1 micron filter clogged after 1 week

replaced 150micron filter with 1micron last week. nozzles are now fine and never need cleaning, but membranous crud in the res clogged the filter completely. who knows for how long! no wonder it seemed like growth slowed.

doing a res change tomorrow. going to bust out the wetvac and hose and give it a thorough cleaning. back to steady H2O2 regimen. how much do you guys use? how often?

1 micron is ok for dtw. If you`re recirculating the nutes you`ll need a series of prefilters to catch progressively smaller debris to prevent the finer filters from blocking rapidly.

I do a lot of filtering between house water, RO, fish, and hydro, and 1 micron is VERY fine, I only use a 1 micron as a final stage for water that has already been through a 20 and a 5. For a hydro rez I would go much courser personally, I think a 1 micron would always clog fast. An ez-clone nozzle for example has a .075 orifice which is 75,000 microns, so even a 1000 micron filter is mare than enough.

Yea lol...what are you trying to keep out? not a whole lot of things that are smaller 1 micron...that's enough to filter out smoke!

i'm using orbit misting nozzles with a 0.3mm (300 micron) aperture. i was using a 150 micron (100 mesh) filter, but my nozzles were still getting clogged. i think it had to do with running beneficials in the res and the 4ft of tubing/piping between the solenoid valve and the nozzles. maybe sub-150micron particles of bacteria/fungus that make it past the filter clump together to form larger 300+ micron chunks. going to order 20micron mesh filter and see if that works better.

haole420 said:

i'm using orbit misting nozzles with a 0.3mm (300 micron) aperture. i was using a 150 micron (100 mesh) filter, but my nozzles were still getting clogged. i think it had to do with running beneficials in the res and the 4ft of tubing/piping between the solenoid valve and the nozzles. maybe sub-150micron particles of bacteria/fungus that make it past the filter clump together to form larger 300+ micron chunks. going to order 20micron mesh filter and see if that works better.

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Yeah, gunk forms in feed lines past where a filter can help. I feed via pvc pipe and even much larger nozzles can sometimes clog, except the ones I discovered in this thread: https://www.rollitup.org/hydroponics-aeroponics/401124-best-ponics-spray-nozzle-i-2.html#post5423855 Though they won't make as fine a mist as yours I'm sure.

infinitescrog said:

Yea lol...what are you trying to keep out? not a whole lot of things that are smaller 1 micron...that's enough to filter out smoke!

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Debris doesn`t come in uniform shapes or sizes, something 1 micron around and 2mm long will pass a 1 micron filter, the same applies to coarser filters 0.075" is 1.905mm or 1905 microns. (1000 microns = 1mm)

Atomizer said:

Debris doesn`t come in uniform shapes or sizes, something 1 micron around and 2mm long will pass a 1 micron filter, the same applies to coarser filters 0.075" is 1.905mm or 1905 microns. (1000 microns = 1mm)

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I thought a micron was a millionth of an inch? Are there both metric and English microns?

One micron is one millionth of a metre or 1000th of 1mm, either way its pretty small

Atomizer said:

One micron is one millionth of a metre or 1000th of 1mm, either way its pretty small

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I should have figured a measurement used in science so much would me metric. Right, English system uses mil's or 1000th's of an inch. Thanks for setting me straight on that

No problem, the one to watch out for with filters is not to confuse mesh with microns. There are 2 standards for mesh to make it more interesting

Atomizer said:

No problem, the one to watch out for with filters is not to confuse mesh with microns. There are 2 standards for mesh to make it more interesting

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Oh yeah, mesh, I've run into that before, usually with stainless screen filters, and that's where the larger the number the smaller the openings right? I used to screen print and that polyester mesh was simply openings per inch, usually from 50 to 400, but filters are different right? What are those standards you mention?

my 1micron filter is 1000mesh. my 150micron is 100mesh. so this particular mesh scale seems arbitrary (rather than thousandths of a mm)

Mesh usually relates to the number of "wires" per inch, the aperture depends to some extent on the thickness of the wires. If you buy it in sheet form, the specs will usually give you the wire diameter and the aperture size.
I have some 400 mesh, 28 micron wire diameter, 35 micron aperture and 31% open area.

Haole, is your filter inline? I have a 1 micron filter on the end of my feed hose, but it's a bag - no clogging issues yet, been running it for a month or two and even have some soil in my system.

Have a 200 mesh prefilter on my return line to my reservoir to catch all the big junk, though.

i'm using a rusco spin-down filter.

i drained my res and root chamber, sprayed them down with 10% bleach, and used my wetvac to get all the chunks out. had to purge my pressure tank and spin-down filter a few times. everything running smoothly for now. probably going to order another filter along the lines of 200 mesh.

definitely going sterile. no more bennies. thinking about adding a UV bulb to my res (which is separate from the root chamber). does anybody know if standard 10.0 UVB CFL for reptiles will also sanitize my solution? or is it a different wavelength of UV?

Atomizer said:

Debris doesn`t come in uniform shapes or sizes, something 1 micron around and 2mm long will pass a 1 micron filter, the same applies to coarser filters 0.075" is 1.905mm or 1905 microns. (1000 microns = 1mm)

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true: under pressure, chunks could get extruded through the openings to produce longer shapes, like you say.