AQUA Telford 2017

Here's our little stand. This is the BioHome outlet at the show. We've got the various forms of BioHome along with some samples that people can take away. I've also got a magnifier here so people can see inside the various types of media if they want to break them up and have a look. I've also got a little bowl of water here so they can do a dip test, check for the porosity. There you go, very porous media. And I've also set my computer up which is attached to a USB microscope. so people can actually see inside the media as well and we've got one of these lovely Evolve shower filters and into there we've put some of our new shower media just to show people the where it would be generally used you see how much we've got in there there's 25 kilos in there and we could easily get another 25 kilos in there so 50 kilos in each one of those trays that's a hell of a lot of filtration I'm on the Pond Expert stand now and this is a company that I was aware of but I've never really had anything to do with and looking around here I'm very impressed at the range of stuff they've got for ponds. It's good quality and it's very affordable as well so I'll just quickly show you a few of the standout products that I've been impressed with. Now you know I like the pressure filters for filtering ponds and this is one of those exceptionally easy to clean. Like other filters it's got a dial on the top. So you can set it for normal operation, so the water would come in, go through your UV, through your foams, straight back to the pond or up to the cascade. But if you twist it, water will start to come out to the drain. Then you just turn this handle, the foams on the inside rotate, and it's like a paddle thing which squashes all the muck out, and it goes away to your drain. Now these come with a tap. So ordinarily you would have a flow control tap in here. So you want to clean it out, you don't need to switch anything off, all you do, Turn that dial, open the valve, crank the handle, and it cleans itself with a little bit of help from you. Now, I actually think that that turning handle is a big improvement over the very, very old pressure filters where you had to take them all apart and manually clean them, which was a really time-consuming and often tricky process. And it's also a big improvement over the sort of filters where you pump the handle. Because if you haven't cleaned it for a while, that clunky handle can be very stiff. That's what I did. It's got a good range of lights, various treatments, some natural, some chemical, little pond hoover here, all sorts of fish treatments. It's pretty much no frills stuff. It basically just does what it says on the packaging. Here's a big version of that filter. Look at the size of that fella. Suitable for up to 30,000 litres. Or, for up to 15,000 litres, for a fish pond. I don't know. We've also got a very good range of pumps as well. There's a hell of a lot of sizes. And I've actually been out of the retailing game for about two years. And I'm blown away by the running costs, or lack of running costs, for these pumps. There we go, I've just flipped that box around there. You see this pump, 16,000 litres an hour, is only 140 watts. and that's got a maximum head of 7.5 meters which is about 25 feet or 24 and a half feet and these are really easy to clean out. there you go you're into the pump. they also do a great range of air pumps, nets, liners and also stone liners as well. these things are gravel stuck onto a fabric and if you haven't quite put your pond in properly and you had the liner shown around the edges like that You could use the stone liner to go around there and hide the blackness. We've also got some more traditional sort of horn filters. Nice big UV, really really good mechanical filtration. Just a really well thought out design. You know these things are pretty compact and they offer really good filtration. I really like the look of this stuff. And just on the subject of really good running costs, we've got a pump in here pumping all the way up here. 30,000 liter an hour pump. And the current wattage is only 398 watts. That is absolutely phenomenal. So as you can see, this is quite a big stand. Certainly bigger than our little bio home stand. But they've got so much more to show. What I forgot to mention before is there's a couple of different types of skimmers here. Now if you don't know what skimmers are, they basically float around on the top of your pond and draw the leaves in, into that little basket, which you empty periodically. Really, really handy. And we've also got a really good selection of switch boxes here. Three switch box for armoured cable, ordinary three switch box, a four switch box, five, and also a six switch box as well, so you can wire six different things in there. And these things are really, really handy. We've got some Y-splitters, and there's still hardly any companies doing these, and I don't know why. They basically allow you to take water in here from your pump, and split it two ways. But they allow you to control the flow on each of those ways. Unlike other splitters that I'm familiar with, these ones have a proper ball valve inside, so they shut the flow off much better. Previous ones that I installed basically just had a flap that moved, and they were a regulator. They didn't actually shut the flow