Removing out the tiniest particles from the water...

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo

ewok

Fire Eel
MFK Member
May 25, 2007
2,632
6
68
Undisclosed Location in SOCAL
what's the best filter media or best filtration method to get out suspended clay particulate matter? i have a tank that i put fluorite in. initially the water was ok, but the fish started stirring things up. i don't want the tank to end up looking all cloudy all the time. what's the best filter media to use to trap this stuff? i have two external canisters running on the tank.
 
diatom filter. clearest water you can get - period
 
for a cheap alternative to diatoms.use micron bad.
 
If its just a one off clean you need, you can try some flocculating agents. They will bind the clay suspension into larger "fluffier" pieces which your canister can remove. See your aquarium store for details
 
Filter floss is cheap and works good, but not as good as a diatom filter.
 
You need really heavy filtration to get them out, solid current so all the particles are airborne and will travel and be sucked through the filter, not just washing around in the tank (like mine currently - sump under construction to fix that).

This bugged the hell out of me as a photographer, so I looked into and found the solution for it. LFS should sell high flow 50 Micron Filter 'Wool' I guess you would call it, and if my memory serves me correctly, 50 microns is 0.005mm, so there won't be any particles getting through that. Put this into the top of your canister right before the impeller, so all slightly larger particles will get filtered and stopped by your previous mechanical filtration, and then the last surviving 'specs' will get trapped by this stuff. Downside to crystal clear water is that you're going to have to clean the wool out more often than you would usually clean the filter, but in my opinion it's worth it.

Seachem Purigen is another product I highly recommend for water polishing, 100gm bag is cheap, reusable, and polishes around 100Gal/400L effectively. I'm running 200gm on my 140 and the water, apart from specs and dusty/cloudiness when stirred up is crystal clear.

Hope this advice helps, let me know how it goes as my sump is going to have a lot of mechanical filtration in it so I don't have to use Photoshop to remove so many specs :p
 
i was reading some old threads about diatom filters, and apparently the 'powder' that is used in the diatom filter (that's actually the media that traps the gunk in the water) is hazardous to human health??
probably don't want to get one. flocculating additives... could do. i was hoping for a long term solution as the fluorite will constantly get stirred up. can i add a filter sock into my external canister? as in just use the sock as media? i know that's now what it was designed to be used as, but i can't think of any other aquarium safe media that is 1 micron or so...
 
MonsterFishKeepers.com