My first DIY bacci shower...input welcomed!

[glassbird]

I have been doing a great deal of research on the internet about the type of filter called a "bacci shower". I think I have a good grasp of the overall concept. I have been trying to design a new filter for my ponds that can be hidden inside a whiskey barrel, and I think a variation of the bacci shower will do the job. But I would welcome the input of anyone out there who is familiar with the idea.

I have a pump that sits inside a prefilter in the lower of my two ponds, and the pump pushes water up to the filter location. Previously, I had a liner in a half of a whiskey barrel that contained filter material...the water came into the liner near the bottom and filtered up through scrubbies, and then over flowed back into the upper pond. The two ponds are connected by a waterfall. But my fish are getting bigger, and I need more/better filtration.

I now have a large plastic barrel, 18 inches across and 30 inches tall. I have come up with a square PVC arrangement that will have dozens of holes drilled into that will distribute the water over the top layer in the barrel, which will be mostly that double sided blue/white "cut-your-own" filter material from a LFS. The next layer will be about 20 inches of scrubbies that the water will shower down thru. And the bottom layer will be about 5 inches of lava rocks, mostly because I already have them, and the weight will give the barrel some stability.

Does this sound like it might work? And should I strive for more "air space" inside the barrel, or is it ok to have the barrel filled halfway up with water? I am trying to figure out if I should put the outflow (with the intake of the outflow positioned near the bottom) halfway up the barrel, or closer to the bottom. In other words, is there a benefit to letting the water collect in the barrel before it goes back to the pond? Or is the filtering action mostly taking place in the "shower" part of the process?

Whew, thats a lot of typing....thanks for any help!

 

[glassbird]

Wow...45 views and no opinions? Maybe I scared people off by mis-spelling "bakki"? Several times. (I am going to blame it on spell check...that's my story, and I am sticking to it.)

Or are my descriptions confusing?

 

[Rokuzachi]

I'd never heard of it until I read this post, and I only know what it is now because of watching some Youtube videos and hitting up wikipedia for it just now

Seems like a cool idea, but I got nothin'.

 

[Crepe]

Looks fine to me. My filter is just two layers of layers of bonded filter pad and about 2 feet deep of bio balls. The input is a spray bar and venturi. It works very well and is easy to clean. Your build is just like mine really without the venturi which aerates the water.

 

[glassbird]

Whew! Thanks for the responses! Crepe, I understand the basic concept of a venturi, and I think I have added one already to my version of a spray bar. I have taken pictures, but I am presently at work, and cannot post pictures from this computer. Maybe a description will convey what I have done, and you can tell me if this is "venturi-like"...?

The spray bar is a square arrangement of 1 inch PVC pipe and elbows. The top of the spray bar (where the water first enters the spray bar) originally had a pipe running horizontally, then an elbow to go down to the bar, and then a T junction to spread the water out into the square configuration of the spray bar. I recently removed the elbow and replaced it with a T-junction...this way the water falls down into the spray bar (the same way it did with the elbow), but there is also an open "port" pointing straight up. I did this mostly to provide an overflow option if the holes in the spray bar get clogged somehow. I figured, better to have the water overflow out the open port and into the filter, than have it not flow at all. And at the same time, it should add some oxygen to the water as it flows by the port.

None of the parts in the spray bar are glued in permanently yet. I thought I would get it running first with all the joints just jammed tightly together, and glue it later once I am sure it all works. This T-junction modification may turn out to be a problem, for some reason, in which case I will pull it off and put the elbow back in.

As an aside, and somewhat unrelated, I managed to ruin the first barrel by using the wrong size hole saw to cut the return. So I have to wait for another barrel of the right size to become available...measure twice, cut once, right? Sigh.

 

[glassbird]

Well, if anyone is interested...
after more research, I have come to the conclusion that what I have built is really more of a shower filter, and not a true bakki filter. It now has 5 inches of lava rock in the bottom, about 3 inches of air space, and then about 15 inches of bio-media...about half of which is nylon scrubbies, and the rest various sized nylon scrub pads from the dollar store cut into random sizes.

On top of that is about 4 inches of bonded media (mostly the 2-sided "cut-your-own" filter media from a LFS). My pump is putting 400 gallons per hour thru it. And the blue plastic barrel is completely hidden inside a whole whiskey barrel. Looks good!

The fish will go in slowly over the next two weeks. If anyone is curious, I will update this thread as time goes by. My big hope is to avoid the horrendous algea bloom that I had last year...my fish were too big for my old filter, and I could not find pond plants locally until much later in the season than ever before. That was the pits!

 

[Cichlid Kid]

The aerobic bacteria that takes care of ammonia thrive on oxygen so I'd put your return hole closer to the bottom of your barrel. This would give you more area inside for optimal bacteria colonization. IMO

 

[chagoi]

Shower,gas off, space between media.

 

[glassbird]

Shower,gas off, space between media.

Huh? Sorry to be dense, but I do not understand!

By "space between media", do you mean build in gaps between the different types of media? I did that, with pieces of egg crate supporting the scrubbies above the lava rock, and the DIY filter media above the scrubbies.

An as an update...my DIY shower filter did an outstanding job. No green water bloom, at all. My fish seemed to like the results, and I will be using the same set-up this coming summer.

I will try to get some pics into this thread at some point...

 

[chagoi]

Yes that's what I mean. It's working you did a good job.