Pimp My Filter #10 - Fluval FX6 Canister Filter Upgrade (also covers FX5) - Fluval FX6 Set Up

Hello there, welcome back. In this video, I've got a real treat for you because I've got the heaviest of the heavy hitters as far as external canister filters go for aquariums. Making its way to the table, weighing an impressive 9 kilos, is the biggest, the baddest FX6. Now I get asked about this one all the time. How does the water flow through it? How can I best maximize it, et cetera, et cetera. It's almost a daily occurrence that I'm sending messages and emails and all sorts backwards and forwards. So to have the opportunity to show you exactly how this thing works and exactly how to upgrade it is a dream come true for me because this is going to save me hours per week explaining things. If I can just make a good video that I can direct people to and say, look, here's the filter, this is how it works. I'll be a very very happy man. Now unfortunately this one has arrived to me and it's got nothing in it apart from the trays. So I've got some old foams and I'll put the foams in to let you see how they're arranged and then we'll get on with the upgrade. It's going to be quite a simple one but the changes I'm going to make will be very very effective. Okay these are the foams that come with the FX4, the FX5 and the FX6. So this video will be suitable for any owners of an FX-4, FX-5 and FX-6. The size of the trays are exactly the same in all of the FX filters and in the FX range we've basically got a two-part coarse foam which slots in there and if I remove this I'll be able to tell you exactly how the filter works. Okay that is our in pipe, that is our out pipe. As you can see the in pipe goes all the way down to the bottom. Down in here, the outpipe comes from the pump which is at the bottom of our filter and fires up and back out to our tank. Put a little bit of illumination on there so you can see inside properly and that's what we've got. Hopefully you can see in the bottom of there. But our in-pipe comes down here and then the water swirls around and around and around and goes around the outside of the trays through the foams. Well the water travels between the foam foam and this wall here, because we've got those fins there, It allows it to travel up freely once it's gone through the foam and then it comes down over the top of the trays so the water actually flows from top to bottom in these trays and once it's gone right through the trays comes out the bottom then it swirls around inside here and it's drawn out by our pump spat out back to the tank. So now that we know how the water flows through the filter We know where to put our coarse foams, our medium foams, which ordinarily wouldn't be in here, and our fine pad. I've seen a lot of these filters with a fine pad on the very bottom and that's just absolutely the wrong place to put it. These are pretty impressive trays. I, you know, I normally condemn filters for not having this and not having that, you know, the limitations, but the FX filters have an excellent capacity to keep the water clear. They do lack a little bit of space for media because of the reliance on those big foam rings, but they still hold quite a lot of media. They are very, very good filters. There's a high flow rate, great mechanical capacity, and a pretty good biological capacity as well. So I cannot really say anything negative about these filters. They are very, very good. Right, that's how our filter would normally be. Three trays stacked on top of each other in both the FX-5 and FX-6. In the FX-4 we would only have two trays. Let's just concentrate on one tray at a time because all of the outside of these trays are going to be set up in exactly the same way. Basically what that will involve is removing this big coarse foam like so. So because this filter hasn't got any foams in, we need some foams. Now we're not going to buy the official foams because they cost a fortune, and they're only coarse and we're not going to buy compatible foams because again they're only coarse. What we are going to do is fit a coarse and medium foam in here, and that actually fits in better than you may think. Here's our ordinary pond foam with a bumpy side and a flat side. This actually fits together, if we put the two bumpy sides together It actually fits together just like a set of teeth. That combined thickness enables us to get a piece of foam in here very, very well. In fact, to get two pieces of foam in here, the coarse one and the medium one. So if we have the coarse one on the outside, water's gonna hit that first, it's gonna travel through there, then it's gonna go through our medium foam, and then it's gonna rise up down through our trays. And just for reference, each of the foams that we are gonna cut is 37 and a half centimeters long which is 14 and three-quarter inches by nine centimeters wide which is three and a half inches and out of a coarse and medium foam we can get one two three strips so it only needs two coarse and two medium foams to get a full set for an FX5 or an FX6. Now, in the style of all the best... TV shows, here's one I did earlier. This one is actually from an FX5 that I had here before the FX6 arrived. That one is already set up. See the water's going to come through the coarse foam, through the medium foam, up and then down