I've had decent success with various shapes, sizes, and thicknesses of
bulk filter batting material. The best one I came up with is a pond
pump with a short 3/4 dia hose attached to the inlet. I cut a hole in
an AQ foam block, crammed the block over the inlet hose and wrapped the
block with two layers of filter batting. When the batting gets clogged
it's easy to remove/rinse/reapply.

steve


spiral_72 wrote:
I've tried several variations of the manual vac & pump/filter in an
interest to clean my tank a little more thorough. The best
configuration (so far) uses a whole house 30 micron filter insert
fitted to the input of a return pump in a 10gal plastic tote. The idea
was to vacuum into the tote and return the cleaned water to the tank
and allow smaller water changes. What I have works well for about 10
gallons. The filter plugs and I have to stop vacuuming. I've tried
cleaning the filter by reverse flow from the tap, with less than
spectacular results. At $5 a pair for the filters they cost too much to
replace. I thought about a sand or gravel filter but how would I clean
it? A new 30 micron filter works well for a few minutes, but leaves a
microscopic "cloud" in the water. The obvious solution would be to
use a 5 micron fine filter, but that'd plug sooner. Oh, I've also
tried using foam or paper towel as a prefilter. Any ideas?

Thanks

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