'Invisible' Aquarium filter - Awesome internal fish tank filter by Pondguru

Hello there, I'm Richard from Tank Valley Aquatics and the Pond Guru channel on YouTube. Today I'm ultra excited because I'm going to share with you a filter that I came up with about 18 months ago and haven't acted on because I was going to start producing them commercially but I decided not to. I'll give the idea to you guys and let you develop it. Now the idea I had was for a very effective filter. that wouldn't be intrusive in a fish tank. Now, as many of the people who watch my videos know, I had the first internal moving bed filters on YouTube and thousands of people have taken that idea and ran with it. There's all sorts of pop bottles, shampoo bottles, shower gel bottles being converted into great little filters. But, at the end of the day, it doesn't look bad. You know, it looks interesting. But it's quite intrusive in an aquarium. It looks out of place especially if you've got a nice planted tank with a good selection of fish. It just looks wrong. This one looks very right. And the thing that this filter is made from has been in shot since the start of this video. And a lot of people are going to absolutely kick themselves when they see how simple this is and what a good idea it is. I normally don't blow my own trumpet. I let other people decide what they think of these ideas. But this one, I can honestly say I've never seen before, and it's so obvious. But this ornament, this hollow resin ornament, can be an excellent filter. And it's not just this ornament, there's no doubt hundreds of different types of ornaments that can also be adapted to be made into great little filters. All you need to do to make this into a very effective filter is drill a few holes and use the right media. So in short, I'm going to drill holes in the top here to let air out. Drill holes for suckers, so I can stick that to the inside of the tank, drill a hole in there for the airline, and I'll show you exactly how I built a filter out of this now. They're well and truly joined together in holy matrimony now. Next stage is just to drill a few holes in the top of here for the air to get out. That probably is about a 1mm or 1.5mm drill bit, so that's, I don't know, 5 or 6 holes drilled in the top there for the air to come out. When you're looking at that thing... Flat on the back wall, you can really only see those top two. Now because this filter is going to be air driven, it needs a hole putting in the back of here, near the bottom, for the airline to go through. So I'm thinking I want the foams roughly to there, so airline will have to come in just above the foams. Put it through there, and draw the airline through. And I've got a T-piece on here, just to stop it getting pulled through. So basically, that's it. When you want to clean this thing, all you do is take it off the back of the tank, turn it upside down, drain the water out into your tank, whip the foams out, tip the media out, clean it, put it back together, stick it on the back of your tank, set the air away, and it's grafting again. So without any media or foams in, this is what we end up with. We end up with exactly the same ornament, with holes drilled in the top, three holes in the back for your suckers. But these particular suckers come with little stainless steel hooks. It may have been a better idea for me to drill smaller holes and use the hooks to support this. I'm not sure. It does stick very close to the side of a tank, which is a bonus. So, you choose. And the reason that airline comes in about two inches above the opening here is because below that level, that's where your foams sit. So you've got your coarse, medium, fine foams filtering out coarse, medium and fine muck. This is your polishing pad, so your water is polished before it gets to the media, which is ultra important. And then as the air is injected in here, it's expelled out the top, that in turn creates a pull, so it drags water in the bottom. Your foams do the mechanical filtering job, your media does the biological filtering job. So I'll just very quickly set this up now, just to show you how easy it is to put together. This is the media going in. That's handy because that uses 500 grams, which is a pound, sorry, 1.1 pound of Biohome Ultimate filter media. That works out pretty much exactly. See the outlet there, just next to the level of media. So now when I put the foams in, the foams will sit below the level of the airline. First one in is the polishing pad, medium foam, coarse foam. There you go. Snug as anything, there's no media going to fall out of there, and when it's stuck on the tank like that, you don't see any of the foams. You're literally just looking at a rock. It's an invisible filter, but it's a filter with an awesome filtering capacity, not only for ammonia and nitrite, but because of the media used, nitrate as well. Of course, you don't have to use bio-home media. You can use anything. I would stay away from plastic, though. Plastic, unless it's in a moving bed, is no good in a filter. Because it hasn't got the surface area, it takes ages for the bacteria to build up on it. In the likes of this stuff, it takes two to three weeks for the aerobic bacteria to build up. It takes a bit longer for anaerobic, you're looking at six months plus, but once that anaerobic bacteria is built up on the core, or in the core of this stuff, You're going to get full filtration, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, which you don't get from 99% of filters. Most of them concentrate on the ammonia and nitrite because they tend to have very high flow rates and the media generally isn't designed for supporting anaerobic bacteria. And it's that anaerobic zone in the middle of this media which makes such a difference. It means that you're going to get full filtration and also you're going to be doing less water changes, which is a lot