Canister Filters, Booster Filters and Chemical Filtration 101

Hello there, in this video we're going to be taking a look at a few things including a typical canister filter and the setup for that, a couple of different sizes of booster filters and where they can go with relation to the inlet or possibly the outlet on the canister filter, and also we're going to be talking a little bit about chemical filtration and where it goes in the system as well, as well as touching on chemicals that can enhance the biological system and chemicals that can hold it back. Okay so on the top of most canister filters we've got an in pipe which draws water from the tank that then goes through the filter and then we've got an out pipe so we've got an in and an out on the top. Obviously you need the pipes that go into your tank attached to the right ones that isn't difficult to work out we'll not be covering that. But the flow of water through the filter is important to know. So the water comes in, it then goes down a tube that you'll see in a moment that's formed by the holes in the trays. Down to the bottom, swirls around here, rises up through the trays and back out to the tank. And because we know the direction of the water flow, we can get the foams and the media in the right place. So I'll bring the camera in and I'll show you how I've got this one set up and hopefully it should make sense to you. So we'll get the top off, and I'll show you where the water goes. So it comes from your tank into here, and it comes out here. Then goes down this pipe, which could have a UV in it if this was a UV version. This one hasn't got a UV in it. Some of them have UVs, so the water would go through the UV first, right down to the bottom, and up through the trays. So in the bottom, I've just chucked a few of the plastic balls that came with this filter, just to settle out any heavy muck. Heavy ceramic tubes are good to put in there, just pack the bottom out if you've got space under your tray and that'll just help to settle heavy muck out before it comes up and hits the bottom of your bottom tray. And in here, coarse foam, medium foam, fine pad. That fits in there absolutely beautifully actually because this is the pad that came with the filter. So that's the mechanical The mechanical side of things done down the bottom there. Because this works bottom to top, all the muck is held in the bottom, which helps to keep the trays above that nice and clean. So in this particular version of the filter, which is the All Pond Solutions EF2000, also known as the SunSun 304, it'll take approximately 5 kilos of media. Roughly 1.7 kilos in each tray. That's biological media, biological media. And more biological media that is going to do a hell of a good job to support bacteria which will consume the ammonia nitrite and nitrate and to complement this biological media you might want to chuck some gel balls in. These are the things that I give away with all of the freshwater versions of the Bio Home media and that is Pure Pond from Evolution Aqua. Yes it is sold as a pond additive. But it's got fresh water bacteria and it's the cheapest way to make sure that your bacteria gets put exactly where it needs to go. You basically just scatter these balls in. They dissolve over a matter of weeks or months depending on how good your water is. And the gel nourishes the bacteria. The bacteria goes into all of your media and it matures it very naturally and effectively. However, you may notice that I've left a little bit of room in here. Isn't exactly packed out. That's because I've left room for carbon or some sort of pad Which will act as a chemical media now chemical media is something that I generally don't show in the videos But it can be useful Now if for example you wanted to set a new tank up very quickly You would probably want to take advantage of the little bit of space left in here for some chemical media that could include carbon Stick a few carbon bags in there, that'll help to draw in any colour from bog wood if you're setting up like a new Amazon tank or something, but it will also draw in plant food, so you might not want to use carbon if you've got a planted tank, just see how it goes. It's very useful for drawing in residual treatments and colour from bog wood. But if you're setting a new tank up, there may be times when you want to, for whatever reason, stock it quite heavily, more or less from day one, or shortly after setting the filter up, and you can get products to help that as well. Now other resins and other pouches are available, but this one from RP Aquatics is ammonia block. You'll find this as well as the filter media, the balls and everything on the FilterPro site. But this one is basically a resin which draws in and locks away the ammonia. So basically if the fish in your tank are producing more ammonia than your early stage filter can cope with, if you drop one of these in the top, It'll still give whatever bacteria is living before that first chance at all of the ammonia that's being generated in the tank. So that is going to mature quite nicely with bacteria. Any excess ammonia that gets past all of that is going to be drawn in by the pad. And you would use one of these pads for every 150 litres, now obviously you would take this out of the plastic first, but say for example that you had a 300 litre tank and you wanted the ammonia to be drawn in from that, while at the same time giving your filter the chance to mature. You drop one pad in there, one pad in there, slap the top on and the filter's good to go. You shouldn't Don't get