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Hey guys, this idea occurred to me just a while ago.

Would it be posible to use a water siphon, and let the output go through a plastic container which is filled with filter medium, and allow the water to flow out from the container back into the tank via small holes cut at the bottom of the container?

Very much like a HOB filter but instead of an impeller/powerhead to draw in water you use a siphon tube.

Just a simple idea for anyone who wants to "go green" on a smaller sized tank, eg: Hospital Tank.

Maybe i'm having a dumb moment, but a siphon works due to gravity taking the water to a lower level - how does it back to the tank? or put another way, you can't siphon uphill...

Like Richard says, if you can make water run up from low down, sure, go for it. But so far, I've only ever managed to syphon from a high level down to a lower level, not from low to high. Yes, siphoning can lift water over an edge, but only if the outlet if lower than the inlet of the siphon hose/pipe.

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Mats

A breeder I know uses two liter plastic cookie-jars filled with 10 ppi blue filter foam as air driven filters.
Basically one of these, but scaled up:
http://www.csupomona.edu/~jskoga/Aquari ... funct4.GIF
They have pretty impressive capacity.

Mike_Noren wrote:A breeder I know uses two liter plastic cookie-jars filled with 10 ppi blue filter foam as air driven filters.
Basically one of these, but scaled up:
http://www.csupomona.edu/~jskoga/Aquari ... funct4.GIF
They have pretty impressive capacity.

Yes, but that still needs air-pressure generated somehow - which normally means electric power needed. I'm not sure if it's more or less efficient to pump air than water - but for the same amount of flow, I expect the water pump wins in least power consumption. So if reducing power-consumption is the goal, it won't really work.

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Mats

That filter is used totally submerged and is basically a box filter. It works like a sponge filter. When air goes up the uplift tube, it pulls water along with it. Water enters the "system" passing through the media thereby being filtered. It exits the "system" still inside the tank and below the level of the surface. I would also note that the air pump relies on electricity for its power.

This reminds me of an idea I had...

In places where tapwater is chlorine and nitrate free (like my current location ), you could rig up a constant water change tank, with an inlet and outlet connected directly to the tap.

I could not think of a way to get better water quality, and it could be ideal for breeding projects.

The only consideration would be how much water to feed in and out, as well as how to keep the temperature stable.

MatsP wrote: Yes, but that still needs air-pressure generated somehow - which normally means electric power needed.

Well, you have to use power somewhere, perpetual motion engines are impossible (and such an engine was what the OP suggested in his post unless he intended to power the siphon with a pump).

racoll wrote:In places where tapwater is chlorine and nitrate free (like my current location ), you could rig up a constant water change tank, with an inlet and outlet connected directly to the tap.

Flow-through tanks like that are used in commercial hatcheries and most public aquaria. They work perfectly regardless of load, but you use quite a lot of water, and unless you have access to a flowing river with sufficient altitude gradient you'll still have to use electricity.

If the purpose is zero electricity usage, I'd recommend looking in to solar panels. A small and fairly cheap solar panel producing, say, 5 watts or so, can power a small pump.

Mike Noren wrote:but you use quite a lot of water

Using a filter would reduce the amount of water consumed, and I'm thinking of this from a high water quality - low maintenance point of view, rather than low power consumption.

So, say if you changed automatically changed 10-25% of water in a 100L tank daily, that's 70-175L of water weekly. Compared to one 50% weekly change at 50L, it doesn't sound like too much, and you would have more stable conditions?

Mike Noren wrote:, and unless you have access to a flowing river with sufficient altitude gradient you'll still have to use electricity.

Not necessarily, because the mains water is pressurised, so you would just have to pipe an inflow and drill an overflow pipe.

I use the method of "drip water changes" - but I do use a filter too. Since I produce RO water, I get a lot of waste-water, which I put into a set of 4 tanks. Nitrate level in my tap-water is quite high, but since it hardly rises during the day or so that the water is in the tank, it's not a big problem (for those fish that I keep in those tanks - not the most sensitive of species!)

