I was told they can last six months with cleaning. I confess to letting ours go way too long before we change them out. The Hayward DE is sounding more appealing with no cartridge changing. I honestly don't know when they were last changed..have been unable to do water changes for many months....husband doing everything right now.
I would love to see others use DE pool filters...
If a DE filter is a good fit for them!
I have tried all sorts of cartridge filters from the RedSea aquarium specific cartridge filters to several different types of 12" Big Blue type filter cartridges. My results have ranged from them clogging in a matter of days to clogging in a matter of hours. I have never tried a pool cartridge filter like the Penair Rainbow RTL filters and nothing with near 100sqft of filter material. The top change lid design on the Rainbow filters (I looked them up after you mentioned them above) is FAR superior to any cartridge filter housing I have ever tried. The RedSea cartridge filter has a similar top lid design but still left a lot of spilled water mess when cleaning. I am currently running a 24" Big Blue type cartridge filter with a 20 micron (I think) cartridge covered with DE on my 35g dirt bottom tank. The 24" BigBlue with just a new cartridge would last weeks before needing cleaning. With the DE coating the filter cartridge it lasts several months before needing to have the DE knocked off the cartridge than allowing it to recoat the cartridge. The Big Blue DE doesn't last as long as the Hayward EC40 did but it still lasts for over a half year before it needs to be removed from my system and serviced in the kitchen sink.
I have probably beaten the point to death... but I LOVE the EC40 pool DE filter!
Maintenance of the EC40 has 2 facets:
1) Turn off return pump, pump handle on the EC40 filter several times to knock the DE off the filter screens, turn the return pump back on and the DE recoats the filter screens. There is a small ploom of DE in the tank when doing this that dissipates very quickly.
2) Take the supply and return lines off of the EC40 and backwash out all of the DE. This can be done with valves like an Ultima filter if you don't mind doing the plumbing. After the filter has been backwashed you will need to load a new batch of DE into the filter. I found the easiest way to do this is to put the DE filter water output into the sump then sprinkle the new DE into the sump while running the sump return pump. As the DE coats the filter screen the DE clears out of the sump quite quickly and the DE ploom in the sump clears quite quickly. --This extended maintenance is probably more work than changing a filter cartridge but when I had my 110g it was well over a year before needing to recharge the EC40 with DE.
I do believe DE filters work best with some kind of course pre-filter. Fitler pads in the sump work well so do filter socks. An Ultima would be another great option.
Pacu Mom, I understand the frustration of taking for ever to setup a new tank. My daughter and I are over a year into setting up our 180g tank. The progress we have made on the stand lately (in a different thread) is helping to boost our moral and work harder to get it finished. It always seems like it takes longer to get everything together than it should though. The stand is a major part of our build though.
My overall design goal for our 180g is
easy to maintain. Really easy access to the sock filters and the EC40 hopefully will both contribute to easy of maintenance and Minimizing maintenance time!
My apologizes for the thread hijack!
