I wanted to do a quick into on this video. A couple of months ago, I put in this swirl

filter to collect some of the solids and it's been working very well so far. But the biggest

problems that I've been having is that I need to clean it out every day. Otherwise the waste

that's in there gets pretty nasty very quickly. It also dumps out about 2.5 gallons of water

every time that I do that. So, after a month it adds up to a lot of water usage. I added

a mineralisation tank, which is back here into the system and my goal with it is to

only to do maintenance on the system once a week. I usually just do work on the greenhouse

over the weekend and don't want to have to come down and keep working every day on flushing

out the system.

So this is the design that I came up with. Now this is an experiment so I'm not sure

in the long term how well it's going to work. but for the last month it's been doing quite

well for itself. I haven't had to do any maintenance on it expect for just a little bit of cleaning

here and there. Usually just on the weekends and about every two weeks I've been taking

some of the solids out of the materialization tank. And it probably doesn't really need

it that often but I was just sort of experimenting to see what it looked like in there. so this

is what I've come up with. I'm not sure if other people have done it the same way, so,

I issue credit where credit is due in the comments if someone else has come up with

a design like this. Thanks for watching!

If you haven’t seen the original video for the swirl filter, I’ll leave a link to it.

For clarity of the new design, I’ll rearrange the diagram a bit, but none of the original

plumbing has changed.

First is to add a new tank. The water level will be the same height as the swirl filter.

My tank is a factory reject and it wasn’t quite high enough so I set it on a block foundation.

I then added a new bulkhead fitting and valve for the solids waste discharge. I set it up

high enough so that it could drain into a 5-gallon bucket.

The waste line of the swirl filter is connected to the mineralisation tank with a 3/4” tube.

If I was able to set the swirl and mineralisation tanks closer, I probably would have used a

larger and short pipe, but I was concerned about the solids taking too long to get to

the mineralisation tank and becoming anaerobic. By having a smaller volume tube, the solids

will move quicker out of this area, but I do run the risk of it getting clogged with

a larger obstruction.

The outlet pipe is actually set slightly above the normal water level so it will only drain

if there is some freak overflow event and there is a baffle around it to keep surface

debris from going into the drain. The key is this 1/4" hole drilled about two inches

below the normal surface. This allows for the clean water to weep from the tank. This

is just enough flow to keep the solids moving through the fill tube.

To keep most of the solids from going into the drain, a settling tank is added. The water

enters through the bottom of the cone and since it moves so slowly in this tank, the

average water turnover is well over an hour so there is plenty of time for the solids

to settle and work their way back out through the cone bottom. A protective baffle was also

added under the cone’s tip to help prevent rouge air bubbles from entering into the settling

tank and stirring up the water. I had gone through a few settling tanks, starting with

a milk jug, then a 2.5 gallon jug, but they didn’t provide enough volume and time for

settling. If I had the parts, I probably would have made a taller settling tank and had the

cone come within an inch of the bottom of the mineralisation tank.

To remove the solids from the bottom of the tank, I took a pieces of 3/4" tubing and attached

it to the waste line. I also made a little skimmer attachment for it and mounted it to

a handle to make it easier to move it around the bottom. I also dropped a couple of air

stones in the bottom to keep the water well aerated and moving.

When it’s time to remove the solids, I shut off the intake valve and air stones and let

the system settle for an hour, then open the waste valve and suck out some of the solids.

I could let the waste bucket settle out and return some of the water back to the system,

but I just dump it around some of the fruit trees.

An alternate design consideration would be to have the mineralisation tank also be a

cone bottom which would make it much easier to quickly purge the solids.

Looking inside the sump tank, this is water that’s coming directly from the fish tank,

the swirl filter, and the trickle from the mineralisation tank. From here, it is pumped

into the media beds which are used as the biofilter and capture any remaining solids.

A system like this could easily be changed so that the water could drain directly into

the grow beds instead of being pumped.

One other thing I’ve been experimenting with is adding bio filter media. Instead of

spending a fortune on K1, I’m using some of the old HDPE pieces from the old plastic

extruder I made a few years ago. Unfortunately, the narrow strips have been working their

way into the settling tank area and floating to the surface. I keeping working on this

Another problem that I’ve run into is when I feed the fish scrap lettuce. The digested

lettuce still has fairly large pieces and tends to float, getting trapped at the top

of the settle tank. It’s easy enough to skim it off, but my goal is to minimize maintenance

with this.

Overall, I’m happy with the design. A few minor alterations will be needed, but in the

long term, it should work well.

Thanks for watching!