How much clear vinyl tubing would I need to make a fish tank filter?”
You would need a 1 inch clear vinyl tubing, a PVC tube the height of your aquarium, a handful of 1 inch drain or bulkhead fittings, 2-liter plastic juice jug with an open handle, a 1/8″ hose from an air pump, a water proof silicone (depending on the quality of your drain fittings), one or two empty plastic aquarium plant baskets, and one black zip tie.
“The Home Made Filter” On the 45 gallon tank, you can use the drilled bulkhead overflow to supply water to a home made filter. This filter is somewhere half way between a wet-dry filter and a power filter. The basic scheme is pretty simple you just need a five gallon bucket (in HDPE plastic from Hechingers: $5), a submersible magnet drive pump (Maxi-Jet 500, about $15), a basket to hold filter material, about 3 feet of vinyl tubing (FDA approved), and a 50 pound bag of lava rock ($10). You also needed about $10 worth of miscellaneous PVC fittings for the plumbing off the bulkhead. The setup is like this: the bucket is under a tube extending from the bulkhead fitting on the tank. The pump is in the bottom of the bucket with a return flow tube attached to it, that is led back to a spray bar in the tank. On top of the pump is about three gallons of carefully cleaned lava rock. Then set the basket with filter material (sponge and/or filter wool) in it on top of the lava rock and under the
