Magnum 350

I have a few of them that I've been using for years... I'm quite satisfied with them...

They have a smaller media chamber than most other canisters, but that's the only fault I see with them.

I do know the squealing noise your talking about. I've found that as long as I thoroughly clean the impellor when I service the filter, and then make sure everything is snugly together... the squealing is minimal and disappears within half a day...

I've tried a lot of media combinations in them. My favorite is the micron Cartridge... with the blue sleeve over it... with 'filter fiber' outside of the blue sleeve... This does make for a thickly packed media chamber and reduced the flow rate considerably, but every drop of water that comes out of it is extremely crisp, clean water...

PS - In my experience there is absolutely nothing better for pushing water through a UV light than a Magnum filter well packed for micron filtration...

PS - In my experience there is absolutely nothing better for pushing water through a UV light than a Magnum filter well packed for micron filtration...

Click to expand...

YES!

When I lived in my old apartment I was still on the first floor and have not had any kids yet so funds were high so to say. I had a 46 bow front reef as my focal point and display in my apartment, (I would do it again but the new apartment has some very nice new carpet, the last was hard wood and kids are expensive but sometimes just as rewarding as a reef tank). I would come home from work and if the old lady was still at work or something I would pull up a chair, relax with a good old friend :wink: and stare into the clearest reef tank I ever saw. I had minimal space for a wet dry/sump so I ran a similar set up as I explained above with a tetra pond UV sterilizer plumbed in and man I had such a gorgeous tank!

I had it pretty much over stocked with fish but the fact that I could change between so much different medias so easily I never had water quality issues. Nitrite, nitrate, ammonia and phosphates were never a problem and people that I knew that were in the same hobby and ran sumps were amazed by it! Often I traded or just gave away lots of really nice frags.

Sorry for the long story :zz: . I'll go back to the topic now :thumb:

Yea, I'll get some pics when i fix my sd card, if not i'll just use my phone, As far as the micron, if you run it alone it clogs extremely quick, and when i say that there is no exageration. Since i dont have pics, i'll try and describe it to ya. Inside the carbon basket i put a pad surrounding the tube that comes up the middle of the carbon basket, then put onther layer around that, you might be able to fit 3 layers, but i doubt it. So after you have the tube in the middle of the carbon basket completely surrounded (like it's wrapped in them) i put another one or two scotch pads on top of it all, so it covers the top of that tube as well. Basically, since the water gets sucked through that tube in the middle, you wanna have it completely surrounded with those pads, so every drop that get sucked into that tube goes through the pads. Then install the carbon basket in the canister, i normally dont use the blue sleeve. Then, with the carbon basket in the canister, i surround the basket with filter floss. Same princilple as above, the water gets sucked through the carbon basket then pushed out into the tank, so you want the ENTIRE carbon basket (even the black back) surrounding in the stuff. here's the only pic i could really find of the floss surrounding the carbon basket.

I got the idea. I did a bit of something on my own. I added a layer of the pads around the inside of the carbon basket making sure that the entire thing was pretty much covered from the inside ( not surrounding the tube but just the inside of the basket ) then I added some carbon like you normally would. I like to use the carbon cause the wife does not like the odor. I know it still don't do much but as long as it keeps her at ease I just do it anyway.

Then I added the filter floss stuff that I got from the crafts dept of Wal-Mart like you did. I made sure that when I added the pads that no watter would pass them into the basket.

So it goes filter floss, then pads on the inside of the basket ( trimmed to fit, 3 pads all together ) and then carbon media. I took a look at it and the floss looks as if its catching tons of stuff. Its like the very fine unnoticeable particles are now visible in some areas of the floss since they are building up.

By looks of it, the Micron filter does a great job but it dont look like it would have as much srface space anyway as oposed to this idea.

Thanks