The DracoDrum Solution

Why a drum at all?

Although traditionally more expensive than almost all other forms of purely mechanical filtration, drums have 2 redeeming features - the ability to consistently filter out particles down to around 50 to 90 microns and to vastly reduce maintenance and cleaning on any filter system they are fitted to. Because they take so much debris out of the water at the beginning of the filtration process, it allows the "back end" or biological part of the filter to work far more efficiently as it doesn't have to cope with low levels of muck building up on the bacterial surfaces. This also reduces the risk of bacterial infection on your fish as there are fewer places for "bad bacteria" to propogate. The results are almost akin to getting a whole new filter.

Why DracoDrum?

Dracodrum was designed as a more affordable drop in solution that is easy to use. Initial price of a drum was always very expensive and then there were the hidden costs of plumbing a standalone unit in, usually involving lots of expensive 4 inch pipe and just the pure hassle of having to move everything around to physically fit them in to any existing system. Sometimes this scenario alone ruled out drum installs for most. Also there seems to be a bit of an "arms race" of extra features going on and on face value this seems to make them more complex for the user to install and use. There must be a simpler way.

From the absolute start, DracoDrum was designed to fit in the front of an ERIC filter to replace the subjectively high maintenance brush box system used in these units. The brief was to come up with a product that could drop in without a single modification to the original filter. It then had to be extremely easy to "wire up" and commission and then it had to be easy to maintain, with everything easily replaceable. It also had to have all the features needed to make a drum work but keep it within the chassis of the drum to allow it to be installed in almost any situation, no matter how tight.

The result is a drum that not only fits in an ERIC filter, but fits the 300 series Nexus units and single inlet vortexes over 33 inches in Diameter. We are also looking at multi chamber units but on a case by case basis as there are so many different types. Spring 2016 will see the introduction of a standalone unit and a smaller drum for nexus 200 series filters and smaller vortexes and larger multibays.

The remotely sited controller has start / emergency stop buttons and a knob allowing you to change the length of wash. It also has 2 leads - one to plug in to the mains supply (110v and 230v, auto selectable) and one to plug in to the drum. Status of the unit is via 4 colour coded LEDs. We didn't think we could make it any simpler than that. Low voltage, sealed water valves and drive units utilising an extremely low geared direct drive system mean that only 12 volts is anywhere near your pond water. It is also designed to run without a noisy and power hungry wash pump in most circumstances, so on standby the unit can use less than 12 watts and in full wash mode, use 35 watts. It is entirely possible to run it off a car battery for prolonged periods of time.

For those of you who like to have some bling, unfortunately the DracoDrum does not have anything shiny on it but does come in a rather fetching polished black polypropylene with a striking logo on top and not forgetting the dapper red drum seal which will certainly make it stand out from the crowd...