Ultimate Guide to CLEANING Your Aquarium Filter

Ladies and gentlemen, I will show you today, how to clean this Eheim external filter. And it's been sitting here, underneath this aquarium behind me, for the past seven months, without any maintenance. So I'll show you today, how to do a proper filter maintenance. Quite interesting, stay with me! Do you have an external filter? If not, we have a couple of videos, that explain to you, why should you have an external filter. Because filtration is the second most important thing in the aquarium hobby, after water parameters. So what do I have today here? I have the 120P aquarium, scaped by Luis Cardoso from Portugal. And we have two Eheim Professional 5E filters below it. How should you filter your aquarium? If you ask our good friend, the A.I.scaper, which lives in the bottom right corner of the Green Aqua website, you can find out what is the size of the filter, that is most suitable for your aquarium. Filters have two parameters, that are very important. The first one is the canister size. As you can see here, we have quite a big canister size, relative to the aquarium volume. The second most important thing about filtration is the flow rate. Why is flow rate important? It is important, because you need to keep the CO2 and the water flowing around the tank. You want the debris to be taken out into the filter, so it can clean it, it can decompose it. Ammonia is really toxic, so you don't want to have that in the water. Why do we maintain and how often do we maintain filters? I can see on this chart, that we had a complete maintenance session, which will include filter cleaning, aquarium cleaning, trimming, done by Gabor, one of the maintenance team members, on November 30th last year. So it's more than six months, since we did anything with these two filters. So if you do the regular water changes, if you have strong filtration, you'll be able to maintain your aquarium without issues. So I'm going to open these filters for the first time in six, or actually seven months. Obviously, at the beginning of the life cycle of a layout, you will clean the filter more often. Actually, both of these filters are the Eheim Professional 5E 700 filters. I'm going to work only on one. Don't do this at home! It's not very scientific, because the lily pipe is resting on the rim of the aquarium. You don't want to do that. But now you can see, how strong is the flow after six months, without filter cleaning. So let me take the app. You can see that the impeller speed, which is rotor speed in this case, if you press manual, then you can see that it's set at 75. So let me increase it to 100 and see what happens. Okay? I can already hear it, that it started to increase the... Can you hear it? It's getting stronger. It's splashing all over the place. Let's take it down to 43%. This is the minimum you can set these filters. So now you have it back even less, than we set previously. So this is the minimum that you can have. For the older filters, that do not have this option of decreasing the flow rate, which is actually decreasing the rotation speed of the impeller inside the filter, you can have this lever and you can actually partially close this lever. And you can see that the flow rate has already decreased. At the bottom of this screen, we have the degree of pollution, which is telling you, if you set it properly... I didn't set it properly from the beginning, that it is at 5%. So let me see if it's true. These filters need to be running 24x7. So you should plug it into an outlet, that has electricity all the time. Do not put filters on timer, because filter bacteria, that live in the filter, need a lot of Oxygen to work. So filter unplugged. I need to close this lever. The hose adapter is actually connecting the hoses to the filter head. The whole filter hose adapter will come up. So I'm holding this in one hand, I'm pushing the button and there you go. This is the filter adapter. You also need to remove the adapter, if you want to move the whole filter. This is the filter head, as I explained. It has four clamps. What you need to do, is you take two sides of the clamps. See? This is how you open and close the filter. An Eheim filter. Okay, so I'm opening this. Moment of truth. Thank you! I'm going to probably put... There you go! These brushes are made by Eheim, to help you with cleaning the impellers. Okay, so you've got like three of these guys here. If I stick this brush through this intake, filter intake hole, let me see where it comes out. There, see? Every time that you do a filter cleaning, clean this as well. You need to be careful. This impeller shaft is ceramic. So you can actually break it. You rotate it a little bit and then you can just take it out. And as you take it out, you can see that the shaft is coming out. This bushing is dirty, as you can see, okay? I know guys, that this is very technical. Believe me, if you watch this video, you know everything to know about the composition of the external filters and maintenance and care. And I'm going to remove the impeller now. This impeller has plastic wings. So this one goes in first and then you've got the shaft coming in, right? Okay, don't lose any of these. You can buy the whole structure together. Actually, you can buy the impeller shafts separately. This actually is the only rotating part, moving part in this filter. And with the biggest brush, I can actually go into the shaft and I can clean that. So I think we're done with the first part. I'm going to explain to you now, how to clean this. This guy right here, that comes in to the filter, goes through this to the bottom of the filter. And I can see that it's full with debris. I'm just showing to you, how clogged this filter was after six months. And it still pushed the water through like nothing. So when you open the filter, what you see is the first step of the filtration. You can see that debris and all kinds of dirty things are in there. How long would a pre-filter pad last? I think it would last you probably two, three years. Every Eheim filter has a separate filter pad product for it. This is the old one and this is the new one. And here's the thumbnail for the video. This is okay to rinse under tap water. Biological filter media, that we're gonna get to in a second, is not okay to rinse under tap water. I know this is reverse osmosis water. You could do this at home with tap water. You could carry the whole thing into the bathroom. Okay... Now let's go back to the impeller housing. And let's try to clean that as well. So you can actually see how dirty this was. So I'm actually also cleaning this. The first sealing ring, which is the chamber, the impeller housing. And then you have the filter head sealing ring. This is the big one, that goes around here, right? I could remove