The filter that Autopot supplies is better than nothing, I can give them that much. But in my opinion it suffers from two serious limitations. First it is so small that its capacity is negligible. If for any reason there is stuff in your reservoir, it can plug with not much junk. Second, the filtration it accomplishes is coarse, and it will let too much smaller diameter stuff into your lines, and that could accumulate in the lines or the valves and cause mischief. All opinion on my part, but I can tell you that my setup sorted a long grow with zero issues with the autopot system, and my reservoir was full of junk the whole time because I was using stream and lake water with significant amounts of organic debris in it.
There are lots of ways to skin this cat, I have used two. Last winter, with my ~10 gallon reservoir, I wedged a common pleated filter element over the reservoir outlet as shown in these photos:
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Note that by wedging the way that I did, the only way water can get out of the reservoir is to go through the filter first. Both ends of the common filter elements are open, so the far end from the outlet needs to be sealed one way or another in order for this to work. I had the fairly dense white foam I used sitting around (bit of a diy pack rat, I admit), but if you need foam, one of the pool noodles would work fine if you cut it to the lengths needed.
In my garden this summer, I used a 45 gallon reservoir which is a lot wider than the 10 gallon one, so rather than wedging the element like the setup in the pics, I adapted the filter element so it would screw into the bulkhead fitting I used to install a tap on the barrel. The filter element is still on the inside of the barrel, just mounted with a pipe thread, not wedged. I don't have pics of that setup, but you get the idea.
You could also just buy the entire filter housing sold for this sort of filter and install in on your line, but if you do that, install it downstream from your reservoir tap/valve so that you can maintain it if needed without draining the reservoir. Unlikely that you will need to do anything with it though, its capacity is far larger than any likely loading unless you are fooling around with some really nasty organic stuff. And it will not let anything that is not dissolved or seriously tiny into your lines or valves.
Just my take on it, but it works well for me. Good luck with your grow, I expect you will like the autopot system if you give it a try.