any ammonia readings, that should draw it all in. Now I hope that makes sense and I'll just do it the other way as well so obviously we're working bottom to top in this scenario. If you have it down here in a bottom to top sort of scenario it's going to draw in far too much ammonia and therefore starve the bacteria in here and that's actually going to delay the setup of this. It won't enhance it, it will delay it. So you need to know which direction your filter works and where therefore your chemical filtration goes. That is super important. Now this particular one as I said is good when you're setting the filter up and you want to stock the tank very quickly whilst at the same time allowing your filter to mature. It's also very good if you're going on holiday as well because we all know what it's like when people feed the fish. They tend to feed them far too heavily and you come back and some of them have died. It's a total nightmare. This just prevents that from happening. So you stick a couple of these lads in and it'll ensure that the ammonia never gets out of control even if the fish do get overfed. Just a quick word on this one as well, RP also do a nitrate remover as well. Again, in a bottom to top system, that would go in the top, so that would be last, therefore your bacteria that lives down here will get first shot at all of the nitrate that's been produced in here. It's super important to have these in the right place. Now I would kind of hope that viewers would be able to run that backwards through their mind, but for the heart of understanding, We'll just assume that this filter works top to bottom. It doesn't, but let's just assume it does. So in that scenario, we could still keep all that stuff in the bottom. It wouldn't really matter. If there was space down there for extra rings or balls or something, just leave them in, you know. So in a top-down type of scenario, we would have our mechanical on the top going all the way through our biological. To our chemicals. So the chemical media would go on the very bottom of the bottom tray and you just cover that with media. It's not lying flat there, but it's pretty important to have these things lying flat so that the water goes through them. You wouldn't just bunch them up because the water wouldn't flow through them. So your chemical pads in there covered with media in the bottom tray. Remember we're going top to bottom. I do feel as if I've got to keep reminding you just in case people are flicking through. And if it was a top down scenario, we would change the layout of this mechanical filtration. And that's so we would have the fine pad on the bottom. This isn't gonna work, cause I've cut it the other way to work from the bottom up. But you would generally try if you had bumpy foams to face those towards the water flow. So ideally you want those facing up if the water's coming from the top down. It's not going to fit in, so I'll just put it the flat side up. You know, as I say, it doesn't want to be flat side up. It wants to be bumpy side up if the water's coming from the top down. So bear with me while I do that. There you go. So in this scenario, the water comes in from your tank, hits the coarse pad first, then the medium, then the fine. That's the correct order. Straight after that, it's into the biological media, and after that, it's into the chemical media, and then it's back to the tank. Basically, it's exactly the same setup as we showed before, but it's in reverse, because in this scenario, the water is flowing a different way through the filter. It's as simple as that. And this setup still allows the biological side of things to set up just as it would normally, but it also accounts for excess ammonia that might be coming if your fish are being fed too heavily. when you're on holiday or you're setting up a new tank and it's a little bit overstocked now there's enough pads in here for roughly 350 liters although it says each one will do up to 150 by the time you get to the bigger tanks and bigger filters and so on you want to err on the side of caution so there is three pads in each one of these that'll cover you for up to 350 liters If in doubt you could add some more and it's not the sort of thing that you would have in your filter all the time. Now although these will work for about eight weeks per pad you don't need them in beyond that or at least you shouldn't need them in beyond that especially the ammonia one. You know if you're on holiday chuck one of those in providing the water is okay when you get back You can throw it away, that's it, job's done. You know, it's there as a buffer in case anything goes wrong. And likewise, with the ammonia one, when you're setting the new tank up, it's there for when you want to ensure that all the stock that you're putting in isn't gonna be generating more ammonia than the filter can cope with. Eventually, when the filter's mature, it will cope with as much ammonia as can get thrown with it. But if you want that extra little bit of a buffer, that's the stuff to use. Use it for eight weeks or so, take it out, and by then your filter should be more than mature with the aerobic side of things, so ammonia won't be a problem. You should be able to get full stock in pretty quick. And really, again, the nitrate one wouldn't be in all the time. You know, if you've got a filter that's properly set up and is a suitable size for the size of the tank and the stock that you've got in there, there should be enough anaerobic bacteria in here, happy and Staying healthy to consume the nitrate and give you a full