so today we're looking at my fish tank this thing has been in use for many years and look at this
hazy cloudy water that doesn't seem to go away no matter what i do i have a canister filter i
clean it i do water changes and what's really floating around here are little bits of algae
so i'm going to get into this green killing machine i'm going to review it so i bought one
that's rated for 50 gallons or 200 liters but my tank is actually 54 gallons maybe that's not fair
look at the green water and clear water example on the side of the box we want that clear water side
it has an internal uv light with a power head so it moves its own water and the key is for it to
move that water over that ultraviolet bulb at a low enough rate for it to kill everything that's
in suspension specifically the stuff that causes the green the algae that doesn't even go into my
filter system those left pictures and right pictures on the box are identical pictures
they're just a different color filter on there but we're going to really test it says that this
thing is sold as a set and that's because they piled a bunch of these little pre-filters in here
that go on to your green killing machine and these things are washable so they're reusable
i don't think there's really a reason to have so many of them but they're included so it's
part of the unboxing here and we're going to look at everything i'm going to show you step
by step how to hook it up and also what some of the complaints have been because
i've read some other reviews i wanted to see for myself this is a 9 watt version
you can see that it had a 9 watt and a 24 watt option there quick start setup guide easy going
turn green water into clear water in days without any chemicals sounds good to me
so mechanical filtration is what i'm using but we're also going to have this ultraviolet killing
it's also supposed to sanitize your tank i don't know how all that works necessarily but
this also shows all the different models that are available there's a 9 watt a 3 watt and a 24 watt
i got the 9 probably a little undersized for a 54 gallon tank but we're going to
test it anyway see how it goes it's all sealed up here in plastic let's get that off of there
don't worry i'm not going to make you watch every step of unpackaging this thing but this
will show you what to expect it's all pretty much together silica pack there keeps things dry
more of the little packs of pre-filter here that will only stop things like plant bits
and stuff we want the small things to go through because we want them exposed to that
ultraviolet light surface we want the living organisms that are in suspension in your tank
to die and there's the power head there there's the light housing and there's
this little pre-filter piece on here comes out really easy when you put that in your tank you
want to probably keep that accessible so you can inspect it and swap it out clean it replace it
keep the big chunks out of your filter and these plugs go to the outside unit the adapter and that
sticks on the outside of your tank for the purpose of my review though i'm going to put
this on the front of the tank so we can keep an eye on it here's your ac adapter obviously it's a
12-volt system so you can't just plug it straight into the wall that's why you need this adapter
and that's it that's all the stuff how long's the cord i bet you're wondering look at that
too and there's a little periscope top there that swivels we're gonna stick that on there
that's what it looks like it just pressure fits in place and then you can turn it to any direction
that you want it did go in kind of tough but uh then of course aim it across your tank any way
you want it to go and look there's a little piece of looks almost like some kind of grease in there
but it's not it's just little bits of plastic there you go now it's in place and little
periscope part turns you can have that above the water level if you want below the water level if
you want i'm going to put it right at water level so i can see that it's moving i want to make sure
it's working some of the complaints were that these connectors on the outside actually come
apart too easy in fact they fell off just by the weight of the cord i didn't find that to
be true at all when i looked at these they snap in place really good the power section of course here
has a weather seal and then it's also got the threaded nut that goes over the top of it there
and the others look they pull apart kind of tough there's a little ring there that it clips right
onto so they must have responded to some of these early complaints that these connections were not
firm enough because they certainly are even when this thing fell off the front of the tank and hung
by those cords it did not disconnect itself anything that's going in your fish tank gets
washed off first fresh water i'm on well water so i don't have chlorine to worry about lucky me
we're gonna wash everything really good and look again at that hazy water that we're dealing with
so that's our starting point may 11th put the date on there just in case i forget
the duration of our test is going to be 17 days and it took every bit of that so i think it's a
little bit undersized but there we can see the unit inside the tank again with that pre-filter
in a convenient spot for me to look it over to see if things accumulate on it also this outside
attachment piece here that shows that it's on when it's plugged in fell off about once a week so you
want to make sure that's secured and that it is on the outside of your tank here we are looking
through the glass look at that hazy water kind of cloudy and also underneath i've plugged it into a
unit that's got a ground fault circuit interrupter and an overload protector now this is the fluval
unit that i've had in there it's an inline ultraviolet filter system which did not work
it did nothing i think the big problem with this thing is it is underpowered and it's also in line
what a pain now we've got our unit on the green lights on showing that that bulb is getting energy
and there it is like it's moving the water across the surface there you can also see there's a
bunch of debris there we're going to talk about cleaning up the surface water too while we're at
it so we're going to do two things at once and those little bits of live plants this is a live
planted tank deep 54 gallon bow front tank corner type and the movement is not too disruptive so it
moves nice and slow and that's key when we're trying to kill things with ultraviolet light
we want the water to move slow these are the filters and i use these to show how much green
is passing through this water this is the eheim skimmer 350. it's an aquarium filter
but it's just for clearing the surface because we know the critical gas exchange
happens at the surface of your tank so this is the only thing i'm adding to it here's a quick look at
the label if you want to see the details of that there'll be links down in the video description
none of these recommendations are sponsored i've not been compensated now we look at these little
filter pads we show that there is a lot of algae in suspension and that's what we're targeting
so the polishing filter pad that i'm using here that i put in this little surface camera
is a 50 micron size look at this this is after 17 days look how clear that is
that's a mono shrimp right there with eggs we're gonna have baby shrimp no we're not gonna have
any baby shrimp because they only reproduce in brackish water this is a freshwater tank and these
are live plants and these little amount of shrimp scoot all over the place and keep things clean
obviously they couldn't clear the water but i want you to notice how clear things are now look at the
detail i can get videoing the tail of this little shrimp the color variances so it definitely worked
this nail a neorite snail these are all the things i've done to keep algae under control in my tank
so there we go if you're wanting to look for animals to put in your tank to keep things
clean i put the amano shrimp and the near right snails at the top of the list because those snails
don't reproduce remember how rough the surface of the water looked before now it's nice and clear
running quietly i didn't even change that pre-filter it's got little bits of
leaves and stuff from the plants down below stuck on it but it's still working great
look at the clear water you want to look down through the top and see if your tank
cleared up like this one did that's a great example of an improvement of the water quality
here we're looking in from the side this tank is populated with cardinal tetras
some neon tetras standards and we've also got angel fish in here that are hiding in the corner
they didn't want to make an appearance but we can look through the depth of this tank
and look how clear everything is when you compare this to the way it looked at the beginning
i would call it a solid success so what do we think of it first of all this thing's only
drawing nine watts so that's nothing you can run that all the time what's a life expectancy about
six months if you leave it on full time some people say they cycle it on and off
here i change the angle a little bit to show some of these live plants on the right
the amount of shrimp keep them super clean very happy with it i would definitely recommend
this nine watt clean green killing machine as a water clarifier but i would recommend that you
upgrade it if you've got a tank this size or larger upgrade to that 24 watt version so they did
no water changes during this test we used the 9 watt kgm green killing machine cleared the surface
with the eheim scam 350 and did nothing else i would call it a satisfactory test i definitely
recommend it get yourself a green killing machine near right snails a mono shrimp and you said
eheim skimmer when your surface gets cluttered thanks for watching hope you have a great weekend