so as i continue to build out the new public aquarium i'm facing a number of challenges
specifically how am i going to get a number of these things done that i want to get done
in a unique way that is going to be useful for me but you guys haven't seen before and
i always think to myself well why don't we have something this is where things get a little
ridiculous with this video why don't we have something that you know allows us to not only
filter the aquarium water but i want to polish it i want to i want to mechanically filter it i
want to biologically filter it i also want to skim the water surface because we do not like
a lot of that you know protein buildup that can potentially happen at the top of an aquarium but i
also want to be able to use it as a gravel vacuum basically all in one filter that is incredibly
useful for so many different things so today i'm taking some of my old ideas and older videos
and mashing it up to create essentially the ultimate do-it-yourself filter that honestly
shouldn't cost you more than 20 dollars this is going to be something that i think everybody
can not only build but you should probably just have it we're going to build it first and then uh
i'm going to talk to you and about sizing it and how to scale it up to even bigger aquariums etc
and of course see it in action and wait till you see that now personally i'm building something
incredibly similar for this but what i'm going to be showing you is going to be good for anything
like up to 50 gallons in size and the one i'm building is of course going to be built
for tanks up to like 700 gallons type of
thing
and we're almost there what really triggered this video is i was on amazon the other day
and i started noticing like aquarium equipment is
getting like much more affordable than i could ever remember
and i mean aquarium pumps are now like 15 bucks if you want to do this project though you just need
a pump like this output input but the input's got to kind of be like a spout you want to stay
away from the pumps that are like this where there is no real input it's just throughout the bottom
through these slats even though it does have a top spout these work great for other purposes
but just not for this now obviously it's a water bottle and these are incredibly
scalable so you can go bigger and bigger what we're gonna do though is incredibly simple
we're gonna take this bottle that we drilled that hole into put it in the top of this powerhead
and bam the filter's almost done you've seen me do this similar to before this one's going
to be a little bit better i'm going to take some ceramic media for the biological media
and that would typically be enough for like uh you know a 30 gallon tank right there if you
don't want ceramic media go get some lava rock smash it up into small pieces it's highly porous
biological media it'll do the same thing i'm just using what i have on hand for the purpose of the
video then of some filter flush see me this use this stuff all the time hold it up boom boom done
we've got mechanical filtration we've got biological filtration we have water circulation
because this is going to go near the surface of the water it's also a surface
skimmer i'll show you how it's going to become a gravel vacuum in a second
you want to you want to scale it up and go bigger just use a different bottle this one
here probably be good for 50 gallons now of course this is going to largely depend on
the stocking of the actual aquarium your flow rates you want to go at least six times per
hour so this pump here does about 300 gallons an hour so i'd be able to go upwards of 50 gallons
uh but if i were to use this on a 50 gallon i pop this one off i popped this one on now
it's good for 50 gallons now it looks like it's not sturdy but it technically is it's holding up
all that now the slits we've cut in here should be about an inch in length anything longer and
you're wasting the bottle uh anything shorter and it's not going to properly skim or the fish will
be able to get over in top of the bottle one inch because about a half of an inch of this is going
to be above the water surface and the other half will be below okay let's see this work
no into the aquarium it'll go and plug it in
now this is going to be an exaggeration of how this filter could potentially work as you can see
the water is overflowing into the uh top portion through the top uh the slits that i cut i did it
too quickly just for the video but you kind of get the idea the slits are just too small they
need to be a little bit bigger or simply add more because what it's doing is it's sucking a lot of
air which is technically beneficial towards the uh media but then we get this problem which again
isn't even all that bad uh if i slowly slowed the pump down that will stop now you can kind of see
the surface skipping that this does it allows all the particles from the water to get through
and get filtered out through that filter floss but the fish can't go through it
this pump's probably a little too strong for my likings for this tank and i i mean the
ceramic media has a lot of trapped air in it that's the problem right now but
look how well this works so as water flows over we're getting rid of that uh protein buildup
that you'll see it's an oil slick sometimes at the top of your aquarium a lot of the times it's just
due to over feeding not enough water changes or surface movement so this will eliminate that issue
uh or at least take care of it until you have time to do your water changes and whatnot then
of course the water after being skimmed it goes through the filter floss being the water's being
polished i mean if you want to use a sponge here to make it last a little bit longer go for it even
fish are interested in it uh but this is going to remove all of the debris from the aquariums
and because we're using a filter flux is going to polish it then the water is traveling through all
of this biological media and that is biologically filtering it that's where the nitrogen cycle is
going to take place once these trapped air bubbles get out of there it's not going to look so bad but
again we're doing this live type of deal and then the water's returned and circulated throughout
the aquarium look at the flow in the tank now maintenance couldn't be easier turn the pump off
pull this pull the filter floss out toss new stuff in
and you're done that is the extent of your filter your new filters
maintenance you don't have to do it's literally the easiest i could think of
the only downside is this is an eyesore that is ugly so perhaps maybe you use uh
you know some abs pipe or hide this obviously hide this behind some plants or you know something like
that get creative to get rid of it i'd love to see what you guys do with the the fish just love
it the festivums now what about maintaining the filter itself or using it for its other purposes
like i said this is also a gravel vacuum not only is it a filter skimmer a water polisher
and a biological aquarium filter it's also going to be a gravel vac okay so we all do filtration
maintenance every once in a while we want to make sure that we're kind of cleaning the filters
a little bit of tank water
get rid of the floss take your biological media
and you want to rinse that around anyways drain it off and then your media is good to go we don't
want to use tap water or anything like that we could potentially kill the beneficial bacteria
living within this media why you got it off the tank though take some of your filter floss
jam it in there all the way to the end like so right now typically a gravel vacuum you need
to remove water you're siphoning water out of the tank maybe into a five gallon bucket
not anymore now we have a gravel vacuum so you watch this go ahead and
gravel vacuum your whole tank we're not removing water from the aquarium but we are removing all
of this waste all this uneaten food and fish waste and everything you don't really want in your tank
because it's just going to contribute to polluting it and cause you more problems down the road
once you've got everything out there you want to get out we're not going to
turn the pump off until we flip it back upside down and now you can shut it off all of that waste
now removed from your aquarium anyways back to the public aquarium to get some work done
but man not bad for 20 bucks a filter that can mechanically biologically
it can filter skim and it can gravel back i hope you guys enjoyed that project look at this
oh so many things are happening right now it's hard for me to even comprehend that
this is actually happening i hope you guys are incredibly excited just as much as i
am i gotta get upstairs and edit this video get it out to you and then i gotta get back to work
um everybody's probably wondering what's all this paint all over me or why is my
fingers cut et cetera et cetera it just you know that's what i'm like when i'm working on stuff
even when i was building this uh filter earlier i don't know if you can tell in the video but you
can see somewheres along the video i cut my finger with the scissors i can't even be using filters
or scissors but if you want to learn how to do everything that i do and you want more information
or you want the detailed uh you know the nitty gritty everything absolutely you could possibly
learn about filtration i wrote an amazing chapter in my book the ultimate do it yourself handbook
this thing uh the ultimate do-it-yourself handbook for the do-it-yourself aquarist link is in the
description if you want to pick up a copy it's got absolutely everything you could ever imagine
that you could want to build and take control of your hobby hope you guys enjoyed it and enjoyed
this video if you want more of these make sure you hit the like button as well as subscribe i
don't know where i'm getting this energy right now i'm exhausted i'll see you guys in the next video