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Post by Deleted on Apr 20, 2014 22:59:51 GMT -5
Yam..I bought a pressurized pond filter from lowes. It includes the container with inlet and outley, 1 aggressive mesh filter, 1 other foam filter and then little plastic bio filter balls. Screw off the top to clean filters periodically..I made my own venturi out if pvc. May get a Dannco when money permits. I think this will work well in your alotted space. Ill check measurements tom. Piper, did you connect this to your existing tank? Have you used it yet?? Doesn't this go inside the tank rather than external? I saw this today but it does not look like it would handle shad slime. How do you handle cleaning it while your fishing? Thanks! Yam |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 21, 2014 0:11:56 GMT -5
Clogging issues sound very bad. Ok, after putting all the pieces together via conversations with you and other members of this site along with watching my buddies real bait tank work in action for a day, here is a synopsis of my latest design. First of all, after measuring carefully with 5 gallon buckets, I found out that my existing tank only held 22 gallons because the manufacturer put the overflow (elbow in picture below) rather low in the tank! BOOOOO!!!! You can see from this picture that there is still many inches of room to work with in my existing tank.  Thus, my plan is to remove the plastic screen from this overflow (shown in an earlier post) and put it on my drain. I will then place this stupid overflow out of commission as not only does it cost me 8 gallons of water, it serves as an obstruction for my bait! I don't want them hitting their noses before I get a chance to put a hook into them! Of course, raising the water level in the tank will make it even harder to access the filter but I finally decided after going back and forth between continuing this project or just buying a SBTII, that cleaning the filters is going to be ridiculously hard if not impossible unless drastic measures are taken! And as shown in the next picture, I removed my seat cushion for a reason! Muuuhuuuhaaa!!!   You guessed it! I plan to cut out a 6 inch diameter hole in the corner (where the master blaster pump is in picture 1 and where the light is in picture 2). This will allow me to access a screw top that will be flush with the top of the seat. The cushion will then be secured using Velcro and maybe snaps so that quick on and off access to the filter can occur. Interestingly enough, I am glad I removed this cushion that WAS fastened with 6 bolts because when I turned it over, it started to rain water. Now, I can easily dry it out after I fish in hurricanes. At least this is what I am telling my wife and me to rationalize drilling a very large hole into a very new boat! And here is my design. As shown, to address the clogging issues you mentioned, I stepped this up to a 6" D pipe. Secondly, if the filters do clog without me knowing it, an overflow will kick in and send water down to the 6" bottom area of the pipe that feeds water to my pump. This way, my pump will be protected along with everything else that is in this compartment (batteries, pumps, etc.). As shown in the picture, I am also thinking about piping a 1" tube right up the middle of the 6" pipe to serve as a holder for my sponge filters and to better ensure that water is dispersed evenly through the filter media. If SBTII does it, why shouldn't I? However, I am still considering just piping the water directly into the side of the filter above the media. Your thoughts??  In operation, with the pump running, I would think that water would only be as high as the filter media. However, with the pump off, the pipe water will be the same height as the tank. As shown, this will be 2 inches below my screw cap which will provide me with the real 30 gallons of tank area that I was supposed to have. Then there is the issue with filters. I have heard nothing but horror stories about poly-fill. My buddy gets his filters from a furniture manufacture. He places 4 layers of these things in his real bait tank and really only needs to clean the top two. I'll hook you up with the company if interested. You can order sheets with various porosity sizes and firmness and then cut them to fit your application. I am also considering dropping a bag of zeolite in the bottom chamber just for kicks but I am not sure if this will do anything. Finally, you might ask, "How will you drain the tank?" That's simple! I will place a valve on the flexible pipe that exits my boat and is exclusively dedicated to this bait tank system. I can reach it easily by opening my bilge hatch. Draining will then be a breeze. I also have the luxury of using my existing live well pump to fill her up if the lake water permits or I have a bunch of ice. All feedback would be much appreciated before I cut a freaking hole into my boat! Yam |
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piper
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Post by piper on Apr 21, 2014 6:07:55 GMT -5
Yam..I bought a pressurized pond filter from lowes. It includes the container with inlet and outley, 1 aggressive mesh filter, 1 other foam filter and then little plastic bio filter balls. Screw off the top to clean filters periodically..I made my own venturi out if pvc. May get a Dannco when money permits. I think this will work well in your alotted space. Ill check measurements tom. Piper, did you connect this to your existing tank? Have you used it yet?? Doesn't this go inside the tank rather than external? I saw this today but it does not look like it would handle shad slime. How do you handle cleaning it while your fishing? Thanks! Yam Ill take pics this evening. I run it externally. Last year I went with a live well pump inserted into the bottom port, so it pulled water through the top and back out. Through tubing. On my tank I installed a thru hull fitting and attached the tube to the nipple and had my hole in the inside. My only problem was dead shad getting sucked and clogging it. As far as slime. I ran the pump for about 20-30 min, unscrew the lid wash the black filter in the lake and back at it in 30 secs or less |
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Apr 21, 2014 9:22:32 GMT -5
Looks like a plan to me. I didn't do the pipe in the center because I didn't want to have to put any care into preparing filters.... I just rip off ahunk of polyfill and stuff it in there.
