The Sicce Whale 500 will hold 3.5kg of Biohome Ultimate which makes it suitable for a normally stocked tropical tank of up to 350 litres / 95 US gallons or a heavily stocked tank of up to 175 litres / 46 US gallons. At the time of making this video the Amazon UK price was mad but those prices tend to fluctuate so it would be worth checking out both the Amazon and Ebay links and seeing which one is currently cheapest if you're interested in buying one. This is a really well made filter with sleek design, good flow rate (1300 lph / 342 US gph) and a decent capacity for media - definitely one to consider.
A full cycle is completed by bacteria - the aerobic part of biological filtration which processes ammonia to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate followed by an anaerobic part which processes nitrate into soluble nitrogen which bubbles off to the atmosphere. Therefore it requires a suitable amount of excellent quality filter media to be able to provide the environment for both aerobic AND anaerobic bacteria - that is what Biohome ultimate does perfectly but even with such good media there are limitations and we recommend the following amounts for different stocking scenarios: (1 US Gallon = 3.8 litres) (1kg = 2.2 lbs) Average community tropical aquarium = 1kg per 100 litres Average coldwater aquarium = 1kg - 1.5kg per 100 litres Predator aquarium = 1.5kg - 2kg per 100 litres Large cichlid aquarium = 1.5kg - 2kg per 100 litres Malawi / Tanganyikan aquarium = 1.5kg - 2kg per 100 litres Marine aquarium = 1.5kg - 2kg per 100 litres Average mixed fish pond = 1kg per 200 litres Average koi pond = 1kg per 150 litres
You may be disagreeing with the above figures but remember that they are for a FULL CYCLE not half a job - achieving 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite is quite easy since aerobic bacteria grows freely on any surface but the anaerobic bacteria responsible for COMPLETING the cycle needs more a specialized habitat. Remember to use a water conditioner which does not bind / detoxify ammonia, nitrite or nitrate as that type of conditioner will severely limit bacteria numbers by starving the bacteria of 'food'. Size a filter properly, set it up sensibly and you will have perfect water - it's that simple....and your filter won't be the dreaded 'Nitrate factory'.....you'll spend less money on treatments too......basically the filter is the foundation of a successful aquarium.
This series of videos is all about trying to squeeze more efficiency out of internal and external aquarium filters which generally have a limited filtering capacity - If you have a filter you'd like me to feature in a video then please contact me on: [email protected] 07772848730 (Richard) Anyone who sends a filter (UK only at present) will have it upgraded and returned to them for free and the only cost you will pay is how much it costs to ship it to me - I'm helping to boost your filter and the resulting videos will hopefully be useful to viewers all over the world so it's a win/win.
This channel is purely a hobby for me so I will never ask viewers to donate money for any of my projects or charge anyone for information - information should be shared freely and I certainly don't consider myself an 'expert' in anything I pursue as a hobby so please do your own research, never accept anything as 'fact', reject anyone claiming to be some sort of authority or 'expert' and make your own minds up about anything you wish to study.
Some of the links above may be to my affiliate programs on Amazon and Ebay so they will throw a few pennies my way if you make a purchase - it costs you nothing extra and helps towards keeping the lights on in my bunker.
Hello there welcome back to another edition of Pimp My Filter
and in this video we're going to be
taking a look at an Italian canister filter
and this lad is the CK Whale 500. This is the biggest
version in this particular range
and it's actually a lot smaller than I thought it would be.
I think it's maybe just because it's called Whale.
I expected them to be like really big filters.
It's quite a slimline, stylish sort of a thing.
It's not exactly the monster I thought it would be.
Big thank you to Ross, who sent this for me.
And I'll give you a few facts and figures
before I pull this to bits
and show you how it comes set up.
Although there is...
Most of the guts missing and I'll
also go into how I would set it up and show you how much media
fits in and explain a little bit about the media and so on.
You're entirely free to set it up how
you want but I always try
and set these filters up to provide a full cycle. That's a processing
of ammonia, nitrite and nitrate.
Here's the facts and figures from the manufacturer.
The CK Whale 500 is suitable for tanks between 300 litres
and 500 litres and in America speak
that is 80 litres to... no it's not 80 litres...
80 gallons to 135 US gallons. Sorry it's been
a while since I've done one of these videos.
Yeah, we use litres, you use gallons.
The entire volume of this thing is 8.5 litres,
or 2.25 US gallons, and the actual part that holds
the filter media and the foams is 7 litres,
or, where is it at Imperial? 2 US gallons.
So, flow rate is 1300 litres per hour, which is pretty good.
And the U.S. equivalent of that is 390 U.S. gallons per hour.
Anything else?
Oh, yes.
The power consumption is 18 watts.
And that's the same whether you're in the U.K. or America.
