How important is choosing the correct foams? Very important.... http://www.filterpro.co.uk for media and foams. Similar foams on Amazon.co.uk: http://geni.us/5cvdB Similar foams on Amazon.com: http://geni.us/ABzyp3 The foams in the Amazon link do not have such high ridges and valleys as the foams I sell on the FilterPro website but they are OK. I should have put more emphasis on the LAYERING of various grades of foams as that is key to successful mechanical filtration. One thin profile cut foam will not catch as much muck as a thick square cut foam of same density but a layered approach using coarse, medium then fine foams will do a much better job of progressively catching dirt than a large single sponge which fills the same space e.g. a tray in a canister filter (hope that makes sense). Your foams are the part of your filter which mechanically remove dirt and I'd estimate that 99% of aquarium owners have flat ineffective foams or foams in the wrong place. Hopefully by watching this video you will see the sense in using good quality profile cut foams to catch more dirt and cut down on your filter maintenance schedule. If you're unsure how to set up an external canister filter please check this video out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsAmS... The same method applies to most types of filters - mechanical (foams - and fine pad) followed by biological (good quality media). Thanks for watching and feel free to share this video with anyone you think may benefit from seeing it. Pondguru
Hello there, it seems to have
been an age since I did any aquarium advice videos,
but in this one I'm going to show you why making the right choice
for your foam that goes in your filter is so important.
I'm actually going to do a quick practical demonstration
of why using a foam to profile cut
is much better than using a foam with flat surface.
I've cut it to roughly the same size
as most external filters for medium-sized tanks are,
which is approximately 7 inches square.
The foam itself is about an inch and a quarter deep,
which is about 32 millimetres, 30 millimetres.
I don't think it's a full inch and a quarter,
but that's roughly the size of foams that
you would buy as replacement foams for your external filters.
Outside, you've got all of that surface area,
you've got little mountains and valleys in
I'll show you just how much more muck putting the foam in,
with a profile cut the right way up,
so it contacts the water the profile way first.
I'll show you how much more muck
that can catch. You're going to be amazed.
Okay, for the purpose of this test,
I've crudely fashioned a little box out of cardboard.
And in there,
we're going to put the foam.
Now you'll notice that the size of the box
is just a little bit taller than the foam.
What I'm going to do, I'm going to pour something called bio-gravel
into here, and I'll make a video about bio-gravel at a later date,
but it's basically just a sort of gravel made from sintered glass.
Okay, hopefully you can see that that weighs 50 grams.
I'll just change the units on that,
so I'll put in ounces for our American viewers.
That's 1.8 ounces.
Now what we're going to do is pour some of this bio-gravel
in until it's level with the top of the box.
I'll just zero that.
And when it gets level with the top of the box,
we'll observe the weight.
That'll tell us just how much stuff fits in to that space.
I think
that's pretty much it.
Basically, that represents a clogged foam.
That weighs 390 grams,
so there's 390 grams of media needed to fill that up.
Let's change the units to ounces.
13.8 ounces of media.
Right, set that back to zero.
This time, we're going to use the foam the correct way.
So your water and dirt is going to be contacting it this way.
Boom, hitting that side.
And you'll notice already that you can see a lot more of the box.
It should give you a clue as to how it's going to perform.
So we'll just drop that on.
Just check the weight.
50 grams.
Using exactly the same foam, but just the right way up.
So that's right.
So that's on hold.
That's good.
I'm going to fill this up.
And then I'm going to take it off hold.
And let you see exactly how much media fits
in when you use the foam the right way.
Pretty
much
it.
It's level with the top.
You can still see a little bit of box, but that's about it.
So I'll release the hold. 695.
And what that means is that allowing for the box
and the foam, which was 50 grams,
we've managed to fit 645 grams of media in there.
Just put that into ounces.
24.4 ounces.
So that's almost twice as much media that's fit
in to that same height available above the top of the foam.
Just by using the foams the right way.
So hopefully now you're thinking,
It took almost twice as much stuff to clog foams.
What that means in the real world
is that if you clean your filter out every month,
currently flat foams are contacting the water.
If you get proper foams and use them the right way around,
instead of maintaining the filter every month,
you'd be maintaining it every two months.
I don't bother with anything else other than YouTube.
I don't bother with Facebook or Twitter
or any forums or anything like that.
So if you've liked this video,
please share it with whoever you think might benefit from it.
I really would love to see it spread around
because I would imagine 99% of the people watching this will say,
that makes a difference.
Take these ideas on board.
You can buy these in big sheets on the internet.
I've got them on my website.
The link is in the video description below.
I would just like to see everybody using foams properly
in their filters, and really, the
maintenance that they do with the filters,
because you shouldn't need to be at the filter
every five minutes.
Setting it up properly will make such a hell of a difference,
and on the subject of that,
if you have an external filter,
and you want to see a video of how to set it up properly,
there's also a link to that video that I did
a while back in the video description.
Thanks very much for watching.