cycle. This is really just there as a buffer again just when you're maturing the filter or for whatever reason you're swapping the filter media out for new media you might just want either of these in as a buffer just so you can change more media in one go and get the filter upgraded faster. So in opposition to what a lot of people think about me I am actually a fan of some specific chemical media i.e. carbon. It's cheap, it's effective, it doesn't have any effect on the bacteria and it's good for removing staining from the water and residual fish treatments, that sort of thing. That's good. Ammonia block, as we mentioned, in the right situation. Perfect. Same with the nitrate remover. That's pretty much all you should be considering. Some additives that you put in the tank can be really, really beneficial for the biological side of things, which ultimately is the most important part of any filter system. Now I showed you those before, they're the gel balls. Absolutely excellent because it takes weeks or months to dissolve the seed, the filter media very very efficiently and effectively and really I don't think you can get better than those so that's what I would recommend in the way of bacteria to put in. Once the filters mature with bacteria you don't need any more so it's not the sort of thing where you need like a big two litre tub of them for an aquarium you know, you just need a few, just chuck them in and let them do their thing and then forget about them, don't add any more. Now, there is also plant foods that will enhance the biological side of the bacteria as well. Now, an excellent one that I get good reports from people back about is the Flourish XL from Seachem. The XL version of Flourish has got liquid carbon in, and that really does seem to stimulate the bacteria, especially the anaerobic bacteria, instead of the full cycle, which is the process of ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. Taking five to six months to set up in a good size filter using good media, that can be done in about a month. So that really does help. The trace elements in there and the liquid carbon seem to do a hell of a job with the bacteria. The treatment just really does seem to give the bacteria a good boost. It gives it a good hard kick up the arse to get going. However, there is a few treatments which I would never recommend and I won't mention them by name. I'll just give a vague outline of what they are. So firstly, conditioners, water conditioners, there's a nation of them out there, the majority of which are pretty much the same, they're just manufactured by different companies and marketed under different names. Basically all you want to be looking for is something that makes the water safe for life, so something that neutralises the heavy metals and takes out the chlorine and chloramines, of which I would normally recommend API Stress Coat, but I mean Tetra Aqua Safe, there's loads, loads of types. It simply makes the water safe for life, and that also includes the bacteria. It doesn't mess with any of the bacteria's food, which is the ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate, but some conditioners do. Now, whenever I'm talking negatively about a product, I don't like to mention it by name, but there is a few out there which... Condition the water very, very well. They do what they say, but they also bind the ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. And that has a devastating effect on the bacteria that you're trying to set up in this filter because it basically starves it. It locks up the food that the bacteria needs. So it puts it on a starvation diet. Instead of this being populated absolutely everywhere with bacteria, it might be, I don't know, reduced to 40, 50%. So you could have a nice big filter like this on an average-sized tank, and it might be taking ages to set up with the bacteria, and you'd be thinking, why is it taking so long? Really, it should only take two to three weeks to set up with the aerobic bacteria, which will consume the ammonia and nitrite. That is when you're using good media anyway, it takes a lot longer on plastic media, and it should only take five to six months to set up with the anaerobic bacteria which will process the nitrate. Obviously we mentioned a way to speed that up, you might want to give that a go. If you're starving the bacteria, that first part of your cycle could commonly take between seven to seven to eight weeks. And if you look on forums where people are struggling to set up a filter with the bacteria in like a fishless cycle, for example, they're commonly saying that they're still struggling to get ammonia and nitrite down to zero after seven or eight weeks. And that's just absolutely ridiculous. That basically just tells you that the bacteria hasn't populated the filter enough to cope with whatever ammonia you're adding into the tank. That is down to the conditioner. Not every time. But a lot of the times, if you look at which one they're using, if you look at those posts as to which conditioner they're using when they're struggling, again, I nearly mentioned it, but there is a very popular one that does starve the bacteria. There is ones from other manufacturers that starve it as well. That's why I always say, just go for a normal one that makes the water safe for life. You won't have problems maturing a filter. I tend to call those conditioners with the binding agents Trojan horse treatments because they might look beautiful, they might do exactly what they say they're going to do very well, but they have a side