through our trays. Right, that's looking down into it. You can see how well that bit's knitted together. Sometimes they don't really mesh together very well, but you can still easily get the coarse and the medium foam in. And that's where our water rises up, so it rises, actually you can just see all the way through there, down to the table. And that's where water rises all the way up, so it comes through the foams, follows these fins up, and it goes down through our trays. One, three trays. So I'm going to take them out of my FX5 trays, and I'm going to put them into Danny's FX6 trays. Bear in mind, these trays are the same size. When you're pushing them in, they might get a little bit buckled up. But because of these wide windows in here, it gives you a chance to get your finger in and just make sure that they're pushed right down to the bottom, just like that. Just as a cost comparison, to do three trays with six of the ordinary foams, the official ones, costs approximately 56 English pounds, which probably is near $70. It might actually cost a little bit less in the US, but that's what it cost us in the UK For compatible ones, if you buy six compatible foams which are also coarse, the cheapest I could see those for was around about 13 English pounds, which is about 16, 17 dollars. That's a hell of a lot cheaper, but that's only coarse. Doing it this way is approximately the same cost as the compatible foams, but you're getting a medium and a coarse. And that not only makes financial sense, but it also makes filtration sense as well, because you're going from coarse to medium before the water travels down through your trays. If you only have a coarse foam, although it's pretty thick, the fine muck is just gonna get through there and it's all gonna be on the fine pad, which we're gonna put in the top tray. This way, doing it with a coarse and medium, You've got a graded approach and remember the goal with this particular series of videos is not only to try and get a full cycle by setting the filters up properly it's also to extend the cleaning times as well because you don't want to be looking at a filter every week or every other week. Once a month, once every two months, once every four or five months. You set a filter up right and size it properly you should hardly ever need to look in it. Now comes the important part. Well, another important part, and that is actually putting the media into here. We want to try and get as much media in as we can. And we're basically going to fill up all three trays with good biological media. Now, you can put any sort of media in that you want. We are going to try and set this up to create a full cycle. So we're going to go with a BioHome Ultimate. And when I switch this on, we'll be able to weigh out exactly how much each tray takes. So I think between the three trays it should take 5 kilos based on the dimensions and that's what I always recommend to people, but we'll see exactly how much it can take now. That is 1.65 kilos. I always worked on it being 1.7 kilos so that's pretty close, if I'd packed this in a little bit neater it would be 1.7 kilos, guarantee it. So 1.7 times 3 is just over 5, allowing for a fine pat on the top, that's about 5 kilos. Okay, that can be our top tray. So we've left the media just down from the top a little bit to allow room for a fine pad on there. That's our top tray. Okay, now the pads that I normally sell are crazy thick, so we're gonna use a slightly thinner one. And And we're gonna cut a circular piece out of here we'll to go in see the top you of our in a top tray. minute. Okay then, let's take a look in our trays. So from the bottom up, foams, media, foams, media. And then our top tray. Media and also a fine pad. So now when our water goes through all the foams and up and down through the trays, it has to go through a fine pad. It's going to filter out all the fine muck, which will ensure that all of our media stays very, very clean. A lot heavier than it was when it arrived. There you go. Now that's just packed out with awesomeness. Okay, let's get our top block back on if I can find it. Now I'll just run through a few facts and figures as to how much it pumps and how much it's supposed to treat and also how much it actually will treat for a full cycle. So those figures are quite interesting and very different. Now as I mentioned in the intro, it weighs 9 kilos. That's a pretty heavy filter. It weighs a hell of a lot more than that now because we've actually put 5 kilos of filter media into it. So it's quite a heavy thing. Pretty big as well, but it needs to be big because it's supposed to treat and get this up to 1500 litres. Now I've no doubts that it will keep 1500 litres clear but it doesn't really stand a chance of keeping that water healthy as far as a full cycle goes. We've only got five kilos of media in here and that has absolutely maxed it out and that actually makes this filter suitable for a tank up to 500 litres so that's actually a third of what the manufacturer says But we're talking about full cycle filtration, which is zero ammonia, zero nitrite, and zero or low nitrates. And it's that nitrate figure that is the important one. It's pretty easy to keep ammonia and nitrite to zero, but the nitrate, you do need a certain amount of good media to support both aerobic... anaerobic