Pimp My Filter #76 - Biorb Upgrade / Halo 15, 30, 60 and MORE

Hello there and welcome to another edition of Pimp My Filter. In this video we're going to be taking a look at one of my nemeses because when I had a shop we used to sell these things and the filtration was always a proper head doer. It was never good enough and as the Scottish would say, if fair do my heed, it's the bi-orb. Let's just move that off to one side and I'll tell you a little bit of history About myself... My ex-business, these bi-orbs and the folks who took over the production of the bi-orbs. And of course if you just want to skip forward and you're not interested in the next four or five minutes of me slavering on, there's timestamps in the video description and also in the pinned comment. So just use those to skip to whatever part of the video you want. You don't have to listen to this next bit. Okay, so I used to own an aquatic shop called Tyne Valley Aquatics which was based in the Tyne Valley, strangely enough, and I owned that for, I don't know, eight to ten years or something. Now every year the turnover got less and less and less due to competition online and also from the big boys, i.e. Maidenhead Aquatics who were just buying up the aquatic centres in every garden centre and gradually moving north. When we set that up I knew that it was only a matter of time before I had to think of something else so that's why I currently now work online selling filter media to just simply get filters working properly. Filtration is 95% of fish keeping, that's why I concentrate on it so hard and I know I go over things again and again and again in these videos but to me it is It is absolutely important. There's still so many people out there. You know, with often millions of subscribers who haven't got a bloody clue about filtration. It's a very simple concept. It's basically nature. You're trying to replicate what nature does. And all too often you go down the scientific route and it becomes science over nature. And as I've said many times before, when you introduce science into nature, it makes an arse of it. With what we're going to do today, this is all very, very natural. I'm off on a tangent already, and we're only a few minutes into the video. Where was I? Yes, I used to own a shop. And we would get these things in, in various sizes, 15 litre, 30 litre, 60 litre. And then they started doing all sorts of different shapes. These were sold by a company called Reef One, who got taken over by a bigger company called Oase, who we dealt with for many, many years, and had a really good relationship with Oase. When Oase took these over, I was actually very, very excited and I phoned up the head of Oase in the UK and I said, look, I've got an idea to improve the filtration on these. You could make them absolutely awesome. The filtration as it is, as you shall see later, is a massive problem. It's always been a problem. you've taken this company over you can fix this problem and you can really make a difference you can you know make a statement that this is an ultra filtered suitable tank for fish and i said that to him because the way it comes from the manufacturer is really unsuitable for fish as you'll see later so anyway we had a rapport going backwards and forwards i said look we've developed I developed this filter media called Bio Gravel, it's a porous gravel, I developed it for We developed it or should I say myself and Michael kind of came up with the idea of it specifically for these bi-orbs to improve the filtration. We produced something called bio gravel which was a really porous filter media in the shape of a gravel to basically create I'm going to create an under gravel filter for this, which is what we're going to do in this video. I shouldn't use his name because I don't want to embarrass Chris, so I'll just call him Mr. X. So I was speaking to Mr. X from Oase, and it was going backwards and forwards for what seemed like ages. And, you know, he was putting suggestions to the guys in Germany, and I think I was hassling them to some degree. But he came back eventually and said, look, what are the after-sales potential of your system? And I said, well, there isn't really an after-sales potential. This system solves the problems. People fit it, and they can forget about it. Other than going in with a gravel cleaner to clean it, you know? And he said, that's the problem. There's no after-sales potential. So that was it, dead in the water. Anyway, I progressed with making up kits for various size bi-orbs, which I now sell on the FilterPro website. And this isn't a plug, this is just a history lesson. And I also started selling on eBay as well. Well, a couple of years ago, I was sent a message by eBay saying that all of those kits had been taken off because there was a complaint by Oase UK and Mr X had put in a complaint. And I felt so disappointed because he knew that this system that we're going to be showing later in the video was perfectly compatible. And from the time I mentioned it to, to the time that Oase UK got the listings taken down on eBay, I'd sold thousands of them on there. Not one complaint. Perfectly compatible. And that was a big problem for big business. I'm a small business. Big business says no, no, bye-bye, small business. But luckily, I've been selling them on the website. And this is a plug. The link to the FilterPro website is in the video description. And I've got all the filter kits for the bi-orbs on the filter kits page. So no matter what Mr X tells you, the system that I'm about to show you is perfectly compatible for bi-orbs. And it saves you going back to the shop to buy replacement parts every month or two. That's what the big companies want. If you look at all the new