Tropical Fish Forums

[Flame Angel]

I'm making a few air-driven sponge filters for my breeding tanks - similar to these ones.

At the moment I've got a bunch of spare/old parts lying around. The general plan is to get some small containers for the base to either act as weights, or also house some filter media. However I already have sponges (like the one in the photo), but I'm not sure how I'm going to use them yet.

My main questions I guess - what do you guys think would be the optimal length of the uplift tube? I'm not entirely sure, but I figured if it's too short then the filter won't be very effective. I've got tubes of varying lengths lying around handy (from old UGFs and other filters).

I was also thinking about how much media I can use. The sponges themselves are fairly thick - not sure if I need to add anymore (considering that they're only air driven, can't have too many layers I guess). I was contemplating the idea of using one of those 4L ice-cream containers on the bottom (filled with media), but that would probably be too much?

One of the filters will have a power head (aquaclear 50, 1000lph) which I figure would be able to have a thicker layer of filter material, but I mainly want it to create a current, and it seems if I chuck a heap of media in there the flow decreases quite a bit.

[unissuh]

Question, not to discourage you or anything, but why bother making these when they're so cheap?

I don't think they will need extra media aside from the sponge, not to say you can't toss some in if you want. Just remember it needs to be accessable for cleaning which makes it more complicated - all sorts of gunge can build up over time.
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Fishing in the Rivers of Light

[Flame Angel]

Well I've pretty much got all the parts - just from different brands of them. The sponges I got however are too big for the weight I'm using (from older sponge filters), so I was just going to modify it a bit and assemble them myself. Didn't really see the point in buying whole new ones when I can just make them from what I've already got.

Yeah I might just add a layer of coarse polyfiber or something if there are any openings.

[diademhill]

Use then combined with coarse gravel in plant pots.
The uplift tube needs to be at least half the tank height.

[Flame Angel]

Was planning on using gravel to weigh it down also, so that would work well.

[Flame Angel]

I've chucked some stuff together - in terms of clearing the water up, at the moment they seem to be doing a better job than any internal filter I've ever bought

Cheers guys!