External canister filter set up, nitrogen cycle and what happens in a filter - by Pondguru

Hello there, in this video I will be upgrading an external filter. Here's the filter, it's a reasonable size and it's an Aqua One Aquis 1200. So the first thing we've got is the pump head which sits on the top, which sucks the water out. We've got a partially broken mesh there, but it'll still be okay. Here the first tray has got about 100 little black balls in. That's there. As far as filtration goes, and balls, these are bollocks. These will hardly support any bacteria at all but they may still be useful. Yeah I might be able to use them. Second tray, nothing. That was obviously full of foams that one. Third tray we've got some standard ceramic rings. Yeah they're not all clogged up. They still look pretty good so I will be using them again. Now I'll quickly show you what I'm going to put into that filter. Now here we've got something I like to call a filter upgrade kit. Coarse Foam, Medium Foam Fine pad, three kilograms of BioHome Ultimate Media and some filter balls. There's, oh, I say there's 50 in there, but it's probably near 100 or 150. They contain live bacteria. So here we've got mechanical filtration, biological filtration. And really, mechanical and biological filtration is all you need. But it has to be set up in the right order. I'm going to show you how to do that now. First of all I want to point out that when we drop the tray into here you're left with about a two inch void in the bottom of here. I'll demonstrate that. There's a huge gap under there so when the water comes down from your tank it swirls around there and then it hits whatever it is is in your first basket. I'm going to change that a little bit. I'm going to take this ceramic media and drop it into the bottom of here and you might say That's no good. That's the first place that the water hits when it comes down from your tank. It's gonna have all the muck and all the dirt and filth and pollution. Exactly. I want that dirt and heavy muck to be settled out in the very bottom of the filter. That's why that's there. All those tubes will direct the water flow loads of different ways and hopefully settle out a lot of the heavy muck. And by keeping the really heavy muck in the very bottom of my filter, My foams should last a lot longer before they need to be cleaned out. And on the subject of foams, we've got coarse, medium, and a thick fine pad. Just a close-up detail of these, you'll notice that they've got loads of little bumps on, like an egg box sort of effect. That's extremely important. The replacement foams that you buy for these external filters are flat, and that's a flat surface for the water and the muck to hit. By using a bumpy surface Effectively, you've got a hell of a lot more surface area for the muck to stick to, which increases the life of the foams. Yeah, this sheet of foam is the perfect size, so once I cut this out to fit inside of here, I'm going to have one to use now, and I'm going to have one as a spare. Same with the medium, and same with the fine pad as well. The added bonus of this fine pad is... That you can actually rip it to thickness, so you don't need it as thick as this. If you've got a very shallow tray, where you can only fit in a fine pad of maybe half an inch, about 12mm, just rip it to that thickness, cut it out, and use that. So you can get, at the very least, two large pieces out of this, possibly four, six, eight. So to cut this out, I'm just going to use a standard pair of scissors and basically cut around the outside of here to get it roughly the same shape as this tray. The first one, that's our coarse foam. And what I'm going to do, I'm going to put this in bumpy side down. So when the water comes up from the bottom of the filter, it hits the side with the most surface area on first. So I'll slide that in there. The pipe is a nice tight fit. Time for the medium one, and then I'll follow that on with the fine one. So when the water comes up from the bottom, it hits coarse, medium, then fine. So it filters out coarse, medium, and fine muck. Simple. I'm not going to video myself cutting these ones out, because I'm going to cut them out in exactly the same way. But I will video this when it's all set up. Just be very careful when you're pushing the scissors through these foams. I had my hand underneath this white one, pushed the scissors through, straight into the end of my finger. What a good idea. So, in here, we've got coarse foam, medium foam, and our nice thick pad. Remember, the pad does not have to be as thick as this. In fact, it's probably a little bit too thick in here, so I'm going to tear it down to make it a little bit smaller. There. That's a more sensible size, and it also gives us another little spare one. Drop that back in here. Now all of the muck that gets dragged down from the tank, all the fish's waste and uneaten food, particulate matter that's held in the water, should get strained out in this bottom third of the filter. Pretty important to explain that because that is the mechanical filtration done. That's it, all you need. So below this line, dirty water. Above this line, clean water. And because we're going to be using really porous high quality filter media in this top part of the filter, it's very important that we have extremely clean water. Dirty water will just clog the filter media up and really reduce its efficiency. That's why that so-called polishing pad, the fine one, is in the bottom. So important that it's in there. This is the best and only way to do it if you want full efficiency from your filter and your filter media. Ah, balls! There's not really any place for these in this filter. Plastic filter media hardly holds any bacteria. That will probably help to settle the media out though. So I'm going to see if I've got any extra space in the bottom here and