Changes made with my current filter -- did away with DIY "pre-filter"

[Mmathis]

I have a Home Depot "brand" 3600 GPH pump. It's a solids-handling pump. For the past 3 years, I have used some type of DIY "pre-filter" to encase the pump in, even though it has a cage thingy over the intake. It's been a good pump, but my only complaint with it is that you can't connect anything to the intake, such as a pre-filter. The intake doesn't accommodate any type of attachments, so you have to put it inside something.

Well, I took a good look at the water once things started warming up. Since I don't have a BD [bottom drain for any newbies], I always have lots of floating particulates in the water column. My Skippy and turtle bog are doing great as far as keeping the water quality good, but basically I was sorely lacking as far as mechanical filtration.

So, I decided to try the pump without a DIY pre-filter. It is a solids-handing pump, and as long as I don't run it too fast, the Skippy will settle out a lot of crud. Of course, I was concerned about fish getting sucked in, but decided to try it. So far, so good. The fish swim around it and even close to the intake cage and there has been no indication that they are being sucked in.

And after about 4 days, the water has cleared up a lot -- still some greening from algae, but so much less of the floating bits of crud. Will be flushing the Skippy in another day or so, which will give me an indication of what's been collecting in there.

 

[Meyer Jordan]

You could always place another filter between the pump and the Skippy to catch the particulates and keep the Skippy cleaner. A settlement chamber may work.