ianryeng

Hello,

I currently have a 10 gal planted tank and am not happy with the available filters for affordable prices. At the moment I am using the smallest marineland penguin biowheel filter but it produces a lot of turbulence and the impeller is quite noisy.

My plan currently is to use a two or three sump drinking water filter to implement three stages of filtration using this type of filter shown at the end of the post

Since it is a small tank 3/8 polyvinyl tubing should provide adequate flow assuming approximately 1.5-3 gallons per minute available flow with an inexpensive inline pump.

The first stage is going to be a 5 micron sediment filter, the second stage will be a carbon block, where im not sure what to do is the biological filtration. Should i run the water back to the HOB filter so it goes through the biowheel or add a third sump with some biologically friendly media like ceramic beads or bio balls or something of the like?

I can get the two stage filter for free as we have some that have been returned by customers that we cannot sell and the filters for the first two stages are about $2 and $3 respectively.

Is there any reason not to filter down to 5 microns? I ask because the filter i am currently using seems to only take out large particles...

I am fairly new to the aquarium scene and have been learning a lot quickly but I would greatly appreciate some feedback with respect to this idea before i implement it in case i have overlooked something.

Thank you for your feedback and assistance is the development of this filter,

Ian