Today I finally ordered most of the hardware I’ll require for the further construction of the paludarium. Not computer chips this time, but pumps, filters, pipes, heaters and other cool stuff. In this blog post I’ll highlight some of the components that I’ve selected.
Aquatic Filter
Originally I used an Eheim 2222 external filter for Paludarium 1.0. However, this filter was already too small, so for the new Paludarium 2.0 it would definitely be too small, so I was in need of an upgrade. The price of the larger Eheim filters scared me a bit – So I decided to go for another vendor, JBL. They have a much cheaper filter line, the greenline filters:
I bought their 1501e version, which outputs an impressive 1400 litres per hour and uses only 20 watts. Impressive!
This filter will be running 24/7 (this is needed to keep the bacterias inside the filter alive who help keeping the water clean). Water will be drawn directly from a bottom-feed out of the paludarium, and returned through a feed through in the back of the paludarium straight into a waterfall. The 1400 liters per hour should make quite an impressive waterfall, and generate streaming water at the surface (which the Anableps four-eyes will love!).
External heater
Obviously I need to heat the water inside the paludarium. I want as little stuff as possible inside the paludarium, so I choose for and external heater. This heater is placed in the hose leaving the external filter. I choose for a Hydor ETH 300:
This heater will be set at 30 degrees centigrade. You may think that is very hot for the paludarium, but this is actually a limiter just in case things to wrong: Normally the paludarium electronics will be switching this heater on and off to actually create a water temperature required for the current weather. In case things go wrong and the electronics keep the heater on permanently for some reason, the 30 degrees setting on the heater itself will keep the fish from getting fried!
Pumping Head
To keep the rear of the paludarium moist a pump is required. For this pump I choose the Eheim Compact 600. This very small pump is able to raise enough pressure to feed the water 1.3 meters up (where I need around 75cm for the paludarium):
This pump will not run 24/7. As there is no bacteriological filter involved, shutting down the pump is not a problem. The electronics in the paludarium will have control over this pump, and it will run x minutes per hour. How long it runs per hour depends on the humidity that the inside should have. The higher the moisture level, the longer the pump will run every hour.
Reverse osmosis unit
In order to be able to take in clean water (to feed the mist maker and to replenish evaporated water) I will use a reverse osmosis filter. These filters use tap water as an input, and they output clean water and waste water (which will flow directly into the sewer):
The osmosis water will be inserted into the paludarium via a feed through in the rear of the paludarium. From there it will flow into the mistmaker compartment, and from there it will flow into the waterfall making its way into the aquatic part of the paludarium.
Magnetic valves
In order to be able to take in fresh water and use tap water pressure for the rain sprinklers, I use magnetic valves:
There will be a total of three valves inside the paludarium. One will control rainfall, the second will control the intake of tap water. The third one will drive the reverse osmosis filter to take in clean water.
As soon as all of this stuff arrives I can continue to fill the paludarium with water and hopefully get things going real quick!
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