off. I'm not sure if these ones totally shut the flow off, but they'll certainly shut it off a hell of a lot better than the ones that I used to use when I was putting ponds in. Now just behind me here we've got one of the two displays of new products. So I'll just give you a very quick rundown of what is on show here. There we go. That is the two stands of new products. So let's take a closer look. Now many pond keepers will be familiar with the EasyPod and also the Nexus range filters from Evolution Aqua. But now they've managed to come up with an automatic cleaning system. which also has a manual override so you can manually clean them or you can set them to clean themselves and the organisers of the show were so impressed with that they gave it an award here we've got one of our big pressure filters i really like these filters and i'm actually going to get one of these for making a video so you're going to get to see inside that and get to see exactly how it works i've been very impressed with them and we've also got a more advanced version This one actually has Wi-Fi control. A lot of these filters have Wi-Fi control actually, UV, built-in, easy clean, things are becoming technical, very, very technical. Here we've got the manual option, and here we've got the automatic option. Now here is something that I've seen a lot of at this show, and these are drum filters. They're pretty expensive, but they're a very, very efficient way of doing your mechanical filtration. If you want to learn more about these, just look them up on the internet. They're really, really becoming popular. This one's from Lotus but there was lots of other companies had them or variations of the drum filter. Here's another show winner. This is from Velda. This is a heron scarer which shoots out lasers and bright lights and so on. Really really good and I was considering asking them for one of these for my pond to keep the heron away but it would also scare the kingfisher away so I'm gonna do without that. There's a real push now towards probiotic foods. And we've also got really, really healthy koi foods. We've got insect-based foods. And I'm going to be taking a closer look at those in a minute. Even Oase are getting in on the act. Insinio, Home and Cloud. Everything can be controlled via Wi-Fi and via computer. Things are going technology mad. Now, as far as the marine gear goes down here, there's a hell of a lot on show. My background is not in marine fish or marine equipment, so I'm not the best person to do any sort of presentation telling you what these things are and what they do. But if you want to see a good selection of interviews that have been done down here on YouTube, check out Aaron's Aquariums. I'll put the link to him in the video description. He's been down here two days, and I've seen him interviewing practically everybody. But he hasn't done the pond gear, so that's what I'm aiming my video more towards. And quite simply, I wouldn't do as good a job of the presentation, the videoing, the editing, or the interviewing. As Michael Wood from Aaron's Aquariums. Now, I said I didn't understand how a lot of the marine stuff works, but I do understand how this one works. Although it looks like a twin toilet roll dispenser, it's actually an automated mechanical filter using this really fine material. That's your good stuff, and the stuff that travels through the muck in your sump gets wound up onto here. So this mechanically cleans your water. You load a full roll, clean material on here, It slowly rotates, gathers on here. When it's mucky, take that out and replace it with another one. That one's from Senai, and they've got some really innovative stuff. Again, it's not my forte, marine equipment, so check out Michael on Aaron's Aquariums. Denai have gone absolutely mad. They've got sensors for practically everything, even for planted tanks. They tell you how much CO2 there is in there. Warning about pH fluctuations and crashes and, oh man, it tells you practically everything you would want to know. Here's something that I am not all that impressed with. It's a filter media, and I actually broke that off yesterday when I was seeing how strong it was. It's really, really, it's as brittle as hell. I've no doubt, sorry, that's fallen to bits. I've no doubt that it's got a gigantic surface area, but it's basically made of dust. Really, it's no better than that awful Chinese media I showed in the last video. I'm not impressed with that at all. You've got little cubes of stuff made of the same material, and that goes out for close to £15. I better not say anything more about that. I'm just not impressed. We've got something else that isn't my forte as well, which is reptiles and amphibians. That's indoor amphibians, or amphibians that are kept indoors. But just check out this. This is another show winner. What an absolutely beautiful setup that is, every part of it's controlled, just imagine a couple of little poison dart frogs living in there, absolutely lovely setup and there's another version up there that's really beautiful. This is a drum set up pretty much how you would have it in your pond, now the water from your pond would come in here so you'd have either a gravity fed system or a Or a pump fed system. It would go inside the drum. And it's a really, really fine mesh on the side of there, so only the clean