effect, and that is that you'll get talked into buying something extra to constantly add bacteria to the system in order to get that cycle going in your tank. So the side effects from the conditioner are that it starves bacteria. The solution to that, allegedly, is to add more bacteria. Constantly, daily, keep adding it, keep adding it. So instead of buying one product, you're buying two products. That's a total waste of time. You don't need to do that. Once you have seeded this filter with bacteria, using balls or... whatever else it is you want to put in then once you've dropped that bacteria in filter or in your tank and it's flowing around it's going all through your filter media that bacteria should be free to populate every single surface in here and every single surface in your tank unless it's been starved and i know for a fact some people out there will be denying that this is a thing but it works both ways you know when people have had a perfect cycle Zero ammonia, zero nitrite, zero nitrate and then the nitrate suddenly shot up. They get on the phone to me and say I think the bio home stopped working. I'm like okay so why do you think that? Well it's been in four or five years and everything was perfect but suddenly I've noticed the nitrate's gone up. I'm like, okay, so that would indicate that the anaerobic side of things has been knocked back a bit. Have you put any sort of treatments in? You know, have you put like antibacterial treatments in, which might have killed the bacteria off if you were treating the fish or something? Have you done a massive water change and not treated the water properly? No, the only thing I've done is change the conditioner. Oh, what have you changed it to? Product X. Ah, that's interesting. That's the one that people struggle to set the filter up in the first place with. Do you want to try swapping back to your old one? Oh yeah, I'll give that a go. They gave that a go. One or two months later, the bacteria has come back. It ceased to be starved to death. And the full cycle's restored, so it does work both ways. There's also sachets of treatments at the back end of your filtration which can cause problems for the biological side of things, simply because they're too harsh. Again, they do exactly what they say they're going to do. They'll make the water crystal clear, you'd think the fish was swimming in air, they'll draw in all the residual treatments, but they also can draw in too much of the trace elements. And you need, you just need everything, you need a natural environment in your tank and in your filter. The minute you take a piece of that jigsaw away, the bacteria are going to suffer. So I would just advise against using anything that was too harsh. Again, I don't want to mention names, but basically anything that promises to do too much. I mean, if it promises to remove ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, stay well away from it. I don't know how to say this without making it plainly obvious which one I'm talking about, but if it is recharged using something that would normally be reserved for cleaning toilets, stay away from that. Promises to do a lot, does what it does very well, but it has a massive side effect of starving the bacteria. For your chemical filtration, keep it specific. So if you want to just draw in colour from the water or residual treatments, just use carbon-activated charcoal. If you want to stock the tank really more quickly than you should, or you're going on holiday and you want to put a little bit of a buffer in there for the ammonia, Use the ammonia pads. If you want to keep the nitrate down, restrict the algae growth, whilst your filter matures, use the nitrate pad. Specific treatments are always better. It's the same when you're treating the fish as well. I know this is going on to something totally different, but it's the same when you're treating the fish. There's a lot of people that think, oh, the fish don't look very well, and they cannot identify the problem, so they put like a broad spectrum treatment in. Might be something like Methylene Blue or something. That would absolutely pound the filter because it would be treating all sorts. You'd be going, you know, kind of the nuclear option, you'd be going to treat the fungus, the bacteria. And all sorts of parasites, internal and external, all in one hit. Boom! The net result of that is that the filter is going to suffer and ultimately that's going to cause you more problems because the fish waste isn't going to be processed so the ammonia and the nitrite is going to go high which in turn is going to stress the fish. So with regard to fish treatment try and narrow down exactly what is wrong with the fish and if they've got white spot for example treat them with a white spot treatment. Don't bother going for the scorched earth option option where you would just Try and kill everything in one go. Treat for specific things, if you can identify them. If you can't identify what's wrong with a fish, take the fish or take pictures of fish to somebody who can identify them. I mean, I know for, like, koi people, they would generally take a scraping off the koi. They would go to a koi place, they'd look under a microscope, they'd go, oh, yeah, it's got costia, OK, this is what you need to treat. Boom, specific treatment for that particular thing. That's so important. Right, so we've covered the setup of a filter, whether it works from top to bottom or bottom to top with regard to the mechanical, biological and chemical. We've gone into what enhances bacteria, what holds it