[dwalstad]

Recently, I stirred up the soil a lot in my new Native Fish Tank (55 gal) while doing some major redesigning. It was a mess!

Anyway, I thought the turbidity would go away like it usually does. It didn't. After 10 days, I took out the tank's UV Submariner and put in the AquaClear Powerhead/ "Quick Filter" combination. The Quick Filter does a really nice job of removing soil turbidity. In 2 days, the turbidity was gone.

Got me thinking, though, of how to make the UV Submariner filter a better mechanical filter. If any of you have this filter, you'll see that it has a very coarse, flimsy mesh sleeve for mechanical filtration. It is essentially useless for removing soil turbidity.

So I decided to add the filter padding I use in the Quick Filter to the UV Submariner, thereby making the Submariner a good mechanical filter. I replaced the flimsy black mesh with a 7" X 9" piece of filter padding. Rolls of this filter padding are sold as "Micron Filter Pads" . I use the 100 micron pore size, but its available with an even smaller pore size (50 microns). I purchased an 18" X 30" roll for less than ~$7 from Drs Foster and Smith (Cat #APG-143963).

One roll provides almost a life-time supply. I reuse the pads over and over again. I chlorox a batch of dirty ones and pound/rinse them out to dislodge most of the debris.

The other thing I like about using the pads is that it slows down the flow rate through the UV filter. A slower flow rate will increase the UV Submariner's sterilizing ability.

Pictures are of my tank before and after I added the Quick Filter with its filter padding. Other picture shows me inserting the new padding into the UV Submariner. Why didn't I think of this sooner!