# Moving filter bed



## bonsai dave (Apr 21, 2010)

Well I have been wanting to build one for a while but I have been very busy and lazy the past few weeks. I build to moving bed filters 1 for my wife's tank and 1 for the baby discus tank. I was not able to find kladnes media locally and i didn't want to buy it from the states but i was able to find a similar product called bio cell and I found it in maple ridge and it cost me $ 140 for 10 lbs. I made a mistake on the one in my wife's tank . I had forgotten to put hole in the bottom of the bottle so water can get in. I will fix it tomorrow.
Here are a few pictures of the one in the wife's tank.


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## Edarion (Apr 21, 2010)

That looks reallly interesting... how does it work?


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## kookus (Apr 23, 2010)

that is very cool... do you mind telling us where in maple ridge?


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## bonsai dave (Apr 21, 2010)

Here is a video on the how the filter is made andhow it works
YouTube - HOW TO - MAKE A MOVING BED FILTER
YouTube - Moving bed filter in aquarium - week 1


Edarion said:


> That looks reallly interesting... how does it work?


I got it from trice farms. They only had 1 box. 


kookus said:


> that is very cool... do you mind telling us where in maple ridge?


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## Mferko (Jun 8, 2010)

thats awesome, youl be able to watch as the bacteria develops


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## mysticalnet (Apr 22, 2010)

hmm seems really powerful to remove ammonia, but it's not that pretty looking in a tank....


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## Mferko (Jun 8, 2010)

mysticalnet said:


> hmm seems really powerful to remove ammonia, but it's not that pretty looking in a tank....


its up to us to make diy ones that look better and better until someone actually makes one available for retail though, unfortunately not many companies want to sell filters with media that never needs replacing- thats where the $$$ is

you could also put em in a sump

im gonna try and make one for my ebi and hide it with some plants


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## bonsai dave (Apr 21, 2010)

I'm going to looking for diffrent ways to build the filter but for now I will hide the filter behind a driftwood or a lg plants. It not a big deal.



mysticalnet said:


> hmm seems really powerful to remove ammonia, but it's not that pretty looking in a tank....


I'm going to use it in my 170 gallon sump. I'm looking for diffrent ways to build the filter but no luck so far.



Mferko said:


> its up to us to make diy ones that look better and better until someone actually makes one available for retail though, unfortunately not many companies want to sell filters with media that never needs replacing- thats where the $$$ is
> 
> you could also put em in a sump
> 
> im gonna try and make one for my ebi and hide it with some plants


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## gklaw (May 31, 2010)

Silicon/hang a black acrylic box to the back of the tank?


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## bonsai dave (Apr 21, 2010)

gklaw said:


> Silicon/hang a black acrylic box to the back of the tank?


That would work for glass tanks ,but my tank is acrylic and there is no cut out for a hang on the back filters.


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## mysticalnet (Apr 22, 2010)

can this kind of filter media be used in canister filters?


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## African_Fever (Apr 22, 2010)

This media wouldn't really be much good in canisters. It doesn't have nearly as much surface area that porous rock/glass type media has, so you'd really be giving up a lot of your biological filtering capacity. The reason the media doesn't clog up in a moving bed filter is that it's constantly moving due to both water and air flow. In a canister, it would be static and clog up the same as any other.

Moving bed filters are almost a standard koi pond filter for serious koi keepers, so there are many different models out there to look at and get ideas from for scaled down aquarium use. I think their ideal application would be in a sump where they're hidden, otherwise it would take a bit of fabrication skill to do up a hang-on-back type that looks and works great. In a sump (depending on the size/space) you could use either 2L pop bottles upside down (water in at the bottom, out at the top), or even a 5 gallon pail. Ponders as a whole seem to be much more DIY for filtration systems, so check out DIY & MODs (do it yourself / make your own) 3rd edition.. for some ideas.


