I was sure you were going to say ebb and flow would be much better. Otherwise why go through all the trouble of making a Rotating Biological Contact filter? I guess the real question is. Do the microbes in the filter do their job better if they are kept wet all the time? Or is it better if they are continuously dunked? And if so. Is it significantly better?
The rotating filter keeps them wet but they are out of the water just long enough so they are not oxygen starved. There is a specific rpm that is best, but off hand I don't remember it specifically. It's something like 2 rmps give or take.
Originally Posted By: surfsteve
Also. The purpose of making the outdoor filters out of black barrels would be in my mind to keep the light out of the barrels so algae doesn't grow on the deer net, which I am afraid might render it useless. It has nothing to do with trying to filter the algae in the water out.
You'll still get algae in the tank itself, which will end up in the deer netting filter material. Apparently the algae in the netting does not render it useless as the system in the book Small Scale Aquaculture has plenty of algae in it. In fact the more clogged the filter gets the getter it holds in particulate matter to a point.
Originally Posted By: surfsteve
I read that algae is good food for tilapia. I wasn't sure if you understood me. I guess I should have asked. Will the algae harm the biological filtering process by competing with the microbes if allowed to grow on the deer net? Seems like it would mess things up. But on the other hand if Algae gets caught up in the filter in the dark I think it would die and either settle to the bottom of the tank or become food for the microbes. Any ideas?
You really need to get the book Small Scale Aquaculture. It will answer all your questions and more. I don't have an issue with algae in my indoor set up so I can't answer your questions from experience.
If pigs could fly bacon would be harder to come by and there would be a lot of damaged trees.
