DIY Water Polisher or Diatom Filter

I've been thinking about building one, did you ever make one?

you can put thick foam in your filter.

i was going to build one out of a pool cartridge. since summers over walmart is clearing out all those round cartridges for their blow up pools. you can rig it so a water pump or powerhead will pull water through one and that will clean up a tank pretty fast. it is also easy to move from tank to tank.

The only time I us my diatom filter is after moving/changing substrate or after planting/pruning. Filter floss is my full time media for polishing the water. I also use activated carbon if I want the water sparkling and crystal clear. The carbon will get the water staining tannins out of the water from the driftwood I use.

Just buy a used diatom from ebay. I swear by mine.

With a Diatom Filter, do you need to do water changes?

With a Diatom Filter, do you need to do regular water changes or does this in place of regular water changes?

You can get nearly equal results without the mess ...

... by adding 1 micron filter pad material at the end of your filter loop. Rena sells pre-cut 1 micron filter pads to fit their canister filters, but I have simply stuffed this filter material into spent carbon cartridge frames for use with HOB filters.

You can buy a foam pad for a chair like I did from a fabric store. Pull all of he blue off of the penguin cartridge and cut the foam so it fits. Either tie it or rubberband it into place. Works great at getting the tiny particles. Mine are black after a week or so. Very cheap too...

I am all for DIY. But, in this case I just don't think your going to get the same results as a vortex xl. This is not a commercial and I do not sell them. I just love the way it makes my water look and the added benefit of filtering out free floating parasites and bacteria.

it ultimately comes down to particle size ...

Obviously a properly pre-coated DE filter is capable of trapping particles in the sub-micron range. But a HOB filter equipped with 1 micron rated filter media runs a very close second ... without the mess and hassles required by the DE filter, and for a lot lower cost. I'm certainly not trying to talk anyone out of a DE filter, but merely pointing out that a cost-benefit ratio exists. IMHO, compared to a fairly typical 20 micron rating of standard filter media and cartridges, the apparent water clarity difference between a 20x improvement with 1 micron filter media versus a 50-100x improvement with DE is barely noticeable to the naked eye.

Again just a personal opinion, but the same $70-100 investment in a DE unit would also buy you a UV unit (which actually kills algae and some parasites) plus a ton of 1 micron filter media.