filters they want you coming back Week on week, month on month, year on year for the whole lifespan of the tank to buy bits which you simply don't. This system is a one-off hit as far as finances go but moving on from there it's an ex- well I mean it doesn't cost anything moving on from there, it's basically free from there onwards and it's so much better for the fish. Enough of my slaver, let's get this lad out of the box. Oh and before I do I'll just explain why I'm incorporating the smallest of the bi-orbs into this series of videos. That's because I lent my 60 litre bi-orb to Andy from Dramatic Aquatics on YouTube. Andy drilled holes in it and rendered it pretty much useless for me doing videos with. Good work, Andy. Oh, Lord, the thing he made. Was pretty impressive, it looked really nice, it was basically fed from another tank and all that, I don't mind that. The 30 litre bi-orb, I was carrying up some steps to move it from one shed to another, and I slipped, and I fell on top of it, and I thought I would just bounce off it, with it being Perspex, but it actually cracked just like glass, and there was some sharp bits, and one of them went into here, basically it broke the 30 litre bi-orb, So it left me with. The 15 litre bi-orb. I'm just glad when I smashed that 30 litre one that that really pointy bit didn't go up here because I wouldn't be making this video now. I didn't think plastic broke like that, but it does. Anyway, this is all nonsense. Come on, let's just get on with it. Healthy alpha grog. The media that comes in here is basically 25 mil alpha grog. I think it might be 40 mil alpha grog in the bigger ones. I must have misplaced that. Give me, give me a second. I'll have a look through my sheds and I'll try and find it. Okay, so I've looked through all of my sheds and I've actually had to pull these examples of alpha grog out of my filter which has got about 1.2 tons of alpha groggy and I think what I've done when I've got this, I've just tipped the alpha grog into my big filter. So apologies. Hopefully you'll be able to tell really by looking at this that it's absolutely unsuitable as a substrate. Let's have a close look. There you go, it looks pretty much just like a lava rock but it's actually a synthetic sort of lava rock. I think it may be a byproduct from the foundry process or the pottery process or something like that. It's exceptionally cheap. And I think you can still get a 15 kilo bag of this online for under 20 English pounds, which is maybe less than 25 US dollars. Now, Alpha Grog is something that's fallen out of favour with a lot of fish keepers, but I recommend it all the time, just not in the bi-orb. If somebody has a traditional koi filter, which is going to get filthy, I say, don't waste money on really porous stuff, if you've got a media that's sitting in filth, use Alpha Grog, because the vast majority of its surface area is external, so it doesn't mind working in filth, and really, it's cheap as hell, so you can fill big filters with Alpha Grog very, very cheaply. It's a good filter media, and this particular batch of Alpha Grog has got a certain smell There's a nice smell to it. I wouldn't call it foul. I would probably call it organic because this stuff has come from my filter on the pond. There's certainly not enough to fill the bottom of this little bi-orb but it should give you an idea of what comes with this particular tank Hopefully you can see in the bottom of there, yeah. What we've got is a central filter which can be easily removed and normally that would have a pad in here which this one has. Where is he? There he is. and they would recommend you replace that every few months and it would normally have a cartridge which i think this might be part of perhaps which would be full of carbon and various other crap which you don't need so that locks in and that slots down over an air stone which provides the air that's the air stone just down there and that provides the air which comes up through this and then rises up through here and basically just filters the water Or at least that's what it's meant to do and it doesn't do a very good job. And if I flip this upside down you'll see that there's an airline leading away from it. Check valve here to stop any water coming back into an air pump and the air goes in here into the air stone that's in the bottom of the filter and it rises up through this central pipe. Now this central pipe generally doesn't have a cap on so fish can go down there and get stuck so that's one way the fish are going to die in the system. And this particular tank comes with a little air pump and that just connects up as so. You plug it in and it provides the air which drives the filtration. It's going to be difficult to see but our central filtration is in here and around the bottom of there there's little inlets which is where the water is meant to go. But before it gets there it's supposed to pass around this which is the alpha grog which sits all the way around the bottom there. Obviously we haven't got enough. But the whole of the bottom of this would basically be filled with the alpha grog and that is supposed to support the bacteria. But as we know water always finds the easiest route so it tends to just go around it. This ends up doing practically nothing in this system. And that's why this central filter would generally have carbon in and they would tell you to replace it every couple of months because the carbon pulls in smells that are generated from having poor filtration and there's no need to have poor filtration in this little tank. For god's sake it's only 15 litres. If we can't filter this properly it's a bad job. So in order to upgrade this we will now take the central filter out I'll remove the