more stable for your fish. Here's a little demonstration of where the anaerobic bacteria live. Just snap that one in half. There you go, you notice it's a different colour on the inside. Now that is due partially to the firing process. The intense heat doesn't change the colour of the media, because when it is extruded it all comes out grey. It's only when it's fired that it changes colour. But it's also due to the fact that the internal structure of the media is a little bit more dense than the outer edges. So the outer edges, which has taken most of the flow, most of the oxygenated water, they support your aerobic bacteria, i.e. bacteria that prefer Aerobic conditions, high oxygen conditions, they eat away ammonia and nitrite, but they produce nitrate, which in a lot of filters can lead to nitrates going up through the roof. So after six months or so, the central core of this media should have enough anaerobic bacteria colonizing it in the anaerobic or very low oxygen conditions. To make a noticeable difference with your nitrates, especially if it's used at low flow rates, which is what this filter will be. It'll be a low flow rate filter. Many of the filters concentrate on throwing the water around as fast as they possibly can, dragging it through the filter as fast as it can. And all that does, it shoots the water over the media, it forces it right into the middle of the media, and it creates aerobic conditions. Now it's not just that one ornament that you can make into a filter. Here's one here. Fill that up with media. Put your foams in either side of here, drill holes around the outside, airline in the bottom, holes in the top, and there you've got another low flow rate, easily maintainable, cheap, fully functional filter, which will consume ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. And when people look in the tank, all they're going to see is this rock ornament with little bubbles coming out of it. It's another invisible filter. There you go, that's the filter working there. Water's being drawn in the bottom through the foams. spat out the top. You could increase the air if you wanted to totally hide that airline but you know at a glance you don't really notice it. Really once that's in it's a question of do you want that or that? I know what I'd rather have. So now I've got no doubt that the race will be on to find loads of different resin ornaments that filters can be made of and I'm sure there's some great ones that can actually just be sat in the bottom of a tank better than the one I've made but now Now you've got the idea. I honestly can't see how nobody's thought of that before, and I was worried that in the 18 months since I came up with the idea that I would suddenly see a video on YouTube, but I still haven't seen any. I've been searching forums, I've even searched for filter ornaments, ornaments, filters, filters in ornaments, nothing. So there's your idea. I would expect within six to twelve months to see something commercially available. I would imagine that even something like that, although it's no good for the sort of filter I've just showed you how to make, this could be used to cover an internal filter. So your ordinary two blocks of foam and a pump sort of filter, stick that on the side of your tank, somehow stick that over the front of it and you've got a totally hidden filter. I'm sure that is the way forward, to actually hide the internal filters. Not everybody wants or can afford an external filter, so this might be the next best thing. Just one word, if you have a very small space, obviously that filter media, although it will fit in there, might not be ideal for packing it out. Imagine you've got something like that. That one's not ideal because you're going to see the foams there, but if you had basically a smaller version of the one I've just made a filter out of, You're going to have a lot of wasted space in there if you use the BioHome Ultimate. You might want to try using BioHome Plus. It's a more compact version and it can be snapped up like that to fit into really small spaces. So even in something the size of this, which is pretty much the size of my hand, this packed out with good quality media, two or three foams, you could have an excellent filter made out of something so small. So if you want to buy any of this awesome media, links in the description below, and we're hoping to get suppliers in America and Australia. In fact, at the time this video is being produced, there is a supplier in America, and when he's got his website finished, I'll put the details in the video description. So if it isn't up when you're viewing this video, please check back, because it will go in there. Now I'm bound to be asked about the foam that I used in this particular filter. This is what it is. It's a two pack of foam. It's shaped to give it a bit more surface area. Just imagine how many cutouts you could get out of this. And this one's seven pound. So you've got a coarse and a medium foam in this. And this is a very big pack because that's all we've got left in the shop. But this one is fine particle matting. See it's pretty thick. It's about two inches thick which is roughly five centimeters. But you can strip it down to make it as thick or as thin as And this particular one's £10, but in the pond season, when we normally have loads of foams, we do smaller ones and they're only about £2.99 or something. And both types of the foam and the fine particle matting are available on Amazon, on eBay. There's loads of sellers do them. So they're really cheap to pick up. As well as asking you to share this video around forums, Facebook, all sorts of other social sites, I would ask you to click the like button if at this present time you're kicking yourself as to how simple that filter is. And also if you're wondering how in the holy hell you haven't seen something like that before. Thanks very much for watching.