DIY questions

[parshmar]

I know most everyone DIY's their plankton culturing stations out of 2 liter bottles but i'm thinking about making some out of acrylic.

I am pretty good with acrylic and I have a lot of tube and sheet to work with.

I think I would make the "reactors" equiped with an air input at the bottom, a 1/2" drain and a 1/2 water input at the top. I could make the units fully sealed, or have removeable lids. Do I need removable lids even if I have a water input drilled/plumbed? I was even thinking about making it possible to automatically replace water lost from rotifer harvest with fresh green water. I know contamination is an issue so I would make the "linking" pieces removable and they would only be installed for harvest times. I'd probably test this on an experiment basis to see if the phyto becomes contaminated.

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions?

[spk]

Take a look at the Aqua Medic reactors and use a similar designe with regard to the air input at the bottom.

They have a cone shape bottom that prevents the rots, phyto, and BS from settling. It would also be good to have a three way tap at the bottom as I do not like the fact that you harvest and put air in the system through the same tap.

Then for the top I would suggest that a similar principle be used. But yes make sure that the top is removable for cleaning and sterilisation.

If you do this, I would be interested in a few of them.

Steve

[rsman]

linking them together isnt soo bad of a thing, its not too hard to correct for such contaminations, but you will want a way to really scrub them out, so make sure however you build it you can clean it.

[ediaz]

Maybe this will help, browse around this is what hatcheries use.

If the reactors are fully sealed, the air will not blow in.

http://www.solar-components.com/AQUAPR.htm

Ed

[jaybro]

Those have a ton of great uses. I built a fluidized sand bed out of one of the free standing conical bottom ones.

[parshmar]

They have a cone shape bottom that prevents the rots, phyto, and BS from settling.

I'm not sure I could have a cone shaped bottom. I'd have to find something premade that is already conical. If I found something affordable that I could weld to acrylic tube easy enough, then i'd be all over it

If the reactors are fully sealed, the air will not blow in.

Easily fixable And thanks for the link

Time to go make my brain work a bit.

[Fredfish]

You can DIY your own conical bottom, though you probably would be limited in the slope you get.

There is a good thread somewhere in the DIY forum where folks were making their own conical tops for skimmers. They clamped a piece of acrylic in a plywood frame (around the outside edge), heated the acrylic in an oven and then pushed down on the center of the acrylic with the appropriate sized tube.

Worked well for skimmers, so I don;t know why it wouldn't for a reactor.

Fred