Pimp My Filter #25 - Fluval FX4 Canister Filter Upgrade

Hello there, welcome back to another edition of Pimp My Filter, and in this one, we've got one of the new heavy hitters on the market. This one is the Fluval FX4. It's basically a smaller version of the FX5 and the FX6, in that instead of having three trays inside here, it's got two. Although, the modern versions do have extra trays, which I'll show you in a minute. Now, according to Michael, who sent me this... Whatever I find in here is exactly how it came set up from the manufacturer so I'll take the top off and I'll let you see what is inside. Right this just looks exactly the same as an FX5 or an FX6 in that we've got two coarse foams around the outside here and we've then got the trays. This one as I mentioned has got two main trays but it's also got something called an in-tray system. Which is basically a smaller tray that fits inside the main tray. Just a brief overview of how this works. Water comes in here, down this pipe, to the bottom of our filter. Where it swirls around and around and around. Then passes through the foams, up between the foam and the tray. These fins here, that allows water to travel up over. Then the water goes down through the trays to here. And it's drawn out by the pump and then spat back out to the tank. Now, I'm looking in the bottom of here, and we do have quite a space in the bottom here. That's going to allow us to put some primary settlement media in here. It wasn't quite as big as that when we looked at the FX6. So, water goes through the foams, up, down, then hits a coarse foam. I'm not quite sure why we've got coarse and coarse, but anyway, it goes down through the foam. Probably it's not even a handful of filter media, which is a ceramic ring. That was our first tray. Water then goes through a tiny little amount of ceramic rings and then it goes through what I think was a carbon pad, possibly a carbon pad in the bottom there and then out and back to our tank. Right that's actually not a bad setup, obviously there's nowhere near enough filter media in there but we've got quite a lot of mechanical filtration, we really could do the fine pad And these trays within trays, to me, Sorry Fluval, but I think these are absolutely pointless. You know, the box says up to five-stage filtration. Really, you've got mechanical, biological, and chemical. No UV in here, so to me that's three stages of filtration. I just can't work out what the other two stages of filtration could be. There's a lot of wasted potential with this. Okay, I'm going to put these trays off to the side. And I'm going to concentrate on the bottom of this filter. Because we've got a really deep ring in the bottom that accepts the water, we can put something in there to settle the water out and catch the really heavy muck. And for that, we're going to use Eheim Mech. I love using this stuff for primary settlement. And we're going to get now on a kilo in the bottom of there. That's going to catch a hell of a lot of heavy muck. I'll pour it in, bring the camera in, and let you see. Okay, that's what we've got in the bottom there now. Bear in mind our water comes down here and kind of spreads out both ways here. So we've got a lot of primary settlement. Approximately one litre, or maybe it's about one kilo of this, which is the Eheim Mech. Okay, so that is the bottom of our filter done. And that idea was actually given to me by somebody called Mark or Matthew, I think. I was conversing with somebody via email who had an FX4, and he told me about that, having the extra space in the bottom of there to put the primary settlement stuff. So that's not my original idea, but I can't for the life of me remember the lad's name. I'm terrible with names. Sorry about that. And he says it doesn't affect this, which is the drain. He says you can still drain water off there, no problem at all, even when you've still got those rings in. It just blasts around them and just washes it out. I can't confirm that, but it does seem sensible. Okay, now onto the trays. We're actually gonna change the foams that go around here. And in fact, we're gonna take foams out of here as well. This thing absolutely stinks. Just reeks. I've been really ill for the last few days and the smell that's emanating out of here isn't making me feel any better. Right, so we're gonna take these, so we'll get these foams out of the way. Tip this media out. And we'll take the bottom tray bits as well. Right, that's all the media that was in the filter. Roughly, I don't know, half a kilo. Maybe it's a little bit more. Maybe it's one and a half pounds. Yeah, just over half a kilo. That is not enough That leaves us with two trays, or two main trays, and two small insert trays. These we aren't gonna use because, quite frankly, you don't need them. I'm not sure about older versions of the FX4, but certainly the older versions of the FX5 and 6 will not have those extra trays in. The newer versions do. Now that's our original foam. We're going to swap that out for some that I've pre-cut. And this is actually a coarse foam and a medium foam. That's coarse density and medium density. Bumpy foams put together to make a sandwich. And the size of these... Just in case you want to cut some yourself, is 37 and a half centimetres long by 9 centimetres deep. And in inches, that is 14 and three quarter inches by 3 and a half inches. And