In this work, we report on the filtering of threading dislocations in epitaxial growth of thin Ge layers on Si(001) substrates using carbon delta layers. It has been observed that certain epitaxial conditions can enforce the bending of threading dislocations at the carbon layers. Part of the dislocations form closed loops in the bottom layers resulting in defect-reduced top layers. This approach enables the fabrication of thin dislocation-reduced Ge layers on Si(001).