That wire mesh is a much different type of material. Even the dutch weave is not a good fit as it wont allow debris to roll down the screen removing it from the water column. Here are some pics of real sieve screen material. As the angle the water hits it at changes the screen cuts the water separating solids of a certain size from the water column pushing them down the screen.
I was doing min sieves on this tank to "play". The sump on this tank is there for displacement of gallons on the newborn tank and a place to mount my gear for monitoring the system. The big one is for two other tanks that I am rebuilding. I need to keep that project under budget because I am replacing those tnaks with a much larger one as soon as I find the right tank/next project. I suppose a sieve is a good investment since it can easily carry over to a large system.
Design:
x4 2" incoming lines through the sieve
x2 2" lines from sieve to MBBR
out to tanks
Cool. Yea there's definitely no harm at all in playing around with it. I just didn't want you to invest too much time/money trying to get it to work properly. I frustrated the hell out of myself a while back doing just that lol.


