bacteria and it's the anaerobic bacteria that get to work on the nitrate that's what completes our cycle that gives us a full cycle so there's no way we can get 15 kilos of media in here unless we empty everything out and you know do away with all the trays and foams and everything and totally just fill it up but that's not going to make for a very good filter There's probably a few people out there thinking, hold on, I've got an African Cichlid tank or a Predator tank that's 600 litres, I've only got one of these running, because it said it would do up to 1500 litres, does that mean I'm not going to get a full cycle? Well, if you've got a heavily stocked tank, the news gets worse, because it can take anywhere from a kilo and a half to two kilos of media per 100 litres to give you the full cycle. So, in effect, if you've got a very heavily stocked, say, a Piranha tank or an African Cichlid tank or something, one of these would probably be suitable for around about 250 litres. And you might think that's ridiculous, but remember we're talking about a full cycle. We're talking about proper filtration. Not just figures that are plucked out of the air and I don't like being the bearer of bad news so you know I imagine a lot of people cursing me now after seeing this doesn't treat as much as the manufacturer says it'll treat. Fluval probably isn't too happy but this is a fantastic filter. It really really is but if you've got a 900 litre tank or you know 1000 litre tank you need two of these and if you've got a heavily stocked 500 600 litre tank you need two of these. You can never overdo it with the filtration. So there you go. All it took to upgrade this filter, the FX6, and also for the FX5, is two of them, two of them, and five kilos of media. Oh, and a fine pad as well. And if you want to use chemical filtration, it would go in the bottom of the bottom tray, because we'd always go mechanical, biological, chemical, in that order. Now, I have seen a few videos on YouTube where people have put chemical filtration in the top of the top tray. It's probably just so it's easy to get to, but that's not the best place for it. Best place, bottom of the bottom tray. I haven't used any in here because I wanted to max it out, you know? I didn't want to take up any space with carbon or anything. And if you are going to use chemical filtration, just use something like carbon or activated charcoal. Don't go for anything that's recharged by bleach. I've seen a few videos where people put that on top. I've just recharged this with bleach, isn't it marvellous? Boom, all the bacteria in the filter. Nitrates, through the roof. Problems with ammonia and nitrite. It's such a fragile system in here that you need to look after it. You cannot just go murdering it with chemical treatments. And likewise, if you're using a chemical treatment to actually treat your fish, an antibacterial treatment, don't just add a bit more, don't go double dose or anything like that, just keep it to the manufacturer's recommended dosage. If you go over the top, that can affect the filter as well, because remember, the antibacterial agents kill good bacteria as well as bad bacteria, and in here, this will absolutely be alive with good bacteria, and you'll want it to stay that way. Now after all that doom and gloom bacteria does come back very very fast especially on the bio home because it's so receptive to bacteria it only takes a few bits to be surviving and it repopulates again. The aerobic bacteria will colonize absolutely everything very very fast so if you do happen to kill it off it will come back very very quickly. The anaerobic bacteria is a little bit more fragile so it does take a lot longer to come back so you know if you killed off the bacteria in your filter your ammonia and nitrite should come back to zero pretty quick you know within two three weeks your nitrate may take a further four to six months so looking after what's in here by not over treating your tank and not putting unnecessary chemical treatments in is a really big part of keeping this filter working properly And indeed, any filter working properly. It does cost a lot to buy, and it costs a canny bit for the media, but once you've got this thing set up, it will repay you with water quality and also water clarity as well. It's a really, really good filter. I'll put links to the filter and also the media and all that in the video description and in the pinned comment, and if you found this video useful. Hit the thumbs up button, share it wherever you want, because I would imagine there'd be a hell of a lot of people on forums and websites and Facebook groups who own one of these who would benefit from seeing it set up as it is here. In fact, it's not so much that the fish keeper would benefit from it, it's that their fish would benefit from it. That's where my loyalties lie, is to the fish, not so much to the fish keepers or the companies making these filters, it's to the fish. I just want what's best for the fish. The Kraken filter, it will make your fish happy if you use it properly. Okay, check out my other videos, I've done quite a few already on the various filters, and if you've got a filter you want to send me, get in touch, my contact details are in the video description and also in the pinned comment. I'll see you next time.