Crusty’s Mark I Effluent Valve Filter

Crustaceon · Jun 4, 2020

I posted a pick in a different thread of my version of what some big names in the hobby use to stabilize the drip rate of their calcium reactor by preventing effluent valve clogging. In a nutshell, the idea is to place a filter before the effluent valve so any crud from the tank or calcium reactor doesn’t clog the nearly-closed and typically easily-clogged effluent valve. I’m using a prefilter for a reverse osmosis booster pump and replaced the stainless steel screen that came with it (for obvious rusty reasons) with a nylon screen from a cheesy universal clear automotive fuel filter that you’d find at a local auto parts store and would be sold by a kid who you learn had a freshwater tank at some point. I had to use a modified grommet to properly space the filter screen and maintain the correct flow path within the filter housing. I also had do a little bit of light sanding on one side of the screen to get it to fit perfect. But yeah, I’ve had this on my system for the past few weeks and while it’s still a prototype, I’ve been able to maintain a very stable 1 drop per second drip rate (or is that drip/drop?) from a manifold-fed return pump source for the past few weeks. So far so good. The best part of this is, the filter screen can be periodically cleaned and reused.

Let’s break it down:

This is the filter installed after the calcium reactor and before the effluent valve.

Here’s everything including the filter housing, modified filter screen and modified grommet.

In this picture you’ll notice how the diameter on the right side of the filter screen was reduced a bit.

This is what it had to fit into.

Filter screen installed in the filter cap.

I had to space the filter screen with a 1/2” grommet to seal the ends of the filter screen within the filter housing. Note how I removed (lazily) the shoulder from one side of the grommet.