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DIY Sponge Prefilter Glass Lily Pipes

Featured Replies

Ive had this set of CADE lily pipes ever since the beginning of the year and i wanted to prep them for my shrimp tank. I love having sponge filter intakes over a SS mesh one because it acts as a prefilter and grazing ground. Means you wont need to clean the canister very often, just pull a sponge off and wash.

Materials:

Glass intake

Sponge filter

Flame (glass stove, blow torch, lighter etc)

All you need to know is how much of the trunk pipe is needed to fit into the base section and cut that size. Its usually 1cm.

Heat the 1cm trunk pipe and slip it over the lilly pipe. Nice and snug, use water to cool it faster.

Take it off, now heat the base hole and slip the 1cm trunk pipe into the base.

All youre pretty much doing is not only creating an adaptor but reserving enough space for the lilly pipe to suck in water from inside the sponge filter.

Pictures tell a story.

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thats one of the best DIY i have seen to date..... very intuitive mate. 10/10

Nice diy mate buy dosent that sort of defeat the purpose of glass lily pipes?

  • Author

Because this tank will be in my bed room i favoured a glass outflow over a green eheim spray bar (noise), regardless the sponge filter intake would have existed if not on the glass inflow, on the green eheim inflow so better to have a clear segment of my inflow then green :) HTH. Plus these pipes are really easy to clean, CADE includes a cleaning brush.

you are a genius!!! great share mate thanks :D

Nice diy mate buy dosent that sort of defeat the purpose of glass lily pipes?

Still looks pretty sexy to me, Beats the green hoses anyday.

Awesome DIY thread mate. Thanks for sharing !

  • 3 weeks later...

Your post inspired me to do something similar for my Eden 501 so that I dont have to cover the inlet with mesh, so the inlet is connected to a small sponge filter as shown below.

IMAG0446_zps4f1448e5.jpg

  • Author

Looks great mat! fantastic work. eden being so small its good to have a prefilter on it

Thanks!

Yes you cannot just have the little inlet that comes with the filter as that sucks shrimp up, also putting some sponge inside sucks shrimp halfway up and then they die ( I learnt the hard way with some yellows :( ). I also have another mod to the same type of filter, but will put a picture up of that tomorrow. Pretty much the same deal though.

Forgot to mention I have noticed that I have way more flow going through the tank this way too.

Just another different sponge prefilter for others to see:

IMAG0448_zps20e0c3b4.jpg

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