Okay, hopefully you'll be able to see that.
That is an illustration on the back of the box.
That's the bottom of the filter.
That's the top of the filter.
So the water comes down through a tube or through an opening
to the bottom of the...
canister and then rises up through the trays
so it's a simple bottom up filter now normally this
would come with two foams one is 20 ppi one is 10 ppi
and then you've got some filter media
more filter media which i think
that middle one would actually be some sort of alpha grog
it says lightweight ceramic but it looks very much like alpha grog
and then you've got another 20 ppi foam
and then you've got some ceramic rings
Unfortunately everything from here up over
is missing out of this filter but I just thought
I'd tell you what would normally be the setup.
Now because the filters in this series belong to
other people I don't fill them up
and run them generally unless it's like a little internal thing
or something that I can quickly clean out
so it's good that Ross has written in the covering letter
that he put in that he did run the filter for a few days
and it is impressively quiet more so than
More than my 407.
And size-wise, this is more or less the same as the 407,
so this offers you a different option
to the 407, but does it hold more media than the 407?
The Fluval 407 holds just under three kilos
of media, which isn't really much considering how tall that 407 is,
you know, I mean it's
pretty much equivalent to that,
just not sure on its actual filtering capabilities.
Right, well, we'll take a look at that now.
So on the top here we've got the normal in and out pipes
and we've got the release here to take
that off for when you remove this to clean it.
That's pretty standard. If you notice there's no
priming button or plunger or anything on the top of here
and that's because it primes itself by
drawing water out of the tank.
There is a fitting on the shepherd's crook thing that goes into the
tank. Unfortunately I don't have that.
You can look that up in the links that I'll put in the
In the video description.
Now, like most canister filters it's got four clasps.
Instead of operating from the bottom,
you know, like most clasps do,
in fact like pretty much all clasps do on canister filters,
this operates from the top and it's exceptionally easy to release it.
There you go. That is a very
convenient way to get in and out of this filter. So easy to operate.
And the fittings actually feel very good as well.
Try and get a close-up on that.
They're very thick, very well-made.
That's well-made.
This is well-made as well.
It's going to be really easy to keep clean
because it's so smooth and sleek.
I love the design of this filter.
Okay, let's take a look in here.
But before we do, I'll just show you that.
That's where the water's drawn out by the pump.
And what I really love about that is it's got slits on there.
That prevents any of the filter media being drawn up.
Therefore there's no need for a plate on the top of here like a grid.
That is a really simple
solution and to be honest the Italians normally come up
with solutions that are way more complicated
than they need to be but that is so simple.
I absolutely love it. However when it comes to
the way that the water feeds in and down
to the bottom of the tank it actually comes out
the side of the pump head here and I'll show you where that goes now.
It's really strange.
So the water comes down from the side of the pump head
and it actually goes down here and it can
swirl all the way around the outside of these trays
and incidentally these trays fit together
exceptionally well and obviously you can see what I've filled it with.
So I'll just get those out
and then I'll explain what the water goes through
before it gets to the pump and spat back to the tank.
That's the bottom of our canister.
As you can see there's nothing fancy in the bottom of there
and really there's probably not enough space to put any sort of like
old ceramic rings or anything in there it's pretty much unnecessary
and you're going to have very little space to do so if you did want
to put something in there I would suggest the old style Eheim mech
that's probably the only thing that's going to fit in there
because of the size they're very small ceramic rings that'll help
to catch a lot of the heavy muck that comes in from your tank.
So water starts, so water goes down to the bottom of there
and then rises up through the trays.
And this is the only thing that actually came
with this filter from Ross.
That is your 10 PPI foam and that is your 20 PPI foam.
See if I can get a close up on there so you can see
that that one would be kind of described as coarse,
that one would be described as medium.
And because the fit in there so well, right up to the top,
I'm not going to put a fine pad in here
because by the time the water gets through both these thick pads,
I would say the vast majority of the fine muck will get caught in here.
If it doesn't, it'll go through the filter
and get caught second time round.
No problem having big, thick foams.
And kind of dispensing with the fine pad,
you know, as long as you've got nice thick foams.
And that's a pretty deep tray.
It's approximately 2.5 inches
or what's the usable space in there?
Maybe 65 millimetres.
So that's our bottom tray.
Then we've got three trays of media.
In this case, I've used the Biohome Ultimate
because we're aiming for a full cycle.
And each one of these trays will take over a kilo.
So because we've got one, two,
three trays of media in total it gets approximately 3.5 kilos
and I didn't write down what that was in pounds
so I'll put that along the bottom of the screen
for you guys in the US now. Stack that on there okay
so there you can see the you know makeshift
tube thing that the vast majority of the water goes down
to get to the bottom of the tank.
It's a pretty simple idea,
and really because it's all moulded into the design of this thing,
there's nothing there to break.
