Pimp My Filter #44 - SunSun HW-3000 Canister Filter

Hello there, welcome back. In this video, I'm going to show you what the filter is straight away. It's not going to be any messing about. This is the HW3000 from SunSun, and as you can see, it's got a digital readout there on the top. We'll get to that in a moment, but first of all, I'll just show you the outputs. Well, that one is the output. It's a little bit like the FX6 outflow in that you can have two duckbill attachments on here firing out different places in the tank or you can have the duckbill and the spray bar here. I've only got a little tank so this is just a small part of the spray bar. You could have the duckbill firing this way and the spray bar right across the back. Now this dial on the top of that outlet is important and I'll get to that further in the video. This is A really good feature and it kind of negates one of the other features of this particular filter. Fittings are generally good, pipe is roughly an inch internal diameter I think so it's a nice big pipe you get a good amount of flow through it. All in all the quality of fittings is really really good for a budget filter. That translates to the intake as well we've got the I've got the normal sort of... Screened intake on the bottom there, adjustable length pipe, and that goes out, drops down, and into the filter. And talking of the filter, we've got the normal sort of setup. We've got an in-pipe and an out-pipe. Obviously, it goes through all the trays and everything, which I'll show you in a moment. We've got the release mechanism. We've got individual taps for the in and the out, and that's good because it makes it really easy to prime. You just fill this thing up, turn this to off, turn this one to on. Then you unscrew this, you fill the pipe up with water, the jug to let it right up, screw the top back on, you come down here, you open that one up, water levels itself out, then draws water down from the intake just through gravity to fill up whatever remaining space you've got in the filter, pump goes on and it's instantly primed. Although you do get a few air bubbles in, there's probably a few in now, we'll just tip it to one side. You can just hear the air bubbles being spat out. So you've got to rock it around a little bit to get all the air bubbles out, but it runs more or less silently. For a filter of this size, it doesn't make much noise. So I'll just explain what this has shown. This is the digital readout. Now that shows that the impeller is going round. That shows that the power of the thing is six out of six. So it's on maximum output. If we hold this, that goes to unlocked. Then if we hold it again, Flashes, these are up and down arrows, so if we want to reduce the output, simply turn it down, you hear the pump slowing down, turn it back up, you'll hear the pump speeding up. Back to full power, that's it. Once it's stopped flashing, it's set, so it's set now at full power. In a similar way, we've got the UV light, which is in here, controllable by a button here, so press that, that goes to unlock, press it again, and you see that flashing. So, presently, it's not on at all. I'm going to use that to put it on at 2 hours per day, 4 hours per day, 8, 16 or 24. So it's on 24, it's on permanently and you can knock it down as well. OK, before I take this to bits, just a quick note on this particular attachment. As I said before, this feature kind of negates something else and that something else is what I've just been talking about, that electronic flow adjuster. If I loosen that and then... Turn the dial at the top and that reduces the flow coming out of here. Obviously I've got it switched off at the moment so you cannot see it, but that does the same job as the electronic flow adjuster, except this only constricts the flow, it doesn't actually slow the pump down. So if you just use this, and you have the filter pumping at six which is full output even though you wouldn't get full output from there if you turn this down you'd still be using the full electric so you'd still be consuming full power if you control it at the electronic switch on the filter you will consume less power so whilst on the face of it This does the same job as the actual digital readout. It doesn't. It's just an easy way to adjust it, to fine-tune it, should I say. This is like fine-tuning it. The electronic adjustment is to actually set the flow. Okay, so there we've got the top off. And under here, you'll notice it's got a UV light. So the water comes down around the outside of the UV. So it passes over this light, which kills the algae and so on. Then goes down to the bottom of the filter, rises up through the trays. Gets sucked up here in the pump and it gets spat back out to the tank. That's pretty much all I need to show you on there. It's a pretty standard top, although it does have a very thick rubber seal around there which is a nice feature. Okay, so onto the trays. We've got four nice big trays and it's got the hole there for the UV to sit inside. That. It's spiralled, so the water, instead of just going straight down and shooting over the light, it actually swirls around, and that increases the amount of time that the light actually shines on the water that's heading down here. That's good, because it makes the UV light a little bit more efficient. So as it shines out, it's doing more of a job. In the trays, all we have is a piece of fine pad, and that