I'm going to add a few of these to the ceramic rings. That's really filled that bottom part very well. So we're gonna have good settlement in that very bottom part. And then good mechanical filtration just above that. So onto the biological side of things. Right, so now we've got two spare baskets. And all we need to put in here is biological filter media. Just so happens we have the very best one here. This is BioHome Ultimate. There's three kilos of it in this bag. I'm kind of hoping that it'll be almost exactly the right amount for these two trays. I've worked out absolutely perfectly. Three kilograms is enough to do two of these trays, which are approximately eight inches, that's 20 centimeters, by six and a half centimeters, maybe two and a half inches high. It's your more or less standard size external filter. That's why I sell all this stuff as a pack because most people have externals of this sort of size. Now if you've received this kit from me, you might want to give these trays a little rinse through because a little bit of dust can be generated during transit and you don't really want that dust, although it's not harmful, but you don't want it in your tank because it'll only be to filter out. Just take the trays, move them backwards and forwards under a running tap Tap and that will get rid of any dust that might have been generated. Just before I put those back into the canister filter, I'll explain about these things. These are little gel balls and each one of these balls contains millions and millions of live bacteria. So what we're going to do is just scatter them amongst the filter media. Now over the next week or two, these balls will slowly dissolve and they'll release all of the good living bacteria into this filter media and seed it really quickly. BioHome filter media matures with the aerobic bacteria in about two to three weeks which is exceptionally fast. These balls just make sure that that happens. It does mature without these balls but I include these as a freebie in the pack so you might as well use them. I think I've scattered about 50 balls in there and there's probably a good 50 or 60 left so what I'm going to do I'm going to keep those in a sealed bag and they've got a shelf life of about 12 to 18 months. If the filter ever needs to be totally stripped down again, or if I've just done a really heavy maintenance schedule on the tank and the filter, these can be added, just to kick start it again, if I'm worried about losing any bacteria. There you go, you can see the media in there, all the balls scattered in amongst it. They'll dissolve, they'll release all of that goodness directly into the media. Now the real beauty of using these filter starter balls instead of liquid and so on or tablets, is that the gel nourishes the bacteria it actually feeds the bacteria so if you store your filter starter balls you'll notice that they gradually decrease in size that's as the bacteria is eating the gel away you know that this stuff is alive and that's so important right so go in with the first tray so that's the top tray you put that little plastic guard on that'll prevent any of those little balls getting sucked up into the impeller in the pump it wouldn't hurt the pump but you You really want those balls to be in with the filter media. And not shred it up and scatter it all throughout your tank. We don't need to do anything clever with this top part. It just slots straight back on, and that's it. The filter is now ready for use. And that didn't take long at all to completely overhaul this filter and make sure that it works to the maximum efficiency that it possibly can. So now in here you've got suitable foams in the correct order, and the best filter media you can possibly get with live bacteria in there. Now, as soon as you connect this back up to your tank and switch it on, that bacteria is going to start to come out of there. It's going to start to colonize the media. The whole cycle is going to start straight away. You're not going to have to wait. And in two or three weeks, the media in there is going to be mature. But I will give some notes on the maturity of the media. It matures in two stages, this media. The first stage is it maturing with aerobic bacteria. Now, what I mean by aerobic bacteria is bacteria that needs a very highly oxygenated, fast-flowing environment to do really well. Now, around the outside of every single piece of filter media, you've got exactly those conditions. You've got the water moving quickly, carrying highly oxygenated water, passing over it, there's lots of food there, the bacteria is thriving, it's doing really well, and it matures extremely fast. And it's the aerobic bacteria that Processes ammonia and nitrite and in most filters that's where the cycle ends. Your fish produce waste, the poop and pee in the water, that's ammonia. Bacteria convert the ammonia to nitrite, the nitrite then gets converted again by bacteria to nitrate. All of that's an aerobic process, needs a lot of air, ideally fast flowing water. So you're getting rid of ammonia and nitrite, but your filter's actually producing, as a by-product, a lot of nitrate, which means you've got to do a lot of water changes. The holy grail in filtration is to also process the nitrate, and that's very difficult to do, but the bio-home does it very, very easily. That relies on anaerobic bacteria. So the bacteria that... Process the nitrate need low oxygen conditions and in the middle of that media you get exactly those conditions but it does take quite a while to build up typically between four to six months so after two or three weeks you shouldn't have any ammonia or nitrite after four to six months you should notice your nitrate starting to come down which most people can't believe when they see it, but it does happen Typically tanks that had between 60 and 80 parts per million are