I quite like that idea.
It's something I've never seen before, but I like it.
And if anybody in the UK is familiar
with Martin from Holmes Under the Hammer,
that's exactly what he would say as well.
It's very unusual, but I like it.
Also, another point of interest is...
In there, we've got a guide that goes all the way down.
It's like a little plastic fin that goes all the way down there.
That goes just inside of here.
So it acts as a guide to get these trays down nicely.
And it also allows you to see exactly
which way around these trays need to go.
So there's no messing about with it, you know.
They can only go in one way, basically.
Foams. I nearly put it
in the wrong way.
Media, media,
media.
As you can see, the lip on the top.
It's pretty big,
and when you put the tray on top of there,
like so, it creates a really good seal
all the way around here.
That will prevent bypass, so all the water going down
to the bottom is gonna come back up through the trays.
Unfortunately, the sides of this are opaque,
so you can't tell if it's fitting in perfectly,
but if it isn't fitting in perfectly,
you can't get
the top on.
Good.
These are some of the strongest clips
that I've seen on a canister filter
and really there's nothing here to break or go wrong.
I like this one. Right then, a few facts and figures
based on how we've set it up
and my perspective of what size tank this would be suitable for.
So it's got roughly 3.5 kilograms of BioHome Ultimate in there
and for a normally stock tank
we would say one kilo or 2.2 pounds per 100 liters or 26 US gallons.
So 3.5 kilos of media would make
this suitable if you were looking for a full cycle
for a tank of roughly 350 liters or around 92 US gallons.
That's for a normally stocked tank,
like a normally stocked tropical tank.
If you had a heavily stocked tank, so say you had cichlids, discus,
predatory fish, or a marine tank,
so that would kind of halve those figures.
So for the UK audience, 350 divided by two,
I should know that, but it's 175 litres. So for
a heavily stocked tank, I would recommend
that you would get one of these for a tank up to 175 litres
That's
46 US Gallons. That's still pretty good.
It does hold more than the equivalent filter,
all
the nearest one to this, which would be the Fluval 407.
I've
So you've got a real choice there.
I don't think either of them come with spray bars
got
but they do come with all the other fittings.
They're roughly the same size.
to
I think they're roughly the same running costs as well and more
say.
or less the same turnover output as far as the litres per hour go,
or gallons per hour.
The price of these varies quite a lot
because they're not a widely available filter and normally
the first place I go to to put a link for you guys is Amazon
but on Amazon UK they were actually
pretty expensive. I'll still put the link
because the prices do go up and down on there but the
cheapest place I think in the UK I found them was on eBay
so I'll put the link there. I think at the
At the time of making this video, the 500 was roundabout
120 English pounds, which to me is a pretty good buy,
especially considering how well-made this
thing is. I do really like this one, as you can tell.
Yeah, so as far as form, function, how much
media it holds, and according to Ross,
the fact that it's very quiet, this is one that I would
recommend. But if you are running one of these,
or have previously run one of these on your tank,
Please, by all means, put how you found it in the comments section.
That helps other people immensely, because obviously I can't ruin all
these filters and, you know, give you detailed information about them.
The people who can are the people who've ran them,
and that's why that comment section below the video is so important.
So please, if you've used one of these,
put your report down there and just interact with people, you know.
I love it when people help each other,
because I can't monitor the comments I've got.
A thousand and something videos
and there's comments on a lot of them coming in every day.
I just cannot keep up.
However, if you do want to get in touch with me,
my phone number is in the video description
and also in the pinned comment, as well as my email address.
If you're in the UK, please phone me because I get a nation of emails.
Don't text. I don't use text at all.
The less I look at my phone, the better.
It's literally for answering phone calls and downloading podcasts.
Lost.
It's not exactly a multimedia device, this thing.
It's a weapon of mass distraction,
so the less I look at it, the better.
But, however, I take phone calls all the time,
so that's not a problem, you know.
If you've got a filter that you want me to take a look at,
please go back through the series just
to check that I haven't done it already
and, by all means, get in touch with me.
The media that goes in is at my own cost
and the return shipping back to you, obviously within the UK.
So, check with me first,
if there's something
I haven't done,
let me know in the comments.
I will take a look at it and upgrade it for you, no problem.
Thanks for watching, check out
the video description or the pinned comment,
that does have a lot of extra information
and the important links in there as well.
If you want further information there's a link to the Filter Pro site
where you can get the the media and foams and so on.
There's also a Q&A page on there as well which answers a lot
of questions which I get asked on a daily basis by people
who've watched the videos but haven't noticed the Q&A page.
Honestly that'll answer 95% of the common questions that I get asked
so check that out and save yourself some time
because I can't always get to emails quickly.
Thanks for watching, see you next time.
