fit into place and this is just sort of blocked up on some cement blocks and that this has a slight slope to it which it does and I just want to make sure everything fits because once you start cutting these things it's a they can get really expensive having to make corrections the water being subtler will flow over this v-notched we're instead of trying to fabricate one by cutting and welding sheets of plastic I thought it'd be an interesting experiment to make one with 3d printed parts my printer bed can print parts up to 12 inches so the weir is cut into nine sections and has a key slot that will interlock the parts together I'm using a two-part fiberglass resin to bond the pieces together it's thick enough to fill in any gaps that would be in the joints once the resin sets up I'll paint the entire assembly with an enamel paint which will seal up the printed parts we'll let this set for a few hours and it will be ready for the enamel so now my weir is all set one of the problems that I knew is going to come up with this is that these tanks aren't perfectly round so part of this setup is I made up this gasket out of a closed cell foam and that will slide on to here and go around the perimeter and then it will compress in against the side of the tank and I just set this in up near the top of the tank so you can see down into the edge here how the tank has a lot of spacing between the Weir and the tank wall some areas is a good size gap here is a good spot where it goes in this is where the gallon markers are on the side of the tank they indented that unfortunately so we're putting in that gasket it should make it much much better seal in here [Music] you you it's one of the nice things about this we're instead of it having it be built into the side of tank where they use in an external tray to catch the water having this inside and just with the gasket I can level it out to make sure I have a nice uniform area where the water will overflow this and like if it's in the tank you have to make sure that the tank is perfectly level so I can be a little bit sloppier with the tank install and then fine-tune this weird to fit in this place so I'm just gonna fill it up a little bit until it gets to its overflow point and then just sort of push it into place [Applause] it's actually very close little adjustment now that that we're is in we can set the center tube used to settle out the heavier solids install our line from the fish tank I also made this diverter plate up most of these systems just usually see the pipe coming in lower and then flowing up and overflowing like this but I wanted to not have the solids settle on this and so I made up this funky little plate that basically slides into the bottom of this so as the water comes out it will diffuse it and take some of that energy out of the water and let it settle into this column without creating too many ripples it's very experimental but I think it should work out fine and that's all the parts for this thing I think will fire it up and see what it does we have the water coming in on the out hitting against this diffuser plate which is working pretty well and it heads down through the water column down to the bottom and the solids will settle out in the cone and then it overflows this weir and then has the outlet it heads off into the rest of your system just a quick update on the tank it's been running really well so far this little diverter that I put in is running great you can see it's all covered in some algae now but overall it's been doing really well inside the tank the solids have been settling out fairly nicely it's a little bit accumulating on bottom and to keep that under control there's actually a one small koi that's in here and sort of swims around and helps knock things down I find that to be much more effective than having to try to brush this out every couple of days to get the solids out I'm just keeping a koi and they're swimming around that's a really good job the overflow wear is covered in some bio slime a little bit algae growing in there so I'm definitely gonna add a cover to this just to help shave it a little bit especially when summer comes around it'll really start growing in here overall this overflow is working nicely thanks for watching next time we're going to go over the inline mineralisation tank it's been running for a few months now we've got any major problems and I'm looking forward to showing you how that's working [Music]

Channel: Bigelow Brook Farm (Web4Deb)

Views: 114,791

Keywords: aquaponics, geodesic, dome, greenhouse, permaculture, aquaculture, radial flow settler

Id: e5BJDDGJRhw

Length: 14min 38sec (878 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 21 2018