The Puffer Forum

I am thinking of doing a DIY canister filter. Has anyone ever made one before?

I have an air pump that connects to multiple tanks. I would like to the same with a canister type filter, if possible.

Any ideas or recommendations would be appreciated

It would be alot easier to make a nice big trickle filter DIY rather then a canister.

I have no idea how a trickle filter works. Can you point me to a couple links?



I found this link:
http://www.firsttankguide.net/trickle.php

it isn't really what I was looking for. I have a spare pump (a big one) that I could used to power a substantial canister filter. I have never seen a canister used in a multi tank application though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df5a3DFL ... feature=iv

He goes a little in depth on the DIY overflow, but he does use the big rubbermaid tub and the plastic tower drawers for your media (which IMO is the easiest DIY filter for large bioloads.) This should give you good idea to start with. Another benifit of this is that you can place many pumps for returns to each tanks then you need to figure out how to do the overflows to get the water from each tank to the top of the tower. But it has another plus because you can you can as many feeds as you want at the top of the tower since its "trckeling" down anyway. Hope this helps.

I would think it would be easier to build a trickle or wet/dry. Wouldn't have to deal with all the secure fittings. You could also store your heater, have larger water volume, or store your skimmer if it's marine. Also with a sump as you probably know, your waterline doesn't drop in your tank, it drops in the sump. Keeping a constant water level in the tank is obviously cosmetic but i like it. I didn't build mine but here is an idea of what a trickle is. Great at oxygenating the water as well due to the "trickling". I have taken the media out of the bubble trap. Figured i'd announce that before i heard something about it.

Thanks guys! I really appreciate the input.

I have watched the vids, understand them just not exactly sure how I would implement that across 10 or so tanks Unless, they each had a hose all connecting to a single box (the trickle), and had individual pumps for the return. I'm going to really have to plan this one carefully

Thats what i was trying to say lol. the bottom of the DIY trickle has plenty of room for as many pumps and you need and then you could use that as a sump aswell hideing your heaters in there aswell. Just figure out a way to get the water to the top of the trickle and your good to go. It also give you plenty of freedom to use and change all kinds of media.

Unless you wanted to make a closed system with one huge pump and pvc. You could control the pressure of each tank with ball valves.

Drill all your tanks so they use stand pipes for draining into a giant reservoir below all the tanks then pump it up to all the tanks with another set of stand pipe. Check out a LFS that'll let you see how their systems are intertwined. Its farely easy with a reservoir and plenty of PVC

I'm building an inline filter next week and will make a how to guide for it. The basic ideas isint too hard and it also has the capacity to have a heater module to take it out of the tank

J-P wrote:I have an air pump that connects to multiple tanks)

I made one of these out of a 2litre cola bottle once. You can run it off your air pump, you could maybe make a filterr for each tank and run them all off the same air pump (depending on how strong it is)

As I do multiple systems of linked tanks, I'll second the idea that passive systems are far easier to control than pressurized ones. Sizing and controlling a Manifold to feed liquid from multiple tanks into a common canister would be a nightmare. Sizing and balancing flow would be a major PITA. Feeding multiple tanks into a common trickle tower is dead easy. The return from the common sump can instead be a pressurized manifold loop,with individual feeds to each tank is easier if you can do threaded fittings for better leak-proofing. That does still require some care and has some risks. Individual return pumps are safer, but can be rather awkward - largely based on the number of them,

The biggest warning I can offer on the entire concept is that QT absolutely must always be really, really rigid and absolute. Introducing disease into a combined system is a nightmare.

Insuring back-flow cannot happen in a power-off situation is another non-trivial issue.

HTH

heres a quick link to a diy canister filter which i found a while back. has excellent information and detailed steps. 10/10

oops forgot the link?

I am still considering it but not for a multi tank app.

http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/foru ... -step.html =D