All done with my DIY Canister Filter!

[Jonjey]

Here it is folks, my 2' long PVC canister filter. Packed full of 1500 grams of ceramic media, around 15 pot scrubbers, a few inches of filter floss and two packs of Purigen! Powered by a Maxijet 1200, it uses a diy pvc intake and a diy pvc spray bar to circulate the water. My previous filter, a fluval u3, was constantly tossing my axolotls around if they swam passed the output, this is just a nice rain on the top! All in all I have about $80 in this not including the pump which I already had, but the ability to customize it and make sure it does just what you need/want is totally worth it, also it holds more media than a comparably priced canister as far as I know.
In real life the spray bar coming down over the blue led looks amazing. Right now my golden is perched over a piece of driftwood right in front of the blue lights with the bubbles rising behind him and it looks super neat but my camera isn't good enough to get a decent picture of it.
Here's a quick vid of it, sorry for the poor quality no wifi atm so had to upload in microwave definition from my phone, but you can use the pics to get the clear picture and the vid to get the good description!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEvlcuyRtSo

 

[Jonjey]

Oh yeah, the spray bar creates quite a bit of splashing and is getting water on my blinds and whatnot, any ideas on a way to rig up a barrier above it? Thinking of using plastic wrap and some sort of bend-able plastic or something like that to make a shape that can stand on the rim of the tank and keep the water in, any thoughts on what materials I could use or different ways to fix the issue?

 

[sde]

Cool idea! And well done! Looks like it works very well, couldn't have done better myself...at all...cause I am not the best a DIY filters :blush:

But why not just buy a submergible filter for half that? I hear canister filters are better than submergibles though, and its a good price for a canister filter.

Nicely done. -Seth

EDIT: To keep the water from going onto your blinds you could put a old towel over that half of the tank, or just point the spray bar down more. -Seth

 

[Jonjey]

My fluval u3 is a submersible filter and it creates a ridiculous current in the tank. Also it holds a tiny fraction of the media that the canister filter holds and has no space for modifications or upgrades.

 

[Jonjey]

The next day after I set it up I woke up and my tank was completely filled with dust and particles, I rinsed everything out before setting it up but I guess rinsing wasn't enough, and I think most of it was from the ceramic media which I rinsed well but it must have had a lot of stuff still on it. I scooped my lotl's out and put them in a 15 gallon for the day and by this morning the tank was very clear again, not perfect but should be crystal clear within another day or two. I used a wooden shishkabob stick and some rubber bands to keep the spray bar held in place it works very well. Will be putting my lotl's back in tonight.

 

[Jonjey]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX1miI9v2W4

Updated HD video, some new parts and stuff. For anyone who is interested.

 

[Cacique]

The filter looks great, you did a really good job on it. What was the most expensive thing in your build? I would imagine the UV sterilizer.

 

[Jonjey]

The filter looks great, you did a really good job on it. What was the most expensive thing in your build? I would imagine the UV sterilizer.

Actually the quiet one pump was a higher end model cost me about $50, the sterilizer was only around $30. I only needed about 500 gph but I know there's a good chance that I'll be getting a bigger main tank in the future so I wanted to make sure it could efficiently filter a bigger tank.