Aquamira Frontier Pro Water Filter – Recommend?

Jeremy –

Re: "One other thing: When you use a 20 oz soda bottle as your water bottle like I typically do, sucking the water through causes it to collapse due to the pressure and then you have to briefly loosen it to make the bottle reshape. This does not occur with soft side bottles like platys."

Thanks! I got focused on the purification part for a while. Your comment just saved me tons of disappointment and aggravation in the fiddle-factor department. After reading from other threads, I had decided to go the soda bottle route. Now thinking I'll use Platy. (hope it'll fit…it's not as convenient shape as a round soda bottle..have to run to store & check one out!)

To all respondents:

Thanks so much for your knowledge and insights. Your generosity in freely sharing from your hard-earned experience is much appreciated by this noobie!

Kent

> the heavy tannins in the Northern MN water supposedly clogged his Frontier Pro in a matter of days

That black water up there will definitely be a torture test.

I envy your hike. I lived up there (Twin Cities) in another life.
Don't know the Superior Trail at all, but have been to the BWCA.

Enjoy!

I will be using the AquaMira Frontier Pro and Polar Pure together. I suppose I could lighten my weight by using a bottle of Tincture of Iodine 2% but I just like how long a bottle of Polar Pure lasts. Which is almost forever.

When I am getting water from a spring I will probably just use the Frontier Pro but if I get water anywhere else I will treat it with Polar Pure first.

"When I am getting water from a spring I will probably just use the Frontier Pro but if I get water anywhere else I will treat it with Polar Pure first."

Not a water expert at all… but I wonder about your statement above. Thinking out loud… any water 'rich enough' to support large, multi-cell protozoa should by definition be more than rich enough to support smaller, simpler bacteria as well. In other words, if your water is biologically questionable at all — then bacteria will be the foremost factor — followed sometimes by protozoa.

If true, then a simple filter like Frontier Pro that is not sufficiently effective against bacteria may just be a false sense of security — for the times when security is needed???

Chris:

As mentioned, I find the website confusing. They seem to show different filters — one of them looks just like the Seychelle, but then there is also a different one shown. Who knows?

Thanks, Ben! I also have been considering just drinking through the filter bite valve. Sometimes, though, it's nice to have a supply of filtered water in camp. As I mentioned, I'm still doing experiments over the bathtub so am still working on a routine.

The ULA Amigo Pro gravity filter is about twice as fast as your reported speed for the Aquamira filter, so it's no wonder the latter seems slow. For one person, though, this isn't critical.

Mary:

Although it doesn't treat viruses, the ULA Amigo Pro can do pretty much everything else and it is a much better filter than the "toy like" Frontier Pro. I just wish the Amigo Pro had connectors at both ends so it could be used as an inline filter as well — similar to the old (previous) model ULA Amigo. But alas, no….

I use the Frontier as an inline-filter with my hydration system (Platypus Bigzip 3l). Because the hose of the bladder tends to slip off the Frontier Pro, I secured it with cable fixer on the inlet and Duck Tape on the outlet. Now I can quickly fill the bladder with a scooper and a coffee-filter, throw in some Micropur tablets and go on – after 15 minutes I can start drinking from my bladders normal bite valve. For friends or for cooking, I can detach the bladders bite valve and use it as gravity filter in just a few seconds. I think this is the perfect system.

These are pretty good and straight from aquamira….

http://aquamira.com/a_word_about_filter_ratings.pdf

http://aquamira.com/consumer/aquamira-water-treatment-drops/BPL_2_Efficacy-of-Water.pdf