I have a question for averyone. (I am pretty sure I know the answer) Do you need to use the AquaMira tablets in conjunction with the new Frontier Pro as illustrated in the video clip by Jason Klass on BPL's website?
Anybody have any thoughts?

You do if you want to kill off viruses and bacteria. They go right through the Frontier Pro - it only stops protozoa (giardia, crypto, etc).

The thing is that tablets take a long time to kill the protozoa. So in the end, the Frontier Pro is about being able to drink your water in 15 minutes regardless of water temp vs. 30 minutes for room temp water and up to 4 hours for really cold water when using only tablets. The filter will also make your water taste better, and will filter out silt and organic matter.

(you can also use the drops, or even some household bleach - I'm sure Ben will chime in on that one)

Edited by mn-backpacker on 04/04/2009 08:30:52 MDT.

And right on cue...

The AM Frontier Pro in and of itself is nothing but a toy. I would never use it alone. Why? Because its 3.0-micron filter pore size is a whopping 10 to 15 times bigger than the pore size of quality filters made by MSR, Katadyn, etc. The 3.0 micron pore size is also bigger than many bacteria!

What's the use of a filter that can only filter out the big stuff (protozoa) but not bacteria? You can be sure that any pool of water "rich enough" to support complex organisms like multi-cell protozoa (crypto, giardia, etc.) will by definition be more than rich enough to support single cell bacteria. So if your water is biologically suspect -- then the Frontier Pro is useless. Period.

But you can save some weight and carry the much smaller and lighter Frontier Pro by pairing it with chemicals -- like household bleach (or the unecessarily expensive chlorine dioxide tablets). Let the chemicals kill the tiny stuff (bacteria, virus) and let the simple Frontier Pro filter block out the bigger stuff.

Edited by ben2world on 04/04/2009 17:36:44 MDT.