Today, I want to talk about three aquarium filters that you can build right now
so today's topic is actually about how certain types of filters are being used in the Hobby entirely wrong and
I'm going [to] talk more so about that at the end of this video with that set
I thought it was a good idea to also incorporate the top three filters that you could literally build right now
When it comes to aquarium filtration?
There's typically a couple of main things that we focus on one is mechanical filtration and the other is biological filtration
Meaning mechanical will clear your water and polish it remove any Debris or anything that's floating in the tank and make it clear biological
Meaning that it's processing all of your fish [wastes] from ammonia to nitrite to nitrate [now] for years
I've been showing you guys how to build a massive
Array of different types of aquarium filters and for the most part a lot of them have become extremely popular today
I'm covering three of the ones that we've already built however
I want to revisit the proper ways [to] use them a lot of you guys will remember that I like to build a lot of
Filters and even equipment out of water bottles so for the first filter what we're going to do is simply cut the bottle in half
slide this on to a power head or pump of some sort that it will accommodate a bottleneck and then stuff it with
Polyester filling now if you watched my video on do-it-Yourself aquarium, Media
You'll know exactly the type of [filling] [that] I'm talking about now
[you've] got yourself a water polisher toss this in your aquarium, and it works by the pump sucking up water
Through that filling which is filtering out the fine particles in the water
Returning only polished water to your tank now the thing about this type of filter is it is just a temporary situation?
Meaning [that] you're only polishing your water for a certain reason
Maybe you just did a water change, and you stirred a lotta things up or maybe you just fed
And there's a lot of heavy eaters in your tank
Whatever the case may be you
Don't need to be running this all the time
Why well [because] after you've polished your water everything that you sucked out of your water is still
In your tank and in the water system
[you] just don't see it because it's stuck in the polyester filling meaning that this will continue to pollute your water until you remove it
So in my opinion, it should only be run from one to three [hours] whenever you need it on that same note
If you don't have a pump all you need is a water bottle cut in half with the polyester filling and then toss this on
to the end of your filter
If you have a hang on the back filter this will slide up on the intake quite nicely or if you have a canister filter
You can put your intake on this this will temporarily
Polish your water until you get it as clear as you need it to be this is by far
One of my favorite types of filters due to how easy and common it is to build one
Not to mention its usefulness the next filter. We're going to do is another type of mechanical filter however
This is going [to] be a surface skimmer meaning that we're going to skim the surface of the water and remove any build-up
Proteins or floating plants you don't want there or anything else is floating there to do. So you simply cut the top?
30% off of the bottle
Then form teeth out of the top of the bottle by simply cutting out notches now
You'll have to get used to how many notches you need as well as how wide they need to be in
Order to accommodate the type and size of pump that you have
The stronger the pump the more teeth and bigger teeth you will need once you've cut out all your teeth again
you simply take some polyester filling toss it inside of it and
Attach it to [your] pump
This goes in upside down in your [aquarium], and the brim [of] the bottle breaches the surface of the water
You'll need to [adjust] the height to make sure that you are getting some surface skimming yet
The bottle is not draining dry as the water is being skimmed
It's then filtered through this polyester filling and returned to the aquarium now
I built this a couple years ago and since then people had some people have said that they
Had issues with their fish getting stuck in the teeth are actually getting sucked down into the filter?