back. Probably now time to go into the booster filters. Okay, so these are the two most commonly available sizes. These are from the same manufacturer as this, which was All Pond Solutions. For you guys in the US, that is SunSun. We've got a 1.2 litre version and a 2.3 litre version. And of the two, I would always say, go for the bigger one. Even if you've only got a smallish canister filter, go for the bigger one. And that's because this one is approximately 5 inches diameter, whereas the smaller one is about 4 inches diameter. And obviously the bigger one holds way more foam. And I mean, even if you just stick with the foams that come in this thing, A five inch diameter is a much bigger contact surface area for the water than a four inch diameter. So the bigger version needs cleaning out a hell of a lot less. That's the major reason why I would say always go for the bigger one. So in here, we've got three sponges, all of which are pretty coarse, but because the water's flowing down through them like that and not going in through the sides, It's going to filter out pretty much everything, you know, if in doubt. You can squeeze a medium pad underneath that if you're going top to bottom, or if you're going bottom to top, put it on the top. And that will ensure that the water is ridiculously clean before it gets to here. So basically, if you're sticking with the foams, one of these boosters would go on the inlet pipe from the tank to your filter. That would free up one of your trays in the filter, in the main filter, that would ordinarily be used for your foams and fine pad, so you could fill that with media. In this particular filter, that would take the capacity for filter media from, I think, roughly 5.2 kilos up to about 7 kilos. So in here you could get 7 kilos of media, if your foams were in here. And these boosters are really cheap, reasonably well made, but very effective. Instead of buying a bigger canister filter if you find out that the one you've got is too small you could simply just add a booster full of the foams you don't need to buy any extra foams if you don't want to add it on the intake stick more media in here and therefore boost the efficiency of the whole system and give it more capacity to cope with whatever size tank you've got. So that's the most common place to have the booster filter on the intake and have it full of foams but if you're worried about restricting the flow that's coming out of your main filter because of the smaller contact area here than here which is approximately eight inches or something square that's a massive area difference You could leave your main canister filled up how we showed in the first half of this video. And instead of having foams in your booster, you can take those out and you can fit 1.7 kilos of media in here. Well, 1.7 if it's the Biohome Ultimate. And instead of having that on the intake pipe, you would have that on the outlet pipe that goes back from your main filter to your tank. So it would just feed in as normal, filter it out, and then it would spit it out through this fella. And that would have your extra media in. Loads of people do use these for media. And I mean, you could put, you know, bags of the bio gravel or something like that in. Allow most of the water to shoot around the outsides and use this as a, like a, An aerobic slash anoxic sort of filtration whereby the middle of this wouldn't have much flow in it and you'd get a ridiculous amount of anaerobic activity happening there in a safe environment. You could always go half and half as well if you had this on the outlet side of your main filter. You could mostly fill it with filter media. Stick one of your ammonia pads or nitrate pads on the top if you're working bottom to top. If you're working top to bottom, put your pad on the bottom so it would be last in the whole system. That would just give you somewhere pretty convenient if you wanted to take this apart, get into there to change your pads. And these are actually a really convenient size for the bigger one as well. They fit in there absolutely perfectly. So there are some complementary things that you can use in your booster. If it's on the outlet, if it's on the intake side, just stick with whatever foams come in. Or as I said before, add a finer one if you just want that extra bit of polish before the water then goes to your main filter. Right, so I think I may have covered everything I was planning to cover, although I didn't write a list. If I've left anything out, I will put it in the video description and I'll put all the links to all this sort of stuff in the description as well. And also in the pinned comment if you're watching on YouTube. If you found this video useful, feel free to share it wherever you want. Put links to it on forums or Facebook groups or whatever. I'm not on any of those, so if it gets spread around on there, that's all good. Anything you find useful, just share. Copy the video, take clips of it, upload bits of it. to your own channel use it for whatever you want i'm not bothered once i put these videos out they're yours to do with whatever you want you know all i would ask is if you are going to copy the entirety of the video and upload it to your own channel which quite a lot of people do just leave the video description and the pinned comment intact if you upload it to yours because that's got relevant stuff in you know if i see anybody uploading a full video without that intact i do I do tend to get it taken down. Just leave that description. Good stuff. Thanks for watching. See you next time.