Let us know how the foam filters work. Sound like they could be less hassle than polyfil even if you have to prepare them ahead of time.
I also didn't understand that your livewell was in your leaning post. That should be sweet when you get the filter plumbed in. Can you also squirt great stuff around it to insulate it? If so, I don't think a SBT wll have much on youur tank.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 21, 2014 12:18:06 GMT -5
Looks like a plan to me. I didn't do the pipe in the center because I didn't want to have to put any care into preparing filters.... I just rip off ahunk of polyfill and stuff it in there. Let us know how the foam filters work. Sound like they could be less hassle than polyfil even if you have to prepare them ahead of time. I also didn't understand that your livewell was in your leaning post. That should be sweet when you get the filter plumbed in. Can you also squirt great stuff around it to insulate it? If so, I don't think a SBT wll have much on youur tank. I am still debating if I need this center pipe in the center of the six inch pipe. After cutting the overflow flexible hose off of the nipple and playing around a bit, I could easily just elbow the existing hose above the filter media. This hose looks to be 1.5 inches. The screen at the bottom of the sponges will certainly support the media without a center pipe. What do you think? Would introducing water from the side be okay? I have thought about using a bar across the top of the media that would evenly disperse the incoming flow. But then this might clog and might be a pain in terms of removing my sponges. Although it could be a thread fitting so that I could easily remove it. Yes, I was toying around with the idea of using great stuff for further insulation. The actual tank has about 2-3 inches of void space all around it inside the leaning post. I am just not sure if this would be required. Additionally, that great stuff is also some nasty stuff. Yet, they use it on hot tubs. Hmmmmm. Additional ideas: - Mount a Rule 500 gph bilge at the bottom of the 6" pipe. What do you think about this? I am leaning this way because of quieter operation and less worry. My arms are long enough to install this and to change it out when it dies.
- Put a marine thread hatch on the leaning post below the seat cushion. This would add some integrity to the hole and would guard against leaking. I can do this because I now know that I do not want the top of my filter pipe to be flush with the seat. Too much of a pain to remove and after carefully measuring, I don't need that much height. The marine hatch would look nice too in terms of fit and finish.
- Keep the two center cushion bolts and use wing nuts to secure. The other 4 bolts will be removed and Velcrot will be used. This will add security when trailering or not in fishing mode while maintaining quick accessibility to the filter.
Yep, if this works, keyword IF, then not only will I have a cool bait tank, I can easily drain it which is kind of a pain with the SBTII. Not much..but kind of. Secondly, I will actually use the existing tank rather than turn it into a trash can and kill more space on my boat.
Thanks for collaborating with me. I hope this discussion is adding some value to your next project.
Yam
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Apr 21, 2014 12:30:38 GMT -5
What do you think? Would introducing water from the side be okay? I don't think it makes a difference.... If you introduce it from the side, as it clogs up on that side, the water will flow over to less clogged material away from the inlet. I think you'll get the same time-to-clogged (TTG) from a side inlet or a center inlet. The center-inlet is probably more pleasing to someone suffering from OCD though. If it's that confined, just make sure you leave enough room for expansion so it doesn't break something. My tank was/is under my back deck, so the filter is vertically challenged... That's why I went with the thru-hull pump. |
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Post by mwardncsu on Apr 21, 2014 12:37:50 GMT -5
Pump in the pipe..... your arm is long enough, but is is narrow/small enough..... and will you be able to rotate it as needed to secure, room to tighten pipe clamps or whatever..... just dry-run it....
Can you fit larger than 6" Not sure that you can readily get anything larger, but the bigger the filter the better when it starts to clog.