it, you don't have to. Just make sure that it sits perfectly in that little opening, that is made for it. And then you've got this nice little product, which is called the Eheim spray lubrication for sealing rings. If you don't lubricate the sealing rings, your filter will start leaking. Now that we're done, I'm going to reapply and put this back. Make sure that the shape matches the shape of the pad. And you can put it back. And this is how the top of the filter should look like. You don't have to make this fuss at home, okay? You can just take this whole thing into the bathroom and clean it there. You had this on the top of the last filter. And then you can take this out. And when you took it out, rotate it a little and just wait for it to drain. This is a huge amount of fine filter mesh. Below this whole thing, you have Seachem Matrix, which is a biological filter media. You can see that it's nicely cycled, because it has this deer brown color. Very important! No biological filter media should be cleaned under tap water, because there's Chlorine in most of the tap waters. This is the most precious thing, that you have in here. Not the biological filter media, Seachem Matrix in our case, but the bacteria, that lives on the surface of the different grains. I'm going to take two Eheim taps. I'm going to attach one of them to the end of the Eheim hoses. So the point is, that this should be aquarium water. And I'm going to actually shower this whole thing. You don't need to be very precise on this. You just rinse it a little bit. And remember, this box had four of these fine filter mesh layers. So I'm going to take one fine filter mesh layer, which will fit this perfectly. Let's move on to the third one. How long will the biological filter media last? This is another common question, that we get forever. Okay, so if you clean it regularly, if you preserve the surface, if you don't add chemicals to it, if you don't contaminate it, if you just keep it like this, it will last for decades. The left side filter is still running. It's okay, because you see, how much water I took out from this aquarium. It's nothing. And I don't need more water to clean it. I'm almost done. I think there's one more tray left. That is the dirtiest, because that was on the bottom. So this is the first tray after the pre-filter. Oh, look at this brown water! This is one clean canister. You don't need to clean it more. This is the hole, that will take the water after the pre-filter. It will take down to the bottom of the filter, external filter. And then, this is the third rubber ring, that we have here. This lubrication is perfectly safe for aquarium use. Filter media is clean, lubrication is done, everything is in good shape, rubber rings are in place. First of all, I'm taking the bottom one, I'm checking the cut, this part here, which has to match the other one. And I just put it at the bottom. And when we're done, just placing the top plastic on, this hole, this opening, should go onto this rubber ring. So that the seal is complete. So now the filter is reassembled. You have the smaller brush, which can go into this hole here. And then you can clean the inside. This is the impeller shaft. You can use the biggest brush to clean the blades. Now when you push this down, make sure that you don't bend it, okay? Because this can break. I'm going to clean this housing. If you hear your filter and you think it's very loud, it's because of two things. It could be some air, or some debris, caught in the impeller. Or the shaft is bent, or broken, which is like bending a shaft. You first break it before it bends. But that could be one issue. Or the blades are like cracked, or broken. Or even the... We've seen some magnets break, after 10 years of EVE high filter operations. So I'll put this in. And it's like held in place, because there's another magnet around the first magnet. And then I'll put in the impeller shaft. And it pushed it in a little bit. I could feel it, that there's the rubber ring at the bottom. So you make sure that it enters the rubber ring. And then there comes the top. You check for these little gaps here. And for these two little round things. And then you push it in, when the round things are on one side of this opening. And you rotate it just a little bit, until it closes. And then you're done. This shape should match this shape. Like so. Make sure that everything is in place. Two sides, close. And this is the way to clean a filter. But we're not done yet. I'm going to take this filter. I'm going to put it aside now. Let's put it here and let's take care of the hoses. And for that, we have a separate product, which is the Eheim filter hose cleaning brushes. This one is only suitable to clean the normal, flexible hoses. Don't use this on lily pipes, because you can actually break the glass. You have three sizes. And you push it through. And when it comes out at the other end, you will start pulling. And then you pull the brush through the whole hose. I think with that, we're done with the maintenance. I'm all wet! This is quite messy, isn't it? I've cleaned filters before. When everything is set and you have a routine, 30 minutes every 4 months, every 3 months. Perfect! Just make sure that you have the right size filter underneath your aquarium, okay? So I know there are many different kinds of filters. Even Eheim has a full range of different designs of filters. But the way that you clean them is similar. So let's install this filter into its place. Oh, the dirty hoses! I don't want to work anymore! Go on, strike! I will ask the maintenance team to do it. I'm plugging it in from the back. The filter hose adapter will go in. There you go! Put it inside, in its place. Make sure that the hoses are not broken anywhere. And then you need to take the outlet and to drain it. I release this outlet and I just bend it down, like so. So water should come out of this, like so. And then I open this. Gravity should help me. Whoa! There you go, see? I can hear that the filter is priming. So actually, you don't need to use the ultra-priming function, if you don't have one on the filter. But you have to wait until the dirty water is coming out of it. Which is actually good, because you're gonna clean the filter itself, by letting the water flow through it. Once the water comes out of it, I'll plug it in. And now the filter starts to pump the water as well. And okay, this filter is actually priming itself as well. So I'm waiting until there are no air bubbles visible in here. Okay, this is enough. I close the tap. I put this back. I open the tap. And now everything is done. If you want to know more about the Eheim line of filters, Tommy has a wonderful tutorial. You will find it here. And you will learn more about how these filters work. We'll see you next time! Bye-bye!