water would then go through to your moving bed module, which you can put any plastic moving bed media in. There's your air pump. And it would go back out to your pond. So you've got really, really good mechanical filtration there, and you've got good aerobic biological filtration. And they're also doing absolutely massive pressure filters as well. Check the size of that out. It must be over three feet tall. There's a bunch of filters as well. Check the size of that out. Must be over 3 feet tall. This is the Oase stand. As you know in a lot of my pond videos, in fact in almost all of my pond building videos, I use Owaza gear. Owaza is just synonymous with quality and they've been working hard on their pumps to make them even more efficient. This is pretty similar to the one that I've got in my pond so for those of you who haven't seen the pump in my pond, that is what it's like. It's an absolute Absolute monster. Yeah, sick. We've also got some really high pressure dirty water pumps, pumping sludge. And we've also got the ProfiClear system as well. This is another drum system. Thank you. I'm familiar with this one because I've maintained a few on ponds that I've put in. So the water goes through the middle of the drum, clean water, then goes to a moving bed module and you can add different modules on so you can have multiple moving bed modules and then here it passes out over a UV and in these chambers here it gives us the option to put some phosphate reducing stuff or nitrate reducing stuff or you can just fill it with filter media, for example grog or maybe it's even bio-home. Just behind me here we've got the Neil Hardy Aquatica stand. And when I had a shop, we dealt with Neil Hardy for many, many years. They do really, really good quality tropical fish. And they do also a good range of pond fish as well. As you can see behind me there, we've got some nice sturgeon and also some fancy goldfish. They've got a few nice aquariums set up, showcasing some of the fish they do. Just look at the size of those puppers. Absolute fellas. We've got our bigger fish down here. I think them fellas are jungle perch. And we've also got some arowana as well. We've got a really nice better display here. Look at all those fellas in there, you can just imagine that in a shop, really nice. Really good discus as well. And according to this note here, they've got a new supplier, and that new supplier seems to be pretty good, because there's a really nice range of colours, and those fish look happy. Now when I had the shop we used to sell something called New Life Spectrum food. Ooh, you're going to be the funniest one. Neil Hardy is the distributor for that and it's a really really good food. Thank you very much. They do a hell of a range now. I mean I only closed the shop a couple of years ago and they seem to have doubled or tripled the amount of food that they do. They do. Here we've got the main show tank in front of Neil Hardy's stand. Really nice setup. And I recognize I recognise pretty much all of those fish, because we used to sell all of those when we had the shop. I'd like to. Just check this tank out, this is absolutely beautiful. This is on the... This is on the Evolution Aqua stand. Thank you. Evolution Aqua are most known for the big pond filters, but they also do a really good and increasing range of aquarium products. That is a beautiful That is a beautiful setup. Really good quality UVs. They really know how to make good quality gear and since they came on the scene not too many years ago I've been very impressed. Here we've got one of the big Nexus filters with the automated cleaning system fitted and you can see this one running that's all K1 inside. As far as aerobic biological filtration goes they do a cracking job. So the water comes in here Travels through the static K1 micro, which acts as your mechanical filtration, and then goes down. Comes up through all of this moving bed media, and this moving bed media supports the bacteria which removes ammonia and nitrite. Then goes back to your pond. So I'm going to go and talk to my teacher. Now here's a range of stuff that EA do for reef aquariums. As I say, they're really really going into the aquarium side of things and skewing it more towards reef tanks. Talking of reef tanks, we've got an absolutely beautiful one here. It's just fantastic. We've got all the filtration underneath there. Really high quality lights and the fellas have done an absolutely cracking job setting this up. Thank you very much. I'm not sure it's going to come out very well on the video because the viewfinder makes that look a little bit washed out but in real life that is absolutely beautiful. Let's do it. I'd say by far that's the best setup at the show. And talking of really good, they've got a new range of aquariums here. This has got like a distressed wood sort of a look and that again is a beautiful setup. Okay. And you've got loads of space under there for your filtration, really really nice. Now this is on the Aqua Forte stand and I've spent a bit of time with the guys here before. They've got a really good high quality range of sieves, bubble beads, pumps, UVs, Room filters, moving bed modules. It's really really good. I've been impressed with it. And they also do a cracking range of UVs and pumps and again their pumps are really low wattage. I've been really