glitter for visual flow indicator?

[Sean Lindstrom]

You could very convincingly fake it by rotating a hoop of clear plastic past a window. You'd need a little toy motor geared down, and some rollers to support the hoop.

 

[felinusz]

If you had a very fine mesh filter at the inlet and outlet of a reservoir, you could conceivably put glitter into it, where it would swirl around and look cool in the turbulence. The mesh filter would allow you to use glitter without having any escape into your loop, and cause havok.

The filter would probably affect your flow rates somewhat however.

 

[ls7corvete]

Look its simple, you just leave a bubble in it and turn your computer over every couple minutes, kinda like one of those glitter wand toy things.

 

[Sean Lindstrom]

Aquariums are typically full of sand and pebbles. Even stray charcoal pellets from a filter must be chewier than glitter. I'll bet a cheap aquarium pump would give at least one year of service.

Pond pumps will handle continuous duty with sand in the impeller. They sit in gravel pits surrounded by mud, never filtered except perhaps by netting to keep the leaves and koi out. I have one in this setting (1cm mesh screen filter) and it's still happily digesting muck after 3 years. It lives in a hole at the lowest point of a concrete pond, and when I clean the pond annually there is about an inch of sand lining the bottom. This ogre replaced a pump which had been running 20 years. It growls though.

Glitters are super-light aluminum foil with a plastic coating. Softer than sand.