DIY Solution

This is my DIY version of Aquatic Eco-System's "Vortex Microstrainer, by Sweetwater." It's good bit of work, a re-design of the basic microscreen drum filter. Their variation has the drum floating and spinning in the vortex, with the spray bar that cleans the screen, stationary. Due to working on a small scale, I had to re-do some things. My version is plumbed something like the one they had at the show. The water outlet of the drum is actually a stand pipe, mounted in the bottom drain of my "mini-vortex." There simply wasn't room to plumb it in as per their design as shown below.



This creates a problem, that was resolved by my filter plumbing, at least, it gives me one method of dumping the vortex.

I shut down the pump, valve off the bottom drain and skimmer feeds, and remove the stand pipe that serves as the water outlet of the drum. From the pump, the water goes through a 3-way valve. This was done to have a "medical by-pass," for pond treatments that must be routed around the biofilter. The by-pass return is a PVC pipe going horizontal over the edge of the pond, a male thread adaptor, to a 90 sweep that threads onto it. This means I can rotate the sweep towards the side of the pond and insert a length of pipe to take the water away from the pond.

The other method is to do the same shut-down procedure and simply drop a sump pump in the vortex. This is do-able, as the vortex is flat bottomed, made from a 55 gal. plastic barrel. Doing it their way would be superior. But this would have been a real pain, working on this particular set-up.

The other changes were things like going to a dual spray bar. The AES rep at the AFKAPS exhibit said they might go with that, also. I thought it would provide a better balance of forces. Besides, I wanted more cleaning power, as I went with a 105 micron screen, instead of their 200 or 500 micron version. If the increased flow can't do the job as the system matures, I can replace it with a larger screen size.

Also, I did cut the vertical parts from the bucket that you see in these pics. These thin strips tended to bow, interfering with the spray nozzles, and thus, the rotation of the drum. I did leave the one that was used to seam the screen. In future versions, even that one will be eliminated. The flotation collar was way too thick and made the drum ride too high in the water. I cut that down to about half of what is shown.

The hardest part was making the stand pipe/water outlet for the drum. The slots that were cut away to allow water in must be properly placed. You have to allow for some variation in water depth, with the drum moving up and down with the water level. At the lowest water level, the drum will slide down the stand pipe. The top of the outlet pipe can't touch the top of the "axle" pipe, or the drum will hang up and not spin. This axle is fixed to the bottom of the drum and the stand pipe comes up inside it. Both of these pipes have a cap on the top end, to prevent a vortex action from sending air down to the pump.

At the maximum high water level in the vortex, the drum floats up the stand pipe. The lowest part of the cut-outs on the stand pipe needs to be high enough that they are still inside the drum, or you will be pumping dirty water from the vortex, instead of clean water from inside the drum.

You can determine just how to cut that stand pipe, or outlet if using AES's plumbing set-up, by making a scale drawing of the filter. I did it by trial and error.

Anyway, that's the basics of it. If you have any questions, let me know. After the system matures, I'll try to write some coherent instructions and place this page on the DIY menu. The pond this system was installed on was rebuilt just 4 days before the filter drum was made. It is 1,450 gallons, a 40 six to eight inch fish load, with two 55 gallon TT's, each with 3 cubic feet of PVC ribbon. A quantity of media from a cycled TT was place in both filters, for a rapid cycle. The pond has a 2 inch (I KNOW!) bottom drain with an airstone mounted on the antivortex cap. I mounted a no-niche skimmer to help keep the pond clean and to reduce the draw down in the vortex. This didn't work well until I rebuilt the skimmer to use 3 inch plumbing, on Spike Cover's advice. This works very well.

Enough of this! Here's the pictures of the beast:

Here you see the bottom of the converted bucket, and the hole for the outlet pipe.	This is how I molded the collar with expanding foam.
Top view, with collar, screen and base for the axel pipe.	Almost the working model. This is before I cut the thickness of the collar and replaced the "axle" pipe with a rigid plastic mesh net version.

Here it is, in place and running.