seeing a reduction down to roughly 5 or 10 parts per million, sometimes untraceable, which is incredible. It means you don't have to do such big water changes with awful tap water and it just creates a more stable environment and a reduction in the nitrate means you get a better growth rate out of your fish as well. It's a win-win situation all around. If you want to know more about the bio home media Click on the link in the video description because I have done a video with loads of questions and answers about it, everything you could possibly want to know, and if you want to find suppliers of the media, also check out the description because I sell it in the UK and around the world, but there also is a US supplier, an Australian supplier, and I think there's a, not a Dutch supplier, what is he, Denmark, there's a supplier in Denmark. I don't think he's got... going yet but there's possibly one in Germany as well and there's a fella in Norway inquired about it so check the video description as the suppliers around the world become available I will post their details on there because you can imagine shipping from the UK to Australia is pretty expensive and if you can get it in your own country it's going to save you a heck of a lot on shipping. Now the media that I've used in here is BioHome Ultimate there's also another type which is exactly the same which doesn't have the trace elements Trace elements. I've never even mentioned the trace elements. Anyway, there's basically two types which are perfect for external filters. BioHome Mini Ultra and BioHome Ultimate. Structurally, they're exactly the same. One has the trace elements. I use the one with the trace elements which is BioHome Ultimate. And what those trace elements do, apart from give it a lovely orangey-red colour, is allow the processes that the bacteria are doing to happen much faster. It's fairly difficult to explain, but if you can imagine them as being really efficient office workers, when you have those trace elements present, it's equivalent to those office workers having a phone, a fax machine, a computer, super fast broadband, filing systems, chairs, desks, they've got everything they need. That stuff never leaves the office. But it allows them to complete their job a lot quicker. It doesn't alter the water chemistry at all. Those trace elements are purely there for use on a bacterial level. So they'll neither benefit nor harm the fish, shrimps, plants. They basically will have no effect at all on your tank, apart from the bacterial processes. If you've got a koi pond or you've got a sump, And you're thinking, that media looks good, obviously if you've checked out the other videos and if you've checked out feedback that people have been giving on it on the internet, you'll be absolutely sold on it, you'll be thinking, well, those are little sticks, they're going to be no good for a big koi shower, there's actually big sticks available now. This is a very new product which basically allows you to fill a much bigger space more cheaply. Obviously the size of that's no good for fitting into these little trays so you have the option for confined spaces and also big spaces like koi filters and this stuff is phenomenal it does exactly the same job in a pond as it does in an external filter. So in your pond you've been looking for that holy grail which is reducing the nitrates this allows you to do it. This is called BioHome Maxi Ultimate because it's basically a maxed out form of ultimate. Still got exactly the same trace elements in, same porosity as the small stuff, just it's in a bigger stick. It's exceptionally good stuff. Just a very quick note on the polishing pad or fine particle pad or filter mat. The white thing, the white fine pad, Remember ours is in the top of the bottom tray, that's exactly where it needs to be, just after the medium foam, and the medium foam is just after the coarse foam. So you filter out coarse, medium and fine muck, and then above that, where all your media is, where the water needs to be clean, the water is clean. If, by chance, you get any small amount of particles coming up through here, they just pass straight through, they're not held back by any stupid pad up here, they pass straight through, back into your tank, and they get caught the second time around. That's so important. If you put a polishing pad up here, what's going to happen is any fine particles that make it up from the bottom of your filter are going to get slowed down in here, where your filter media is. And they're going to settle out on and in the filter media, clogging it up. Keep this area free so your particles fly straight through there, if there is any. They will get taken out second time round in the bottom. All your muck will be in the bottom. Your clean area will be the top where your filter media is. That will allow the filter media to be as efficient as it possibly can be. Forget about putting a pad up here. It is absolutely wrong. So this one is a very typical external filter. Water's sucked down, goes down the central pipe, the muck settles out in the bottom, water flows up through the trays into the pump, the pump blows the water back into your tank. Some filters are different. Now the likes of the Fluval FX5 and FX6, they work differently because the central trays in there actually take the water from the top. So you would have your coarse, medium and fine foam, Going in your top tray, coarse, medium, fine, and then your media underneath that, because the pump for them isn't in the top, it's in the bottom. Just bear that in mind. I hope you found this video useful. This filter upgrade kit is available on my eBay page, and the media is also available in the links below. Thank you very much for watching. I've enjoyed making this video, and I hope you've got benefit from it. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.