Fancy Vac.

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

http://www.geocities.com/spiral_72/Spirals_page.html

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

http://www.geocities.com/spiral_72/Spirals_page.html

In article .com,
says...
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

http://www.geocities.com/spiral_72/Spirals_page.html



I use the Marineland Magnum250, and 1 micron filter insert with the
Marineland vac attachment to vac the gravel, then change the water
removing the water with just a syphon hose, add my aged water using a
Maxi-Jet power head and hose. Then polish the water for an hour with the
Mag250.

--
Jim Anderson
( 8(|) To eMail me, just pull "my_finger"

Bottom posted.

--
You can find my public key at https://keyserver1.pgp.com
"Jim Anderson" wrote in message
et...
In article .com,
says...
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

http://www.geocities.com/spiral_72/Spirals_page.html



I use the Marineland Magnum250, and 1 micron filter insert with the
Marineland vac attachment to vac the gravel, then change the water
removing the water with just a syphon hose, add my aged water using a
Maxi-Jet power head and hose. Then polish the water for an hour with the
Mag250.

--
Jim Anderson
( 8(|) To eMail me, just pull "my_finger"

The magnum paragraph is almost exactly what I want to do for maintenance,
except I would use a magnum 350. Good luck and later!

Will the filter last through one vacuuming? How do you clean the
filter? I'm not familiar with the Marineland vac product you speak of,
but I will Google it in a few.

I've tried various fiberous materials, gravel and block sponges. The
block sponges worked best aside from the house filter but the fine
particle filtration was really bad. Worse than the house filter by far.
However, on my two ten gallon tanks I use a block sponge on a small
powerhead and it works wonderfully. Maybe I am trying to move water
through the sponge too fast with the big pump (300gph). Maybe this is a
job for several filters of incremental mesh size. I dunno. I was really
hoping someone would have a simple solution, like pantyhose or
something...... Oh, and no pantyhose doesn't work either.

Thanks for all the help