just for reference, you can get three strips out of one 17 by 11 pound foam. Unfortunately, you need four in total, so that doesn't work out too well for this filter. But it's certainly gonna give us more mechanical filtration than we have just with these coarse foams. And all we do, we just feed that down into there. So we've got the coarse on the outside, the medium on the inside, so the water hits coarse and then medium. Because we've got nice big gaps down the side of here, we can get our thumb in and squash it right down to where it should be so we don't get any bypass. I'll get the rest put in and then I shall show you them completed. There you go. That's our foam's in now. It looks quite different, doesn't it? And that just allows us to take out coarse and medium muck. Now all we need to do is just put some filter media in each one of these baskets. Each one of these baskets will hold approximately one and a half kilos of Biohome Ultimate, so in the two baskets you should get three kilos in total. That's our That's our bottom tray. And that's our top tray. And we've left about Half to three quarters of an inch from the top to enable us to put a fine pad in the top of the top tray. There you go looks quite colourful but it does serve a purpose. Water goes down into all our primary settlement through the foams down through here down through all the media back out to the tank. So there you go that's the FX4. Three kilos of media in something that size. It's not very impressive, but we do have a lot of mechanical filtration there, so if you've got fish that produce a lot of waste, this is going to catch a lot of that waste. The trade-off is that you don't get much in the way of biological filtration, so it depends what you want from your filter as to whether this is going to be a good choice or not. If you're just looking for zero ammonia, zero nitrite, and you're not too bothered about nitrates, then this will service quite a big tank. But the figures that I'm about to give now are based on full cycle filtration, which is reduction in ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. So that's the aerobic side of the bacterial process and also the anaerobic side of the bacterial process by utilising the BioHome Ultimate, which supports aerobic and anaerobic bacteria. So according to Fluval this filter is suitable for a tank of up to a thousand litres which is about 250 US gallons. Given that you need roughly one kilo of BioHome Ultimate per 100 litres to provide that full cycle that doesn't really stack up. We've got three kilos of media in there and in reality that makes this filter more suited to a tank of nearer 300 litres or if it's heavily stocked It could only service a tank of around about 150 litres, which isn't much for the size and the cost of this. With the FX5 and the FX6 you get the extra tray, so you can get up to 5 kilos of media in. So if you've got a tank that's a reasonable size, I would say go for the bigger one. But this is a little powerhouse. It actually produces 2,650 litres per hour from this pump, which is a hell of a flow. So if you've got fish like a good flow, This is a cracking filter to go for. Oh and 2650 liters is 700 US gallons per hour. That's a hell of a flow. But if you're looking for something purely to give you a full cycle you can get less expensive filters that will hold more biological media. If you wanted to put chemical media in this particular filter it would go in the bottom of the bottom tray so the water hits Mechanical, then biological, then chemical, and then back out to the tank. You'd always go that way, just to keep the chemical media as clean as possible, so it lasts as long as possible. I have seen people putting chemical media on the top of the top tray. I think that's just because it's easier to access there, but that is not the right place to put it. And if you're looking for a chemical media to draw in residual fish treatments or color from bog wood or heavy metals, just go for carbon or charcoal. It doesn't mess up the biological side of your filtration, whereas some of the more modern chemical filtration can mess up the biological side of things. So keep it simple and keep this thing alive. Like the other Fluval filters, it's really, really well made. This is going to last you for years. It is a good filter, but size it correctly, please. You know, if you've got a 1,000 litre tank, this is never, ever going to give you a full cycle, unless you've got a fully planted tank. With a few neons in or something. For a normally stocked tank, you will need that one kilo per 100 litres. So there you go. I hope you found this video useful. If you have, give it a thumbs up. Share it wherever you want. And if you've got a filter you'd like me to have a look at, by all means get in touch. My contact details are in the video description and also in the pinned comment. That is email and phone. Don't text me or send messages or whatever because the chances are I won't see them. I will hear a phone call and I will see emails. If you're asking questions in the comments section on YouTube, there's a 50-50 chance I might see them. So please, if you've got a filter you want me to upgrade, email or phone. So the type of filter we'll be looking at in the next episode is one of life's mysteries. Let's just see what comes along. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.