Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Ive got a 55 gallon I use to quarantine fish and plants, as well as to have some kind of "pet" in my home office other than my fry growout tanks. I had a massive explosion of algae. A real bloom. Massive cloud of algae. The worst. I tried water changes and darkness which made a minimal impact. Ive attached pictures. Isnt that what everyone comes for? The pictures. Ive had biological, mechanical, carbon bags, on this tank. an old Fluval 303, and the aforementioned water changes. I used to have a diatom filter back in the day and had thought of getting another one. I came across this by chance due to the fact that you can "charge' this filter with diatoms. I ordered cheap diatom powder from another source which was a better deal than what I could get here, and I ordered the filter on Amazon as it was the best deal, a lot less than what the pet stores carry this filter for. On to the important part. I received the filter and affixed it to the front pane of the tank where I could actually see it. IT was so cloudy and green that I could not even properly see the back panels to affix the filter. I could see almost nothing. The camera actually seems to be seeing more than I could. I put the filter on with the Micron "polishing" insert and shut the lights off for 2 days. The second picture you see with the filter moved to the side pane is the result- A small improvement. I could make out slightly more. I am not saying the filter is useless in this form- not at all. It works well and flows very strong but it was not doing a whole lot for my situation outside moving water and maybe helping incrementally over what I was already using. Then I charged the filter with Diatoms ( put the filter in a bucket of tank water, so it was submerged, and while it was running I scooped in 6 tablespoons of diatom powder / DE. Once the water is clear it is "Charged" with powder. I then put the filter back in the tank and pretended to be a functional member of society for a couple hours. The final picture is the result after less than 3 hours on the tank. Please disregard the dirty smudged glass, I had very little reason to clean the glass in the previous state. The tank is essentially crystal clear. The filter worked exactly as well-... no... BETTER than the old Vortex diatom filter I burned out many years ago. Fantastic! For the money- this is a great tool. And saved me a massive headache of keeping the lights off and continually changing water and so on hoping to turn the green tide.