just sits. In every one of these trays, so we've got four pieces of fine pad and nothing else, which is really good because we're not paying for unnecessary crap that we're just going to throw away, we can use the money we've saved to set this thing up properly, so that's what I'm going to show you how to do now. Okay, so we've got this set up now very, very simply, we've got some spare white pads, we only need one white pad and that one is on the bottom tray. Remember the water comes down over the UV into the bottom of the filter and rises up through the trays. So in this one, we've got a coarse pad, medium pad, and a fine pad. That keeps all of the mechanical filtration in the bottom of the filter. So all the muck is going to be retained in the very bottom of the filter. After that, we've got three full trays of media. Just take that off and let you have a look. That might look a different colour to what we normally use in these filter demonstrations, but because the guy that sent me this, who is called Drew, actually thank you Drew for sending me this filter, I don't think I've thanked you yet, and also thank you for letting me run the filter. I've had it running for three weeks, it's ran without fault, it's pretty quiet, it seems to be a very good filter. Yeah, I like it. Anyway, this is BioHome Ultimate Marine because Drew is actually going to be using this filter on a marine tank. So in each one of these three big media trays we've got approximately 1.8 kilos of BioHome Ultimate Marine. Obviously it'll fit the same amount of the freshwater version of this which is the orangey one. So three of those added together gives us Mmm. well over five kilos of media which is over 11 pounds for you guys in the US. No fine pad on the top. That is important. I see people setting filters up with a fine pad as the so-called polishing pad as the very last thing water hits. All that does, it concentrates fine muck in all of your trays, clogs your media, no matter what sort of media you're using, clogs it up, makes it just a horrible mess. So if there's any fine particles that get through that bottom tray, just allow them through this. They will be caught a second time round. Keep the media clean and keep it effective. So that's one, that's it. Give it a bit of a wiggle until you can feel the tray lock into position. That way you know that they all fit together perfectly. That goes on the top, goes back on. There is a certain way to get these in. I've put these in the wrong way. It needed to be that way. So I'm gonna have to restack these. Okay, hopefully this goes on properly now. Yep, that's good. Four, there we go. All done. Okay, here's just a few details on the flow rates. So at the one power, the pump only consumes 10 watts, pumps 1,200 liters an hour, and it steps up all the way to 3,000 liters per hour, only consuming 30 watts. And the UV is nine watts. So that's, you know, my God. I mean, that's enough for nearly 1,000 liters, you know. There's a little visual demonstration of where the water comes in, over the UV light, into the bottom of the filter. Up through the trays, back out to the tank. It's got reasonably comprehensive instructions there, it tells you what you could put in the filter, none of which is very accurate, but at least it gives you some indication of what you could do with it, because as I say it only comes with four pieces of fine pad, that's not really enough for any sort of tank, you will need to upgrade it somehow. Oh I forgot to mention as well in the video because I didn't have it set up with this, this is actually a surface skimmer so you can attach that to your intake pipe. So it sucks from the tank from you know midway down the tank or the bottom of your tank and it also sucks from the top and that will remove any oils, any dust, any muck, bubbles that might end up on the water surface. So there you go that's a pretty big filter. for a pretty big tank. I mean, we've got over five kilos of media in here. I'll make it suitable if you want to see a full cycle, which is zero ammonia, zero nitrite and low nitrate for approximately 500 litres or 130 US gallons or thereabouts. And as far as the output goes, as I say, it does everything from 1200 litres an hour to 3000 litres an hour. 3000 2,000 litres an hour is approximately 780 US gallons. So it is a bit of a powerhouse. It's well made. It seems pretty efficient as well. It's just a nice, simply laid out filter. You don't really need this digital part of it, but it's nice to have if you wanna reduce the flow. Say you put this on your tank and you've got a lot of media, you know, because you've got quite a big tank, but you've got something like discus, which don't like a lot of flow. You can knock the flow down. You can still get the efficiency of your filter. Without the flow, and without the running costs as well, because if you knock it down to 1200 litres an hour and you've just got the water going passively through it, or more slowly through it anyway, it's only 10 watts. I mean, in the UK that's going to cost you like £12 a year to run, and in the US it probably is less because your electric costs are way lower than ours. So all in all, good filter. I'll put the link to it in the video description. I'm not sure it's available in the UK yet. If it is, I'll put the link. If you guys can find it and I haven't put the link, let me know and I will put the link in there. Thanks for watching. See you next time.