spinning arms on the old trickle filters

Does any one remember,or have anything to do with the way they used to put a spinning arm over the old trickle filters?
Did they fail or something,you don't see anything like that anymore?
I saw one for sale in a second hand store on the weekend and wondered what they were supposed to do?
i know they spread the water over a large area,was that just to cover more of the bacteria?

Yeh they are part of the nitrate factories from what i have herd.
The old trickles are dead and gone!

I was only speaking to a mate about those last week.
The were supposed to be the ants pants,when they worked

A wholesaler we know still uses trip trays,i like the idea of them,especialy with a spillway to it,he puts wauding on his trays.
Does anyone use trip trays here?

Yeh i know,you are going think i'm a bit random.
What is a drip tray??
I mean i get the tray and prips,does the water drip over the edge of the tray?
Is it like a dinner tray,or better still a drinks tray

You have never seen a drip tray!
I was told they took over from the spinning arms.

They make them out of acrylic normally.
You cut a square of the acrylic and drill some holes in it to let the water drip through the holes.
The ones i have seen have some layers of wauding over it to catch the detries to keep the system clean.

Its pretty simple and is used to get the water over the media,bio balls i have seen.

When I was first starting out with the hobby, they were just around the corner and were they expensive when they were introduced, it was ridiculous.

They were apart of what was badly used, the old trickle filters.

The trickle and under gravels filters for most marine keepers were doomed as they didn’t get it.

These filters were very dependant on being clean, prefiltering and cleaning was a must and in most cases it wasn’t done.

The overall design of most trickle filters were a bit ineffective I must admit, but to say they were a nitrate factory means they were done right and wrong.

Bio filtering is designed to make nitrate and of course convert it, now there was the draw back, without that deep (clean) workings incorporated in these systems, this is where they fell down.

The live rock ways of bio filtering now days can be done better in a trickle filter.

The live rock is slow to block and remains a nitrate removing dead spot with in it for far longer as it is above any thing that may encourage the porus areas to block and not utilise the anaerobic communities to do there bit.

A reasonable trickle filter or under gravel will allow you to house far more tank life than the live rock method as it will convert nitrite far quicker and in greater abundance than the live rock method.

For an example-the live rock method will process nitrites and nitrate of six fish in the tank quite well, but a reasonable trickle or under gravel will convert ammonia-nitrite for 30 fish quite nicely, the problem is, it leaves most of the produced nitrate behind.

The old trickle was far better for the aquarium keepers that are prone to keep putting in to many fish as the trickle kept away the stress quite well, but they were slow poisoned by the nitrate.
With heaps of water changes the old styles did well.

If you are comfortable with the bare minimum of fish, the live rock and protein skimmer are the way to go.

If you want more fish than is exceptable, than the old ways done well are far better.

It is hard to explain, but inverts other than some small polyp varieties are easier to keep than fish.

It is very possible to keep 20 plus fish in a 2 foot tank, if they get on all that is needed is enough external filtering and the sky is the limit.

Oh and the spinning arms definitely do not compete with a drip tray, it makes the arm a waste if time.