- Joined
- Jul 21, 2016
- Messages
- 1,905
- Reaction score
- 4,524
- Review score
- +0 /0 /-0
- Location
- Vancouver, WA
Following! Love the idea of a self-cleaning roller mat...
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
For sure, they're not cheap. It depends on the person on their tradeoff threshold between personal maintenance time requirements and cost.I think it's a great concept, but, $3500 for a prefilter? I will do maintenance.
You should go the whole hog and get a Koi pond bubble bead filter as well, as for the roller filter these work great in the Koi world, salt spray could be an potential issue, hope you have a good lid..So let's talk about RDF's.
RDF's started becoming popular around 10 years ago in the koi hobby. They are about as close to zero maintenance mechanical filtration as you can get, and can handle massive amounts of flow (although you can have much lower flow than their ratings). Water flows into a screen-wrapped drum, and when the water level rises because of detritus, a float switch kicks in, the drum is rotated, and a spraybar cleans the drum by spraying the waste on the screen to a waste drain.
There are a few hurdles I think have prevented anyone from trying this in a saltwater aquarium:
1.) their large size
2.) noise
3.) need to be plumbed to a waste drain
4.) their high cost
5.) possible effects on salinity
6.) metal parts
But I am adamant on making a concerted effort into working around the above if it means no long term maintenance with filter socks. Since this is a fish room install, problems 1, 2, and 3 aren't an issue. I am fine with 4. 5 is a "let's see what happens". 6 will take some custom work.
Currently there are two main RDF brands you can buy in the US. There is Profidrum and Red Label. I contacted Profidrum and got confirmation that their filters can and have been used in saltwater with a "salt seal kit". The problem I have with Profidrum is they are mostly made of 316 stainless steel (the drum, the screen, the tray, etc are all steel). There would be a lot of steel being completely submerged in salt water, and my understanding is that even 316 stainless will corrode over time if submerged.
Then there is Red Label. Red Label RDF's are mainly made of Polypropylene, with relatively few metal parts, and their filter screen is nylon. A couple issues with their smallest model is that the high pressure pump sits in the filter itself (meant for koi ponds, it uses the filtered pond water for the spraybar). Another is the few metal parts in it are not 316 stainless.
I decided to go with Red Label, and take on the project of adapting it for saltwater use, which I think in the long run will be better than having a mostly steel filter. It shipped out today from seasideaquatics.com. My plan is to disassemble it when it arrives, and send the metal parts to a machine shop and have them duplicated in titanium. Some things like standard screws I might be able to get titanium versions on Amazon. It should be pretty straightforward to modify it so that the spraypump sits in an external tub filled with RO, and then something like a Tunze Osmolator to fill it up after a spray cycle.
Here are some pictures of the filter I have coming:
View attachment 934311 View attachment 934312 View attachment 934313 View attachment 934314 View attachment 934315 View attachment 934316
Here is a video of one, kicking off its cleaning cycle at the end:
Bead filters are a bit less popular than they used to be. They require maintenance to flush them, and a lot of extra energy for the head pressure to force water through them. An RDF will filter 70 microns with massive flow with no maintenance and can be gravity fed. A bead filter will however filter super fine particles. But as long as I am getting the same or better than filter socks, I'm happy!You should go the whole hog and get a Koi pond bubble bead filter as well, as for the roller filter these work great in the Koi world, salt spray could be an potential issue, hope you have a good lid..
Sounds excellent, I didn’t realise the spraying was done with RO water, I used to have an old version on my koi pond and it worked really well, I now use K1, I personally love my 2 bead filters and would love to see how one performed in salt water, maybe if I win the lottery, I’ll be following along, good to see some innovation.Bead filters are a bit less popular than they used to be. They require maintenance to flush them, and a lot of extra energy for the head pressure to force water through them. An RDF will filter 70 microns with massive flow with no maintenance and can be gravity fed. A bead filter will however filter super fine particles. But as long as I am getting the same or better than filter socks, I'm happy!
The actual spray part will be reverse osmosis water, not salt water. Almost all of the sprayed water passes through the screen and out to waste.
There will be some overspray, which is where we will test to see how it affects salinity. As long as the amount of overspray during the day is always less than the evaporation on the tank for that day, there will be no affect on salinity. In fact the RDF will act as kind of an assistant to the Osmolator.
If the overspray is more than evap, we will have to find ways around that.
Also there will be small amounts of salt exiting the system from saltwater sticking to the drum each spray cycle. It would be interesting to know if that is a significant enough amount to affect salinity, or if like a 10% monthly water change would make it irrelevant.
The unit does come with a lid, but we will see how good it is and how things work out!
When the drum rotates, it brings the particulate matter sticking to it to the top of the filter, where it is sprayed down into a waste tray, and the waste tray is plumbed to drain. I.e. it goes to "the sewer", the same place water your in your slop sink would go. Or you could even just aim the waste tray at the slop sink.It's hard to tell from the video... when the self cleaning cycle is underway, where does the particulate matter go? Looks like it would simply be sprayed back into input water "tank", waiting to go through the barrel filter again. I'll see if I can find some more information on it. Intriguing for sure.
When the drum rotates, it brings the particulate matter sticking to it to the top of the filter, where it is sprayed down into a waste tray, and the waste tray is plumbed to drain. I.e. it goes to "the sewer", the same place water your in your slop sink would go. Or you could even just aim the waste tray at the slop sink.
In that video around 0:10 it shows 3 pipes. The one in the top middle is the waste tray drain. The two on the lower sides are water coming from the display tank. Then on the other side of the filter are two more pipes for clean water to return to the display tank.
I understand the first part... the sediment that is forced through the filter screen gets sent to the sewer. But what happens to the larger pieces of debris that just get blown off the barrel? They go back down into the holding tank, waiting to get stuck to the drum again, don't they? That was my main question. I assume you'd need to manual remove this once in a while. Not really applicable for reef but for pond I imagine it would need to be fairly often.
As for the second part of your answer, how is water directed to the 3 drain pipes? Is the trough just "floating" in the middle of the drum to remove the waste water (i.e., the rinse cycle) and the other two remove the water that would fall through the barrel and beneath the trough? Trying to visualize it and this seems logical to me. Thanks!
Think of the screen drum as a giant spinning filter sock. There is no sediment being forced through the filter screen. The sediment is trapped inside of the screen drum. One end of the drum is completely closed. The other end is where "dirty" water comes in. The water has to pass through the screen of the drum to continue on its way. What is left behind inside of the drum is the sediment. Then the drum rotates, and that sediment sticking to the inside of the drum is lifted up and out of the water, into the air, and sprayed down into the tray and exits the system.
They are looking greatWhite Kessil a360x's, whaaat? Throwing caution into the wind and likely voiding the warranty on the Kessils to get the look I want. The plastic outer housing is easy enough to remove for painting, but requires snipping the power cable.
View attachment 968175
View attachment 968176
View attachment 968177
Which works out, as I planned on cutting the standard cables anyway. I really wanted them to have a minimalist profile. The outer coating of the standard black 18awg 300v power connectors they come with would prevent that because they add a ton of bulk, so I am rewiring them with standard 18awg 300v wire without the outer coating so everything will fit inside 3/4" aluminum tubing.
Shout out to Kessil though -- I accidentally dropped one of the power bricks (not a light, they were fine, just the black box) into a bucket of water and it fried it. I asked Kessil if i could buy another, but they sent one out for free!