impressed with just how much water these pumps can shift without consuming too much power. Very impressed. One thing I have noticed is that there's a bit of a move with the bigger pumps to make them variable output and that variable output affects how much power they consume. So here we've got a 20,000 litre an hour pump. And you can set this one using the control panel to consume anything from 34 watts to 187 watts. So obviously at maximum output, which is 20,000 litres an hour, you're consuming 187 watts, which is next to nothing for that amount of water. And you can knock it all the way down to 34 watts. Obviously, you're not going to be pumping 20,000 litres at 34 watts. You're going to be pumping a hell of a lot less. But if you want this filter just to stay alive during the winter, just knock it right down. Save yourself some electric. Now, another thing I've noticed at the show this year is there seems to be a big push towards probiotic and more natural foods for fish and also for other creatures as well. And behind me here, I've got a really, really good range from Nature's Grub. That's the name of the company. I'm familiar with them because they did, and still do, a lot of foods for things that you tend to get in your garden, like hedgehogs and squirrels and so on. But they also do a really, really interesting range for aquariums and ponds as well. So just check this out. Now in these sample tubes here, we've got a really good range of the various foods that they do. I mean here we've even got like a flour mix for tortoises obviously I'm not into tortoises but if you want to feed them and you want to feed them properly you've got to feed them on what they would normally eat flour mix we've also got a corn flour mix as well again that's for tortoises we've got dried crayfish for your koi and your big predatory fish and your aquariums we've got veggie pellets for aquariums with added garlic so that's going to help defend off any white spots it's going to help with the fish's slime layer We've also got Corydoras sticks as well, and most people think Corys just eat anything, but this is a specially formulated stick, and apparently they love it. We've also got dried Gammarus shrimp, which is a river shrimp, you're probably familiar with that one. Want one? Dried silkworm pupae, they have a really high protein content, look at that, 53%, and the koi absolutely love them. Now I haven't tried my trout with those, but I bet the trout would love those as well. Carnivore pellets, dried fish, Specific diet for musk turtles. We've got a really well thought out range of products here. We've got more dry food here for aquariums. We've got krill, daphnia, brine shrimp, more krill. An insect mix, tube effects, mixed shrimp, bloodworm, snails. And there in their shells, another insect mix. And again, snails in shell. Now these are very, very good for your puffers. Look at that. Obviously other fish will just suck the snail out of there, but the puffers will chew on the shell. And that will help to prevent their little teeth growing, because their teeth never stop growing, just like rats. And they do need to chew on shells. We've got guppy food, veggie sticks, carnivore flakes, cichlid sticks, carnivore sticks, veggie flakes, shrimp sticks, tropical colour enhancer, mini wafers for your plecos, alga eaters, and marine colour as well. And down here we've got something I'm very familiar with. This is Montmorillonite clay. You can't see what it's like. It's basically just a whitish grey powder. And if you've watched my previous videos, you'll see that that, a bigger version of that, obviously a 25 kilo bag of that, actually cleared my huge garden pond. That is very, very good stuff. Got really good koi mix here as well. Got high protein pellets mixed in with silkworm, pupae, all sorts of shrimps. The koi are going to absolutely devour that. And here we've got a hell of a mix for your koi. All dried insects and shrimp. Oh man, there's just all sorts of invertebrates in there. What a mix. Again, I reckon my trout would eat that up, no problem at all. And just check these out. These are supernatural treat balls, and they might look like dried out onion bargies, but they've got a hell of a range of stuff in. Just chuck one of those in your pond. Start to break up, releasing all the invertebrates and the fish just hoover them up. And one of the last things I'm going to show you for the ponds is a natural probiotic insect-based koi food. Now, if you think about it, if koi were living in natural conditions, most of the stuff they'd be eating is invertebrates, like insects, not fish. So none of this stuff is made with fish meal. If you want an example of just how far they've gone with formulating specialist food, this is food for sugar gliders. We've also got specialist food for various types of terrapins, amphibians, all sorts of stuff. As well as stuff for badgers. You tip that in your garden, you end up with a gripping hole where the badger's roving on. We've got a wildlife pond mix which has got a nation of stuff in. Hedgehog food, squirrel food. As you know, I'm not a great fan of squirrels. They do a lot of damage around my place. You're in a position to feed them and you like squirrels, you've got the food to do it. We've even got duck food and pygmy hedgehog food as well. A really outstanding range of food.