foam from there. That just looks like a normal foam but, you know, for this demonstration we'll take it out. I'll show you what comes in this particular kit that I do for this tank. Chuck that out of the way. And let's get down to making this thing super, super efficient as far as filtration goes. The last thing we want is fish to be dying in here. And die in here they will with the filtration which comes with it. If you don't believe me, just run the standard filtration and you'll find out soon enough. The fish get stuck in the little holes in the bottom of the filter because they can They can swim through this filter media which surrounds it. They cut the faces up and as a result of those wounds you end up with bacterial problems and then fungal problems and of course you think there's something wrong with the fish. There's nothing wrong with the fish, there's a lot wrong with this setup. The way I'm going to do that is to basically take the kit that I sell online and use that to upgrade this tank. Of course there's different amounts of media come with the various kits because the base size dictates how much media we need. In this case it's 1.5 kilos, in the 30 litre version I think it's 2 kilos, and in the 60 litre version of the Orb it's 3.5 kilos that come with this. In the Life and Flow by Orb kits I think that will also be 3.5 kilos because it's got quite Quite a big base. The 15 litre Flow is a very expensive one to upgrade because it's got a big base and it's not very high so it needs a lot of media. That one, I always feel bad about selling the kits for the 15 litre Flow or Life. These ones, it doesn't really cost that much to upgrade. 30 litre doesn't cost that much to upgrade. By the time you get to the 60 litre it needs that 3 kilos or 3.5 kilos of media which does add to the cost. Of course you can use other medias which I'll explain a little bit later on but for the purposes of this video we're going to be using the media that was actually developed for this very tank and that is 1.5 kilos of bio gravel. And this is the grey version, which is the freshwater version, although you can use it in saltwater if you want. We also have a saltwater version which has added trace elements which allows the marine bacteria to set up inside the media exceptionally fast. That one's kind of got like an earthy sort of brownie look to it compared to the grey of the freshwater version. They both Both work exceptionally well. It's made from the same material as the Biohome, so it's essentially just sand of various size particles. And that sand is fused together at the points that it touches by powdered glass, which is really fine stuff. So really, when you go through the process of making this, which isn't easy, you basically end up with an exceptionally porous media. Aerobic bacteria will colonise the outside of it, anaerobic bacteria will colonise the inside of it. And essentially what it's doing is just replicating nature. It's just a miniature deep sand bed. That's all it is. Very simple stuff. And aside from the media we've got an instructions sheet and some templates to enable us to cut the foams to the right size to go in Because those foams are going to be used to create. An under gravel filter. They're gonna be used in the bottom of here to lift the filter media up. So when the water is forced around the bio by the rise in air, it has to come down and then it'll go through all the media, through a coarse pad and then through a medium pad. So it's a properly effective under gravel filter. Really it could be described as an active deep sand bed. Because most deep sand beds are just putting far too much sand in an aquarium and expecting to do something. That can quite often go toxic if left unchecked. And check this. This cannot go toxic because you've got each piece of media being your deep sand bed. There's no chance of any sort of sulphurous compounds or anything like that building up in the media. And that's quite important because I know a lot of people do neglect their tanks. Which is fine, if the filtration is good, you don't need to look at them anywhere near as much as if the filtration is crap. So, this particular kit comes with a medium pad, which is the blue one, and a coarse pad, which is the black one. The kits for the bigger tanks... come with a fine pad as well which would generally go in the central filter. Of course you can add a fine pad in the middle of here but it isn't really needed in this particular setup because the medium pad catches a hell of a lot of fine muck. Okay so the two main templates that we need are for the lower form and for the upper foam. The lower foam goes on the bottom and the upper foam goes on the top. So the lower foam would be cut from our medium density pad and the upper foam is going to be cut from our coarse pad so the water goes coarse to medium so really when you get the kit all you've got to do is just cut around these crudely drawn templates that i provide and you'll end up with something like this lower foam not much difference in the size of those because this tank is very small in the bigger versions the 30 litre 60 litre and a 60 litre. There's quite a marked difference between the lower foam and the upper foam because the tank goes out so much more. Now if it's easier for you, all you need to do is just cut out that template, put it on here and then draw around the outside with a permanent marker and then cut that out with your scissors. And I think that's what I'll do for the purpose of this video because I don't want you to see me making an arse of cutting this out. So if I've got something to follow which is Permanent. It makes it a hell of a lot easier. Nice easy line for me to cut around. And because that needs to