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Mats

When I first got into the Hobby when I was around 7 my first tank had an undergravel filter and I also had a HOB air filter. They didn't have powered whisper's then. The design was just like a whisper (the 10-60 series) for the most part except instead of a powered impeller pulling the water you hooked the air tube up just above the intake strainer and then the water would rise through the tube go back into the filter housing which you would put a layer of charcoal in the bottom and then a layer of cotton fiber across the top. The water would then flow back into the tank. If you had a dead whisper housing or similar filter you could probably fairly easily make one of your own with a little work. unfortunately I through the filter away years ago, i actually wish they still made them. it was just cheap plastic. it was great for catching egg laying fry as they would get trapped in the cotton floss and then you just move the cotton floss to another tank and rinse them off into their growout tank. This was how I first bred danio's and didn't know it. then it became clockwork on getting baby danio's, barbs, and cories. All sorts of fish that spawn and you don't know it wind up getting trapped in that white cotton which made them so easy to see. You just had to make sure you checked it everyday. I think I talked myself into making one. I got dead filters everywhere. I kind of forgot about it till i saw the post. lol

You could build a scoop wheel but why?

littlebristlenose wrote:You could build a scoop wheel but why?

That still doesn't solve the problem if we are trying to use "no power" to run the tank. Filtration, whatever method, requires water to be moved in a way that retains it's volume within the tank. So, basically, unless you pour more water into the system, there is no way to filter the tank without using power in some way - this is due to something called friction - it "zaps" energy, and the result of that is that to cycle water around into the filter and back out again will require energy to be added somewhere. Whether that energy comes from running water over a wheel or by applying electricity over a magnet to spin an impeller is of course another question.

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Mats

How about a fish-powered wet & dry 'hamster wheel'?

RickE wrote:How about a fish-powered wet & dry 'hamster wheel'?

Yes, if you can train the fish to swim in the "hamster wheel", then it would work. I suspect the motivation of the fish would be food!

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Mats

How about a planted tank?

grokefish wrote:How about a planted tank?

Yeah, but one that has very few fish and exactly the right amount of sunlight the year around. What about heat? Or we only keeping White Cloud Minnows or Medakas?
Energy has to come from somewhere.
I would consider going into keeping and breeding killiefish if you want to use the least amount of energy possible. Preferably Annual Killies. At least that way you can keep species going yet go for several months while your eggs are incubating in a drawer somewhere. While you wait for the eggs to develop your tank(s) can remain empty. Many do fine at room temperatures.
Choose some with 6 to 9 months incubation periods so you can keep your tanks empty even longer.
I use to raise mostly annual killiefish and spent half the year going fishing. Once it got too cool to enjoy fishing I would begin hatching out my eggs and raise them through the winters. I could breed many in plastic shoe boxes over peat moss. No air, no filters, no heaters. Feed newly hatched fry microworms to avoid using an air or heat source to hatch brine shrimp, transition to FD Blood worms, ground at first. Closest I have ever come to an absolute minimalist method of remaining in the fish hobby but I prefer to run a couple of 5 watt vibrator pumps and use air lift driven sponge filters in order to raise more fish in a given amount of water. No other group of rare and beautiful species may be kept with such a small budget and limited space. A lot of struggling Grad students and retired geezers like me become Killiefish breeders.
I never even bought my fish. I either bought or traded eggs with others. I have managed to get my start of many dozens of species that way over the years. Consider joining a Killiefish Association. I have been a member of the American Killiefish Association off and on since 1968. Once you get to know enough people, you don't even need to belong to a group. I have received/sent eggs through the mail from/to people all over the world.

This idea made me think of the water organ. It *might* be workable if you could find a steady flow of air to force the water down (to create enough pressure to suck it out of the tank) http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/waterorg.htm

You could do this with several wine buckets on the go. The Co2 has a pretty steady release for a few weeks before more sugars or yeasts would have to be added. This would make for a really Kapow! but probably undrinkable wine and you would need several on the go. By the time all this was done and working well, you would be drunk from tasting and may need a hamster wheel yourself.

If that ends up being the case, hook your human/hamster wheel to a trickle charge battery like the Japanese subway steps and voila, a battery run filter!

Great conversation. If money was no object, solar distillation would be my first attempt.

Wow! and I do remember those air-driven HOBs! Jeez! that makes me old! LOL!

interesting read

racoll wrote:

Mike Noren wrote:but you use quite a lot of water

Using a filter would reduce the amount of water consumed

No.
The filter has to be powered, either by electricity or by the flow. If you power it by the natural gravity flow, then you can filter water before it enters the aquarium, or after it exits, neither improves water quality in the aquarium.

If you're going to use flow-through, pass enough water through the tank that nutrient levels never build up. How much flow that equals depends on load - you'd need to monitor conductivity to find the optimum flow.