Doubling my mechanical filtration in the 450

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Egon

Egon

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MFK Member
Jul 4, 2007
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Tempe AZ
The fish are getting too big! I'm having trouble keeping the water crispy. I have the room so I added the "extension" units to my Nu-Clear filters. Cost me $140 for everything not including the filter cartridges which I already have.

Flow is the same, no change in pumps but I doubled the capacity of my filters hopefully giving me twice the time between filter changes, most of you know how "lazy" I am :)

It took about an hour. I had to extend the left side intake plumbing and wrench it all together.

Hopefully no leaks.........

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Yeah it was on my mind for a while. Super easy to upgrade because I already had the Nu-Clears. I just got lucky. I don't think this is possible with other type of filter?
 
That's awesome, may have to look into those, the stackable option is a big plus.
 
Gill Blue said:
not that I know of. how many high can you stack them?
Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing! I might, for the heck of it, just order two more and see if it works. It should stack, without leaking, as high as I want. Just wondering about the efficiency of the pump. I may need to upgrade the pump? I guess even that doesn’t really matter? I have 10 more of those filter cartridges so it’s really no big deal stacking them.
 
well, the higher you go, the slower your flow, so you may want a bigger pump. it depends on the pump you've got. if you've gone up the second filter -12.5"- without any flow reduction, you've got some power to spare.
my laguna 1300 GPH drops 40% @ 4' to 789 GPH...
I have no idea how much oomph it takes to force the water through the filter media.
 
Gill Blue said:
well, the higher you go, the slower your flow, so you may want a bigger pump. it depends on the pump you've got. if you've gone up the second filter -12.5"- without any flow reduction, you've got some power to spare.
my laguna 1300 GPH drops 40% @ 4' to 789 GPH...
I have no idea how much oomph it takes to force the water through the filter media.
Click to expand...


So your saying the output flow is going to change the more filters I stack? Interesting. I was thinking no change in flow or maybe a slight increase in flow? In fact, because there wont be any change in flow or possibly a slight increase in flow, I can expect to increase pressure in the canister at half the rate because I have double the filter media.

Or another way of saying it: The filter will take twice as long to clog up. Instead of changing it out every three weeks I can wait 6 weeks to change it given the feeding and fish don't drastically change.

I haven't changed the pump so the water flowing through the system is the same, it might even be a little better given the seal between the two stacked cartridges might not be perfect. The waters flow has less resistance (pressure) this will slightly increase flow.

That being said, I haven't notice a decrease in the canister pressure at start up compared to it's single cartridge self before the modification. Crossing fingers I get double the time between maintenance.
 
Gill Blue said:
well, the higher you go, the slower your flow, so you may want a bigger pump. it depends on the pump you've got. if you've gone up the second filter -12.5"- without any flow reduction, you've got some power to spare.
my laguna 1300 GPH drops 40% @ 4' to 789 GPH...
I have no idea how much oomph it takes to force the water through the filter media.
Click to expand...

Actually, since it a closed loop, there is no change in head height. Theoretically a double stack will flow more GPH than a single since you will have less resistance to flow with the increased surface area.

I like this, I have thought about doing it with a couple of mine. Do you unclamp it in the middle to pull the cartridges?
 
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