I"m about to undertake an interesting project. I went to the lfs today to get a heavy duty filter for my turtle. He lives in a rubbermade container with low water levels, so a cannister filter was out. It was looking like I had to buy a SUPER expensive pond filter when an employee gave me awesome advice. He told me to buy a small fountain pump and attach an empty plastic bottle with filter media in it, he did it for his own ponds for years. IF it works, I'll have saved myself about $100, the fountain pump only cost me $45 and I have all the media. It sounds too good to be true, I'm about to try the assembly now.

Anyone else ever hear of anything like this?

Chrissy

Wow, I did it...and it worked!!! I was even handy enough to use a rubber band to fit the bottle and pump together. Check it out, I have it set up (minus some of the media) and running in a container to test it out.

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Chrissy

that's some good diy skills there chrissy and you could save people alot of money. you should get that in for tip of the month

there is a vid on you tube about creating a aquarium filter....

this is realy cool

I'm made filters out of bottles/boxes plenty of times, they work wonderfully.

Thanks for the youtube link, very cool

I'm glad I bought the fountain powerhead though, just because I needed a lot of power. This was the first time I'd ever heard of this, I think it's great!

Chrissy

it would be nice to have 1 handy in case of power outages. no electricity.

Unfortunatly they still do need electricity (a pump/power head of some sort to draw the water through), the same as a small canister filter.

Chrissy

Acualy i read the comments and it said you don't. It said it has some sort of siphoning system. probably isnt that powerfull enough for a GF but maby a betta.

that is what i made for my science project

Whoops, thanks! That is an interesting idea, I wonder how well it would work? Seems like it could be more trouble than it's worth...but yes, for power outages it could be great!

Chrissy

hmm i was thinking of putting a betta or sothing like that, maybe white cloud minnows, migt use that as a filter....

Very well done. It was nice of that guy to help save ya some money tho and nice DIY skills.

For sure, the filter's been running a while now and it's amazing. I'm so happy I made it

Wow thats fantastic! I should make something like that for Franklin...

It's very cool. I cleaned it last week and it was absolutely blocked with waste/algae, but the water was still crystal clear. When I was done cleaning the tank a lot of algae was stirred up, but within an hour or two it was clear again, I was so impressed. It's also great because I can stuff whatever media I like in there.