slot over that central filter, we need to cut a hole in the middle as well, which is that. So if we just cut that central part out of the template, that will give us the correct size to cut our foam. There you go. And again, we'll just mark around there with the permanent marker. Now don't worry about making an arse of cutting this out because you get enough foam so you get at least two attempts at it. So if you make a balls of the first one you've always got plenty of foam to try it again. That's it. Not perfect but it doesn't have to be. Goes in there and it fits over the central filter like that. Now unfortunately the upper foam is black Which means drawing around here with the permanent marker, which is black. Probably won't do much good, so I'm just going to have to kind of cut around it by holding the template on here. And I find it easier if you just cut a square first. And you see what I mean by having plenty of foam left over? Don't worry about making a balls of it. There you go, so that has been cut into a square. Now really all I've got to do is just take these corners off. And that's pretty simple. If in doubt, go slightly bigger than you need, because it's always easier to trim bits off. And impossible to add bits back on. That's it. Same story with the middle section. Cut that out. Cut your hole in the middle. And then it's ready to go on top of that one. Actually what I should say is. Before this is set. It might pay just to angle it slightly. All around. Because bear in mind this is a sphere. That's square cut. So if you just angle it. Like this. Just by cutting those raised bits off. All the way around. Like so. It'll just allow this bottom foam to sit more flush to the bottom. Yeah, that looks a little bit better. Now if you've got a really sharp knife, you can just run this around and cut out that central section. If not, what you could do, just fold it in half like that, and that enables you to go in with the scissors a lot easier. And if you're in any doubts about your cutting ability, just cut the central hole smaller than you need because it's easier. Just to cut away at the edges to make it the right size. If it's too big it just won't fit properly. While the medium pad, which is in here the blue one, went bumpy bits down to allow the water around the sides of it and into the filter intakes, this one is going to go bumpy bits up. So you've got the maximum surface area being contacted with the water. And when you push that down that's what you should see from the top. So you've got your coarse foam on the top and underneath that you've got your medium foam. And these foams cover all the little slits around the bottom of the filter so you're not going to get any fish stuck inside the slits that lead to the filter and that is another major cause of why fish die in here. They dive into the little slits and they just get stuck and can't get out. So really doing that prevents your fish from getting through the media and into the little slits around the bottom of the filter intake. That is a huge area down the bottom of here where fish die. They simply just swim through that alpha grog into the filter intakes, get stuck and die. We don't want that to happen. Now in all these kits there's a third template Which is that one, which is the cartridge form. For the 15 litre I say just use that, a bit of your medium pad. You don't really need a fine pad in there. If you did choose to use a fine pad, just use, you know, anything, any generic sort of stuff. The bigger kits do come with a fine pad. This smaller one doesn't. So again, we just cut around that more or less correctly. Go bigger than you need. Trim the suit more or less right. And as long as you get a hole in the middle for the central tube, you're all good. Probably to be easier using a knife and fork, but I've got it more or less there. You know, as long as you've got a hole there. Take that central filter out, stick that lad in the bottom. Doesn't really matter which way up it is. Tighten it up, slap him back in. And as I say, in that central filter, you can use a fine pad if you want to. Doesn't really matter. There's very little muck gets through this system into the central part anyway, so it doesn't really matter. Now I'm just using an off-cut of foam just to block that central air tube. And then in here we pour our media, et voila! We have an ultra efficient under gravel filter and to clean this all you need to do once a week is just go in with a gravel cleaner, push your gravel cleaner through the media, it'll depress the foams, it'll release all the muck that's been trapped and remove it from the tank. It's super efficient. Now if you do get the occasional piece of media inside the air tube don't worry about it as long as the air can still get up it'll still draw the water around and down through the media, through the foams and then back up again. It's probably not worth taking one or two bits out of there and I'm only saying that because I inexplicably have got one piece of media inside the air tube, it's not a big deal. And if you're going to be setting this one up for For marine use, just follow the exact same process. I'm going to use the Marine version of the Bio Gravel. It's just that simple. Now I don't think I've got Marine versions of the BiOrb kits currently on the website. It's something I am planning to do, I just haven't done it yet. So if you want one of these kits from the website, just buy it. Send me an email at the same time, say, look, this is for Marine and I will substitute the The ordinary bio-gravel for marine bio-gravel. Now this one is possibly the most over filtered tank that you could ever have because we would normally advise one kilo of the bio gravel or bio home or you