Here's the material's you'll need; a 1 liter bottle, a piece of clear tubing 5/8 inside diameter 7/8 outside diameter, a foam pre-filter, mine measure 2 3/4" across x 5 1/2" long, and a powerhead. Tools are sissors or a knife, and a heat source.



Pull off the label, cut the bottom off the bottle sized to fit inside near the neck & punch some holes in the cut off bottom. As to the concern with label glue, it does come off with heat.




Put the cut off drilled piece in the bottom;






Put in the foam, floss ,carbon, whatever you like. I did this one with just foam;





Cut off a couple inches of tubing & heat it to soften it;





Shove it inside the neck of the bottle while still soft;




Heat the other end of the tubing;






Stick it to the outside of the powerhead;





Put it in the tank & plug it in. These 2 have been running for a while, as they cycle the sponges darken;





Two of thes filters, one on the bottom & one on the top, along with a couple of home made sponge filters take care of a really stocked 55 gallon. Besides the angels, there's half a dozen bronze corys, at least 6 2" to 3" bristlenose plecs, & a 4" common plec. I haven't vacced the bottom in at least a month, but I clean that bottom filter ever other week.






I've got one in the bottom of another 55 being run by a 1,000 liter per hour pump. It's behind the rock on the left, with a length of tubing attached to the output slid under the rock. There's a few big common plecs in there with the same overstock of angels. Same vac & filter clean routine, the filter on the bottom circulates all the debris into the filter. A couple of canisters & an old AC 300 take care of the rest of the filtration;





In the future I'd like to try a bigger pump with a 2 liter bottle. If you can't find the pre-filters, open cell cushion foam that is NOT treated with fire retardants will work the same. Wal-Mart carries this, along with some fabric stores.

Any questions, comments, or especially ideas for improvment would be appreciated!

BTW, I keep copies of anything of any importance that I post. Hack my posts, I could care less.

John

nice post Tolak, damn those tanks look pretty pristine to me dude. hell of a job.:tup:

v/nice tanks and fish :tup:
I like the filters ingenious, good job. looks like they do it well.
Do you only run mechanical filters on the tank?

What a great idea. Good job

I have bio filtration on all the tanks. The 55 with the dog's head in the way has a couple homemade sponge filters, they're the 2 blue cubes with pvc sticking out of them. The 55 with the largish plec on the side has an eheim 2222, 2224, & an old ac 200 besides the powerhead filter.

i just built one of these filters today with a pequin 660 power head and a 2liter bottle with foam and amonia nutralizing pack