- Ultimate - Filter Baffle

[Fishy friend2]

Since bettas don't like flow and most people only have access to a local Petco which only sells external or internal filters. Not sponges, which produce minimal flow I thought I should post a picture guide to make a filter baffle for minimizing the flow/output of the filter

Supplies Needed
-A pair of Scissors
-An empty water bottle
-A sharpie
-And of course, a filter



Step One

Place the water bottle up against the area where the flow comes out. Make sure it can cover the whole area. Then make a line with the sharpie so the water bottle can fit on the edges where the flow is, after you have it lined and traced. Cut on the lines. Make sure that there is no sharpie residue. This can be potentially toxic to your Betta. After youve cut on the lines, cut the bottle in half on one side. So it opens up on Only one side.






Step Two

Once you've gotten Step One finishished. You can now go on to Step Two.
It is time to put the water bottle on the mouth/lip of the filter where the flow comes out. If you've measured, and cut correctly it should fit on well. Just wrap it around the mouth/lip of the filter like this




Step Three
Now your ready to move on to step three. The easiest step of them all!
Place the filter in the tank, watch and enjoy your Betta not getting blown around by the flow

[Betta man]

Cool. I moved it to DIY because that's where it belongs. I've heard that plastic bottles can imitate estrogen which is a female hormone. Shouldn't be a problem. I actually heard that all the fish in a stream were females because of too many plastic bottles. Idk though.

[lohachata]

have you checked in with your psychiatrist lately....
plastic bottles have to be inert....they can have no effect on the water....otherwise they would be banned by the EPA....

[Humanzombie12]

Heh, your putting to much faith in your government lol

[emc7]

So you don't have to read my whole rant. Just replace your baffle every six month.

A few small studies indicate BPA mimics estrogen in some creatures. bis-phenol-A is a raw material in the production of epoxy, such as is used to coat the inside of cans to keep acidic foods like tomato sauce from corroding the seams, reaching the air, getting contaminated with bacteria and culturing botulism which can kill. It is also used in polycarbonate.

Some reusable dishwasher safe bottles used the material, but manufacturers have taken it out in response to the scare. Disposable water bottles never had it. To see what they are made from, translate the recycle code. Usually PET, polyethylene terephthlate. The same stuff as in polyester clothing. This stuff is clear, stiff and light. However it will degrade over time it sunlight. It will get less flexible and crack. And it is not entirely non-permeable, no polymer is. There are gaps that small molecules can work through over time, letting your water taste funny or your soda go flat.

The isn't any evidence about "estrogenic" effects of PET, but some people want to study it. They want to study every man-made compound and prove it "safe" before letting it come on the market. This is opposed by the chemical industry since it would make any innovation prohibitively expensive and groups like PETA because it would mean more animal testing. For decades in the US, the toxic substances control act has damped the introduction of new plastics and all it requires is sending a "not on TSCA" letter with every transit of a new molecule. TSCA attempts to list every chemical currently in use. Sorting things into safe and unsafe is nonsensical. Every substance in existence has risks. You can drink enough water to die of water poisoning.

Personally, I don't expect any "estrogenic" effects will be found for plastic water bottles, at least in fish. If there were, killie and apisto breeders that buy & sell fish in water bottles would have seen birth defects or skewed sex ratios or decreased breeding by now.

The government will notice a large cluster of deaths and so will class action lawyers. But don't expect them to protect you from subtle effects like making you slightly fatter than before. Products are only tested for known risks. Until some one decided to look for hormone-like effect, it never occurred to anyone to test for them. A single researcher won't be able to afford a study large enough to answer one question about a potential effect, let alone hundreds of possible effects. The makers of packaging have a huge disincentive to do so. What if they proved an issue and everyone who had drunk from a plastic water bottle sued?

For packaging glass is superior in barrier properties and chemical resistance. When you stock your end-of-the-world bunker, use glass. But the transporting the weight of glass and its habit of shattering makes industry look for alternatives.

Chemistry is scary, but nature is worse. Chemists cause accidental poisoning, bacteria do it deliberately. I would not give up epoxy lining of cans if I had to eat from cans. Humans have been eating BPA for decades. If it has an effect, it isn't an obviously killer one like arsenic (found in many well's water) has.

On drinking from water bottles, tap in a glass glass is usually better. But water from a plastic bottle is better than a bottle of soda.

I do think "water treatment" could do a better job of cleaning our waste water. Right now any drug any human takes ends up in our pee and out in the waste water, including actual estrogen. Right now water treatment in most places deals with the nitrate and attempts to kill organisms with chlorine and then puts the water back in the river for the town downstream to pull out. But if we take mineral-rich water out and put RO water back in, we will mess up a lot of places, also.

[Betta man]

Drinking from the hose also messes some stuff up too. I personally like to use gutter mesh.