know any of the bio home products per 100 liters and this tank is only 15 liters possibly even well it will be less by the time you've added all of that in the bottom of it. So it's probably like 10 times over filtered which will ensure that ammonia is never going to be a problem, nitrite is never going to be a problem and nitrate is never going to be a problem as well because you've got that media which is ridiculously porous and supports a hell of a lot of bacteria. However, I just want to point out that when you do your water changes after you've been in with a gravel cleaner on a weekly basis, just use a conditioner which does not affect the ammonia, nitrite or nitrate. Now most of them are fine, 90% of them are fine, but there is a few which claim to remove, detoxify or bind ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. They will basically starve the bacteria by locking up the food that the bacteria needs. So instead of this being 100% efficient, it might be 40, 50% efficient. To be honest, in a bi-orb with that amount of media, That's probably still okay, but as far as conditioners go, I'll just say go for something like Tetra AquaSafe, API Stress Coat, something that doesn't mess about with the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. Going right back to the start of this video, you will remember that I said, as soon as you introduce science into nature, it makes an arse of it. And that's exactly what those Few conditioners with all those binding agents in do, they make an arse of the filtration, so you're unlikely to get a full cycle, which is zero ammonia, zero nitrite, and very very low, possibly zero nitrate, when you're using those conditioners with the binding agents. And that's true whether you're using them in a bi-orb, or whether you're using them in a normal tank, or in a pond, or whatever. Just let nature do its work. This is the most natural thing you could possibly create for your fish living in this ball of death. It's now a ball of life There you go. It doesn't get more simple than that. And the amount of bio gravel that you need is dictated by the base size, so this one is 1.5 kilos and as you can see it's covered it to a decent depth and there's our one piece in the central shaft but don't worry about that. If you ever need to change a fine pad you just scrape that out of the way all the way around, lift this out, change it and put it back. Now if you didn't want to use the bio gravel you could use small pumice that's More kind of suitable for marine use or if you've got live bearers in here because pumice would tend to raise the pH and really mineralize the water. You could just use ordinary aquarium gravel if you wanted. You could use volcanic soil. Maybe it's the two to four millimeter version of volcanic soil. It comes in a... It's a five kilo bag, I think, and it might only be 15 or 16 English pounds. It's not much. It's basically small balls which are spat out by a volcano and it's classed as volcanic soil. You will see sellers online selling it as ceramic filter media, but it's basically just volcanic soil. You know, they're trying to say it's something it isn't. Now the volcanic soil and the ordinary aquarium gravel. I really only support bacteria on the external surfaces because it hasn't got an accessible internal part but that'll be okay for the ammonia and nitrite it'll still be really healthy in there but you might get elevated nitrate levels. If you use pumice it will raise the pH but some pumice is quite porous so that will support anaerobic activity to reduce the nitrate to some degree. You could use crushed lava rock. The red stuff is pretty good. Again, most of the internal structure is inaccessible, but it does work, certainly for the ammonia and nitrite. What else could you use in there? Oh, you could use the Eheim Substrat Pro. That's a pretty decent media. It would probably take two litres of it, maybe, to do the bottom of this particular tank but that's as close as you'll get to the bio gravel as i've mentioned before the bio gravel was created specifically for this tank but the substrat pro is a good second choice i'll put links to all this stuff in the video description if i remember now with regard to other people online doing kits for these you can get little foams which Which are about that big, which go around the central filter. They're okay, I think. Might be five or six English pounds, very very cheap, but when you use those you have to use a hell of a lot more gravel to fill this thing because what I've done here is spread the foams out to meet the sides and unfortunately everything else available online is very very small so you just end up using loads more media you know. So really, as far as I'm concerned, that's the way to go. The only thing I would suggest is that on the top of the air tube, you get a little cap. There's a cap that goes on, and it's just got little slits in it that lets all the air out, but it prevents the fish from going in. Now, I don't know why that tiny little cap isn't supplied as standard with this tank or any of the bi-orbs, but it isn't. It is available as an extra. There's so much more that Oase could have done with this to make it good and prevent the deaths of literally millions of fish worldwide. Because these things, with the filtration, how they're set up, has caused the deaths of millions of fish worldwide. And that's not, you know, alarmist or some sort of fake news or something. That's an absolute fact. These things, as they come set up, Milk are balls of death. It is a ball of life. You will not get any problems with this method. Trust me. The thousands of people who have bought these kits will not be wrong. Thanks for watching. I shall see you in the next video.