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Apr 21, 2014 12:51:49 GMT -5
What is the diameter of the filter on a SBTII? 12"
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Post by mwardncsu on Apr 21, 2014 12:59:23 GMT -5
What is the diameter of the filter on a SBTII? 12" It's rectangular - probably about 4" x 10", with a 1.25 or 1.5" pipe up the middle. So, about 30% more filter surface area - 40 sq in on the SBT-II and a 6" pipe will give you 25-28 square inches of area. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 21, 2014 14:07:41 GMT -5
What is the diameter of the filter on a SBTII? 12" It's rectangular - probably about 4" x 10", with a 1.25 or 1.5" pipe up the middle. So, about 30% more filter surface area - 40 sq in on the SBT-II and a 6" pipe will give you 25-28 square inches of area. Well I think this answers my question on whether or not to use a center pipe. NOPE! I shouldn't sacrifice the surface area of the filter media. Thanks for chiming in Mward. I am not sure why I even want a bilge pump. The advantage I readily see is quiet operation. Plus, I know that my bilge pumps in the past have ran for hours with no water on them in my bilge. Can the same be said for a recirc pump? Hmm.. what do you think Mward...just do a 500 gph recirc and roll the dice? One other question is on the height of the inlet. My thought on this is to make the inlet as low as possible to increase flow. And as the water rises in the filter, less inlet pressure occurs all the way down to 0. With this in mind, it seems the lower the better which not only ensures water for the pump but increases the residence time the water has with the filter. My question is simply..am I thinking about this correctly or am I missing something? And how much space do you think needs to exist between the bottom of the filter media and the bottom of the pipe? Thanks, Yam |
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Post by mwardncsu on Apr 21, 2014 14:14:01 GMT -5
bilge/recirc - all the same to what I'm thinking - basically a Rule 500 gph pump. Not sure the difference, other than I guess a "recirc" is plumbed with an intake and return and the bilge has the open intake? The advantage of the bilge style is that when they die - and they will - you only have one fitting to change - quicker and easier to do on the water. I always keep a spare pump on-hand on the boat.
As to where to return the water into the bait tank - I agree, lower is better for venturi or other aerated water as you get longer dwell time of the bubbles in the water and thus more oxygen transfer into your bait tank water.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 21, 2014 14:18:10 GMT -5
The center-inlet is probably more pleasing to someone suffering from OCD though. No..not me. I think OCD and various other mental illnesses are forcing me to do this rather than just simply buy a freaking SBTII like Bentrod said originally. This is what scares me. Spraying this stuff into a confined space and having it explode my leaning post. I am not sure how one would leave room for expansion. If cooling become a major issue, maybe I will just wrap it with bed foam. To clarify, when you say thru-hall in this context, your hull is your filter? |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 21, 2014 14:19:41 GMT -5
bilge/recirc - all the same to what I'm thinking - basically a Rule 500 gph pump. Not sure the difference, other than I guess a "recirc" is plumbed with an intake and return and the bilge has the open intake? The advantage of the bilge style is that when they die - and they will - you only have one fitting to change - quicker and easier to do on the water. I always keep a spare pump on-hand on the boat. As to where to return the water into the bait tank - I agree, lower is better for venturi or other aerated water as you get longer dwell time of the bubbles in the water and thus more oxygen transfer into your bait tank water. Mward... to clarify, I am asking about the inlet height on the filter. |
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Post by mwardncsu on Apr 21, 2014 14:24:19 GMT -5
Maybe I'm missing something. If you use the "standpipe" in the middle, the water flows in and the static pressure from the water in the main tank forces it up through the pipe, overflows onto the top of the filter material and then works down through the filters to the bottom to the pump and is returned to the tank.
If you get rid of the stand-pipe, which I thought you said you are considering now - then the water either has to come into the filter on the top to filter down through to the pump, or the pump has to be on the top and you have to seal it and evacuate the air so the pump does not starve. Either way, you probably want the water encountering the top-end filters as they are what will get nasty 1st with gizzard slime, and you want to be able to pull it out, rise it, replace, it without having to pull all the filters.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 21, 2014 14:43:20 GMT -5
Maybe I'm missing something. If you use the "standpipe" in the middle, the water flows in and the static pressure from the water in the main tank forces it up through the pipe, overflows onto the top of the filter material and then works down through the filters to the bottom to the pump and is returned to the tank. If you get rid of the stand-pipe, which I thought you said you are considering now - then the water either has to come into the filter on the top to filter down through to the pump, or the pump has to be on the top and you have to seal it and evacuate the air so the pump does not starve. Either way, you probably want the water encountering the top-end filters as they are what will get nasty 1st with gizzard slime, and you want to be able to pull it out, rise it, replace, it without having to pull all the filters. To clarify, the height on the inlet of the filter will either be determined via a side entry or using a pipe coming up the middle. I have now decided this will be from the side. The higher this is in the 6" pvc, the less head pressure (Delta between bait tank height and inlet pipe. The less head pressure, the less flow and the greater the chance you starve your pump. On the reverse side, the lower this pipe, the more head pressure. The lower you go, the more flow that comes in. If you have more flow coming in then the pump can pump out, the water will rise in the 6 inch pipe. As it rises, the water level in the bait tank lowers until the two meet and there is no more head pressure. Hopefully the two levels never meet before equilibrium is established. What I was asking was...is this correct? And if so, then this simply means that the lower your intake to the pvc pipe, the better. |
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