Diatom earth filters

Seano
my leapord wrasse digs and shakes its head in the sand bed about a dozen times a day, hunting for food
my canary wrasse does not do this, but its smart enough to stay close to the leapord and benefit from anything that gets blasted up

my Radient wrasse also used to do this and I want another

so having 2 wrasse foraging in the sand bed will make for a very cloudy tank and my concern other than aesthetics is light issues due to always seeming to have cloudy water

the sand I used was fine argonite 1 - 3mm size and I did not rinse it, so its the fines from that and also decaying snail and fish poop etc thats floating around

so I feel that this Vacuum cleaning of the water will benefit my set up

Steve

 

On other SPS tanks I've had, I've used a 1 micron sock for numerous hours after powerheading off the rocks. My sump on this tank doesn't give me the ability to do that. I can also move this to the predator tank or any of the nano tanks.

 

I have been thinknig about one of these for several months for the same reasons.

 

dissapointing visit to the market

No diatom filters in any of the shops

Steve had to ad lib

purchased a standard cannister filter and lots of fine filter pads

had to modify it a bit, removed trays cut the pads to fit very tight and stacked from bottom tray to top mesh guard, and at same time added a new bag with 1/2 lb of Matrix Carbon in it.

extended the plastic tube on the water in side so it reached the base

covered the return spray bar with a larger diamter tube, tapered slightly shut using a lighter so that a more forceful jet was created

primed the filter using tank water ( syphoned water from tank into cannister)

fired it up, and blasted rockwork with the outlet , moving it around the tank and even behind the reef

once water was very cloudy, used the in coming as a vacuum cleaner, chasing larger particles about and then left in an area that the additional flow was carrying most of the waste to

ran it for about 3 hours yesterday morning

then once again went around the reef with the outlet, chasing any settles particles back into water column and then left running overnight

almost certainly not as effective as a diatom filter for this procedure as much of the smaller particles may still have made it through the filter pads

but the pads where dirty this morning and then was a lot of particulate setted on the base of the cannister

and more importantly, the tank looks a lot clearer today

Ill keep trying/ maybe surf the net or possibly get one of my UK team mates to purchase and bring out to me in Jan

but in the mean time, a few hours every Sunday, prior to a water change
I think I will continue with this cannister/ converted to a vacuum cleaner method

Steve

 

Great ingenuity