Any veterans here who use whole house filters?

[hookthefish]

I'm a Ex-veteran fish farmer in tanks, pond and pen aquaculture for 12 years. I gave up due to crazy up and down market prices and feed prices.

I'm only putting together a small 50 gallon for my son's turtle, goldfish, catfish and for nice looks.

From what I have seen for filters at the pet stores make me laugh since they are made cheep and seem so inadequate to filter good. So I'm going to use 2 - Watt's Big Blue whole house filters, one 20 micron pleated cartridge, and one empty refillable media cartridge so I can fill my own carbon and fiberfill. My biological will be the gravel in the tank with the flow from the filter coming up though the bottom of the tank though the gravel bed plate and though the gravel. Known as RUGF or reverse undergravel filter.
I will use bulkhead fittings to pipe externaly with large pipe and tubing and an large 950 gallon per hour pump.

Have any of you done the same?

I know some pet stores do it for they're tanks.

I haven't for fish farming because "looks" wasn't a consern, vast filtration was, so I had ugly huge filtering systems.

 

[WhiteDevil]

There are cartridges that those big blue filters tank that are carbon packed. The only issue I am having with any 75 and under micron cartridge either spun or pleated is they clog up rather fast.
We have 3 of them on our 210g in addition to the two main filters. If you got the $$ look at the sock filters, they look really nice and take forever to clog.

 

[hookthefish]

I agree on the sock filter being big money and good filtering.
I have seen them at other fish farms but never tried them myself.

From what I have seen some pleated filters are made for wells and some for city water.
I wonder if that makes a difference for high organic water?
Have you tried the pleated for well water?

I was allso told by Aquatic Ecosystems that algae tends to clog pleated filters fast.

 

[hookthefish]

Hmmmm. Interesting!
I found a bag filter for $140. Pentek PBH-420-1. Yes it is nice looking and it don't cost hundreds of dollars.
I think I will first try an empty refillable filter media cartridge first.
before this pentek.