The solution there is easy make the teeth smaller and then take the top of the bottle that you cut off and place it on
Top meaning the fish can't get in through the top
But water can still get sucked in [through] the sides
Now when it comes to flow rates for a surface skimmer
Doesn't really matter because it doesn't take long to skim an entire surface of an aquarium regardless of the size of the pump
contrary to the water polisher where the more powerful the pump is the
Faster it will Polish the water so sizing the pumps for these types of filters all
depends on how fast you want it done now [a] surface skimmer is something that you can leave on your
Aquarium all the time, it doesn't have to be taken off however
I do suggest replacing the polyester filling as often as you can so this is one of my favorite filters as well now
Let's [move] on to the filter that prompted the reason to make this video for this one
We're going to need a water bottle as well [as] a drill. You'll also
need a suction cup or two airline and an air pump some coarse filter foam at about Thirty PPI and
some biological
filtration Media in this case
I'm using some ceramic cylinders meant for the Aquarium, Hobby
That I already had on hand however a much cheaper
and equal method is to simply crush up some lava rock like I've shown you how to do in the
Do-it-yourself filtration media video the drill bit you're going to want to use is five
millimeters in diameter that is because the airline hose is about six millimeters [in] diameter, and if we drill a five millimeter hole and
shove the
Six Millimeter airline into it
It's going to be a snug fit and stay in place start out by drilling a few holes in the top of the bottle [I]
suggest going with at least five followed by drilling a hole in the neck of the bottle
Then drill a hole in the side of the bottle last we'll drill a bunch of holes in the top of the bottle
Now it's ready to put together the first thing you're going to want to do is
Insert your suction cups these should be the type with the type of nub on the top of them so that when we insert them
Into the side of the bottle they stay secure
Then fill your bottle up with that biological media
Then place your cap back on the bottle
followed by inserting your airline hose into the side of the bottle neck
Now cut a hole in your sponge, so that the bottle cap goes Halfway down the sponge
all you have to do now is
install this into your aquarium plug your airline hose into an air pump and turn it on and that's it [as]
Air is pumped into the bottle the air will rise through the bottle causing suction behind it that
suction is pulling water through your bottle cap, but first it goes through the sponge where it's
Mechanically filtered as the air rises up through your ceramic media it is
biologically filtered and then finally released through the holes at the top
Where the water is fully filtered now these bubbles that are rising?
Hit the water surface and burst this bursting action causes surface
agitation which Aids in Oxygen exchange at the surface
Typically once a week you'll want to take your sponge off and give it a quick few squeezes in old aquarium water
Usually when you're doing your water changes now on to why I made this video in the first place
Why am I using this filter and telling you to use this one?
Instead of using this fluidized filter which I actually did videos on one day apart a few days ago
Back then I guess you could say I didn't care when the videos went up or how long they were how they were Done I
Just really enjoyed sharing projects
I had zero idea how popular the fluidized bottle filter would become with that said I feel it's my responsibility
To basically tell you that you're doing it wrong
Before we move on though. I guess I should first explain. [what] a fluidized filter is and how they work
Potentially showing why they becomes popular, okay one call
This is the fluid eyes media that you would typically use in one of these and it is a neutrally buoyant
Material meaning that it floats however once it once it accumulates any sort of extra weight it sings to become suspended in the water
For example [if] Bacteria start to inhibit this media it will become
Suspended in the water column making it extremely easy to fluidize
Making it an ideal media for fluidized filters now this became most popular and waste [treatments] and water treatment plants and then the Koi
Hobby finally making it to the aquarium Hobby in recent years the reason why it's been so successful
Is that it is basically a zero maintenance type of media as this becomes fluidized
and starts moving [around]?
Bacteria inhibited and because it's constantly moving around all of the older Bacteria is knocked off leaving only the youngest and most
efficient Bacteria behind it also has a protected inside where
Bacteria and microorganisms can live out their life cycle within it essentially
It's a highly efficient filter now at the end although
I made a video on this my explained how to size it to your aquarium. I explained how much media you will need
You'll notice that I actually never used one on my personal aquariums, and I'll get to the reason in a minute
I find that these became more and more popular [over] the years
And I certainly attributed to that
Popularity due to the fact that not [only] did my video become the most popular video of all time on these filters
but I actually
Incorporated it into a lot of my other builds building it into different types of sumps all-in-one filters Barrel filters
Filling it into large [sumps] and those videos went on to get millions of views so you might see a video of mine that got
1.5 million views, but if you incorporate all the other videos that I made showcasing this method of filtration
We are approaching 10 million views in total. So why did those other filters matter well?
