Loaches Online Forum

I am in the process of converting my 75 gallon tank into a river tank. I currently have a mattenfilter on the far side of the tank with a pond pump that pulls the water through the filter and pumps water back into area of the tank where the fish will reside.

Rather than removing the mattenfilter and constructing a river tank manifold design, is it possible to simply add maybe one or two more pond pumps and add some additional holes into the mattenfilter? Also, is there any advantage to the manifold design that the mattenfilter will not provide?

I'm excited about the project and look forward to any comments!

Kurt

Can you give a picture of your current setup?

I can provide a picture, but probably not until tomorrow

The disadvantage of a high-flow mattenfilter setup is the same as that of simply placing a few powerheads at one end of the tank: the water has to flow to the far end of the tank and then back to the filter end, guaranteeing high turbulence. This is the situation the manifold is designed to avoid.

I had a 55 gallon tank set up with a manifold plus mattenfilter (the mattenfilter replaced the round sponges covering the intakes in a standard river manifold). It worked OK, but I never quite got the flow right. With your pond pump, you could simply add some plumbing so that the outflow is at the far end of the tank. You wouldn't have to dig up all your substrate, just enough to conceal the plumbing. You would essentially have created a reverse manifold (the plumbing is now on the outflow rather than the intake side).

Maybe this will help:


1. Standard river manifold, with powerheads and cylindrical sponge over intakes.

2. Mattenfilter and pump with simple manifold.

3. Mattenfilter without manifold.

Good idea Noto!
#2 is very logical. It achieves high filtration capacity with uni-directional flow......nice!

Martin.

Thank you for the explanation! I understand what you're saying about the mattenfilter and I have a better idea of how the river manifold system works.

Thanks again
Kurt

You're quite welcome, Kurt. And thank you, Martin, for the original manifold design! Now that Kurt has made me think of the possibility of pushing rather than pulling water through a manifold I will have to try it myself.

Hi all
a combination of version 1) and 2) could be usefull:
Mattenfilter to the right close to the wall und the pump as in fig. 1)