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## Mferko (Jun 8, 2010)

not so sure about the decrease in bio filtration, might agree with a decline in surface area but this stuffs sposed to be much more efficient, none of it is colonized in dead bacteria,its the center is mature and the outside is very fast growing, heavy eating biofilm. tbh we'd have to test that (setup two tanks, dose ammonia in each, see how quickly its converted
im thinking of doing something like that for a research project i have to do next yr


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## fkshiu (Apr 22, 2010)

The same concept is all the rage now in the reefing community:
Vertex Universal Media Reactor Package (UF-20)

Oceanic Corals - (Powered by CubeCart)

Some people have even experimented with grains of rice as the bacterial media.


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## Mferko (Jun 8, 2010)

i couldnt sleep last night cuz i was thinking about building a diy reactor that i can put in line after my cannister filter, i need ideas though for what to use as the container??, cheaper the better but i spose i could even go and get a length of large diameter pipe as long as it had some good resealable end cap fittings available, heres the basic idea.

i think im going to make this a project to keep me busy over xmas holidays, might try and get my hands on some of the kaldness discs/chips that are made to house filter-feeding microorganisms


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## MadgicBug (Apr 22, 2010)

maybe hook it in line with a one of those old ehimem type cannister, but you still need air in it. Maybe an old calcium reator from the reef guys.


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## African_Fever (Apr 22, 2010)

Mferko - efficiency is relative only to whatever you're comparing it to. A plastic media that's made to be fluidized isn't going to be nearly as efficient in a canister filter (where it ISN'T fluidized) as a porous glass/ceramic/rock media (check out MP2C or MarinePure from Cermedia if you want something that would be stellar for canisters or non-fluidized applications). That being said though, in an aerated, fluidized chamber, a plastic bio-media is going to be extremely efficient at converting the wastes in question and not clogging. There's nothing new about the concept or any of the ideas - by having a fluid media, it's constantly being turned over and exposed to 'new' water, all the while flushing out any sort of larger particles that clog up non-moving media beds.

Sand fluid beds have been in use for years, and I honestly don't see any purpose in using grains of rice instead unless their breakdown would somehow benefit a marine aquarium...

I don't think you could really design much in the way of an inline fluid bed using plastic media and having it aerated. A hang-on-back design of the fluid chamber would be easy enough to do (especially with an old Eheim classic canister), but not sure if that's what you're after. Check out some of the online fluid bed filters (FBF's) using sand as the media, and that might be more of what you're looking for as far as a pressurized unit goes.

I'm actually building 4 of these Birdman's Fluid Bed Filter right now for my dual pond greenhouse, so am well aware of all the media in question and it's benefits and purposes. I've actually been looking into carrying the Cermedia as well as Bioflow plastic media for both aquarium and pond uses.


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## Mferko (Jun 8, 2010)

African_Fever said:


> Mferko - efficiency is relative only to whatever you're comparing it to. A plastic media that's made to be fluidized isn't going to be nearly as efficient in a canister filter (where it ISN'T fluidized) as a porous glass/ceramic/rock media (check out MP2C or MarinePure from Cermedia if you want something that would be stellar for canisters or non-fluidized applications). That being said though, in an aerated, fluidized chamber, a plastic bio-media is going to be extremely efficient at converting the wastes in question and not clogging. There's nothing new about the concept or any of the ideas - by having a fluid media, it's constantly being turned over and exposed to 'new' water, all the while flushing out any sort of larger particles that clog up non-moving media beds.
> 
> Sand fluid beds have been in use for years, and I honestly don't see any purpose in using grains of rice instead unless their breakdown would somehow benefit a marine aquarium...
> 
> ...


im going to make the inline fluid bed and have it aerated over xmas break, hang on backs seem like a welfare way of going about this and i have hob breeder boxes taking up that space anyways i agree sump is prolly best but i dont have the tank nor the pump nor the space nor the overflows etc etc, im 95% sure i can get the above design working its just a matter of finding the easiest/cheapest supplies to build it out of, its just going to be a cylinder with an airline coming down the OUT hose and the air will bubble back out along with the filtered water, i may have to upsize the tubing that im going to feed the airline down though to accomodate not only that but the bubbles coming back up


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