I think what happened was a lot of people seen the filters that I was building on a larger scale they seen the pros and
Cons to it they seen the tanks and the fish that [I] was supporting with it, and they wanted [to] have something like [that] on
and they've seen the smaller version of it thinking that they're going to get all the benefits that Joey got and
have a neat looking filter in their aquariums if they build it in this manner and a lot of people had success with it [a]
Lot of people built them and put them on esTablish tanks saying that their filtration is working great
Meanwhile the tank was probably already established in cycle, then this was doing literally very little in
Fact the sponge that you put on the bottom of it has a higher filtering capacity than this
That is why I made this video
I want to explain why you probably shouldn't build this and you should
build this let's first talk about the filter Media's capacity or its filtering capacity a
leader of [K-1] calmness can support approximately 3 grams of feeding
Meaning that if you feed your fish [3] grams of say 40% protein food
You only need about 1 liter of Media when that will be able to handle that type of feeding within 24 hours?
But [when] you build it into a little bottle this isn't a liter
Since you have to stock it at approximately 60% media to 40% water you're only getting about a quarter of a liter in here
So that 3 grams of feeding is now knocked down to almost a half a gram of food every 24 [hours]
And that's something that a lot of people just simply do not understand to put that into perspective
We have the exact same size filter here yet
We can fill this all the way to the top with ceramic Media which has a massive surface area and works great [for]
submerged filters like this
Again, Lava Rock would do the same job
So does this equal this?
Absolutely, not you would need six of these to equal one of these and you're not going to tell me that you're going to have
Six of these in your aquarium, but maybe you want to put it in a [2-liter] bottle well
You're going to need three of these to equal one of these
if you haven't guessed its submerged media can support a bio load six times greater than
Fluidized media, so why do I use [it] on big tanks though? Well?
That's where it's real potential comes into play of course you can fluidize it
And it will do a good [job] in these little water bottles, but [its] efficiency is entirely wasted
Not going to support any sort of real
Aquarium sizes with these again the sponge that you're putting on them is probably what's supporting your tank?
and [then] [before] you know [it] everybody's got a video on the fluidized filter in a bottle and
it becomes even more popular for all of the wrong reasons [in] my
[opinion] it became popular because it looks cool and it gets a lot of views on YouTube
It also has a lot of selling Factors, but those factors don't actually really apply to a little water bottle now
I don't want to come across like I'm against cable on called [Miss] Media or fluidized filters in General in fact
Here's 100 liters of it right now
This is for a filter that. I'm working on I
believe in Fluidized filters when they're properly applied in the right application and
That is the big problem. It's a smaller fluidized bottle filter is simply trending for all of the wrong reasons
[now] there's a butterfly effect to everything evolution aqua the company that makes K1 coldness
Came out with a new media called K1 micro. Which is like half the size of K1, and that's in Direct [response]
To the popularity on YouTube and the videos that are [being] created on these I don't care if it's smaller
It's still not going to be worth [your] time in these bottles
[so] let's say this K1 micro can support twice a bio load as the K1 so in order to replace this 500 milliliter bottle of
Ceramic media instead of having six of these you'll only need three of these or you'll only need two of these
Still would you rather have one of these in your tank or [a] couple of these?
The only real benefit that you're going to get in these bottle type settings
Is that it's [self-cleaning], but at such a small level that them self-cleaning is just really pointless
It's going to take you less than [five] minutes every six months to a year to empty this out and rinse it in tank water
Both still get a sponge both of these sponges still need to be rinsed equal amounts of time
So go out buy yourself a bag of barbecue Lava rock
Crush up about 50 cents worth and toss it in the bottle [you] [now]
Have a filter much more biologically capable than the fluidized filter
And you're only paying [$1] for this the other downside to these becoming popular is that the price [of] this k 1 is?
skyrocketed for example if I go on ebay, and if I want to buy a liter of this
I'm looking at anywheres from 8 to 12 dollars
Meanwhile for a hundred liters a Few years ago
I paid $200 meaning that there's been a 600 percent increase in pricing
Is that because a few years have passed well everything rises in price over time?
but a 600 percent increase is simply just
Selfish sellers taking advantage of a trending topic and I guess I should end the video like this
I also feel it's my [responsibility] to an extent to kind of put a stop to these fluidized bottles anyways
Hope that you guys enjoyed [today's] video
If not join me next Thursday where I will have something different for you
And if you can't wait till then I'll be back this Sunday with a new do-it [yourself] aquarium project