Emergency Aquarium Filtration and Nitrate Reactor Aquarium Filters You Can Build Easily

Hi there welcome back to another sunny beautiful day in northern England. Today I'm going to be showing you two different filters that you can make yourself either for permanent use or emergency use. And with regard to the emergency side of things the little USB water pumps and USB air pumps are very handy things to have around just in case the main pump breaks down in your aquarium and you can't get to fix it. These are just very simple things, exceptionally low power consumption. You can just plug them in and help to keep the system running whilst you get the main thing fixed. But although they're small, they can run decent size filters as you'll see in a moment. Now if anybody saw a recent video I put out on this channel about a solar powered wildlife pond filter or water butt filter, you'll probably recognize this. This is basically just a slightly smaller version of what I What I showed there. It uses a 4-inch pipe. This pipe is classed as a solvent pipe, but push-fit pipe would do. And the 4 inches gives us a decent surface area here and a decent surface area here where the water's drawn in. It also allows us enough space to be able to get our hand in and pull the stuff out or maintain the pump. And the pump is powered by a USB. So we've got a piece of pipe approximately nine inches long maybe and in each end we've got a coarse pad cut to fit a medium pad it's a nice tight fit that one and then hopefully you can see in there we've got approximately a kilo of bio gravel and if I get my t-shirt as a background you may be able to see that the pump is just sitting on top of that bag of media. So the pump draws water through each end through the media and it spits it back out to our tank or our water boat or our wildlife pond. There's the media, quite a bit of it, and there's our pump. Tiny little USB pump. I think this one's rated for about 200 liters per hour which is oh god 50 50 or 52 US gallons per hour. A very small pump because it's got a very small power consumption. And this particular model is adjustable, so you can raise or lower the flow. If you've got an aquarium and you have the flow set at the lowest setting, something like this, it would make an effective nitrate filter because the water inside of here would actually be pretty deoxygenated because it's moving so slowly. And then obviously into that, if you wanted to use it as a nitrate filter, the more porous the media was, anaerobic bacteria it will support but for the purpose of this demonstration I just have the pump set on maximum output just so you can hopefully see a little bit of water flow once I plug it in. So there you go that just fits in there perfectly so let's drop it in. Unfortunately because the sun's just gone in I'm going to demonstrate the battery backup power supply first because obviously that doesn't need direct sunlight although this particular pack was I was charged using direct sunlight. Through a solar panel. Now it's a very well in-e-you power pack. I've got loads of these. Most of the ones I've got are 10,000 milliamps. And I've got one, my wife's got, well I've got two or three in various packs and so on. My wife's got one, my daughter's got one, my son's got one. Plus there's probably a few that we've forgotten about lying around the place. But this one is a 20,000 milliamp hour. And really getting this thing going and keeping it going is just as simple. Plugging that USB in, pump comes on, and it'll stay on until this battery is drained. I'll put details of the battery, well, everything that I've discussed in the day, but more specifically in this case, the battery and the pump in the video description, so if you're mathematically minded, you should be able to work out just how long that pump will run. But it will be a hell of a long time, and it'll be even longer if you connect this to your battery pack, And then your battery pack input. to a solar panel and have your solar panel outside feeding in hopefully you can see the water moving there from the flow but i'll just lift this up so you can see how much water it's pumping that's not bad from such a tiny little pump and in an emergency situation that is going to keep your tank sweet until you can sort out your main canister filter or your sump or your pump or whatever it is that's gone wrong and of course you don't have to fill this with new media you can drag all the old media out of your existing filter Cram it into here and just keep that running, keep it alive, or you could get some mesh bags, put all your old media into the mesh bags and just hang it in the flow so that the water being sucked in through this filter was being spat out over your filter media, keeping it fed with the ammonia and nitrite and nitrate and keeping it alive. Looks like we're just about to get a break in the clouds, so I'll just quickly show you this. This is a 5 watt folding solar panel. I think I got this one on eBay, but they're all over Amazon as well. They're not particularly expensive and even something this big is powerful enough to power this little pump as I shall demonstrate, providing we have enough sun. Now we haven't got direct sunlight at the minute, it's still reasonably bright but there isn't direct sunlight. I'm sure this will work but we'll plug it in, angle it towards the sun, nothing happens. So We'll go for a bigger solar panel. Hopefully this should work, even if there isn't direct sunlight on it. This one is a 20-watt folding solar panel. It's quite handy, this one, as well, because it's got a pouch in there. I've got a 10,000 milliamp slimline battery in there, so that's always charged up, just in case there's no sun. And as you can see, that one is much bigger. That's 20-watt. Oh, hey-o, here we go. I was just about to start connecting that one, and the pump's just started up, being powered by our little 5-watt folding solar panel. So that's just another way to run this little pump. I'll disconnect that and we'll connect the 20 watt solar panel. I think the sun's just about to go in again. Yep, it's working. Good. And this panel has actually got a little distributor box there with two USB outlets. So from this panel, you could run two appliances. So you could have a little water pump and maybe there's a little air pump going at the same time. Or you could have one of your US outlets going to a pump to keep your tank going or to keep your pond or whatever going. And you could have the other USB outlets going to charge your battery for later in the day when the sun goes in and you can't run the system on solar. It's a pretty versatile system. Now I was looking for these the other day online and I couldn't see many 20 watt ones. They all seem to be 28 watt now. And I did buy this one a long time ago. Maybe it's because they're more efficient now. Similar size ones produce 28 watts of power. I'm not sure. But the link I put in the video description will probably be to a 28 watt one. So it will be better and more efficient than this. Now this sort of filter will also run from an air pump. There's a couple of different types of air pump to show you here, again powered by USB, so this one would just hang on the back of your tank, there's your USB input, that gherkin looking thing is your air pump, it's quite a good design actually, there's your airline coming off it, and a little air stone, just drop that in, it's never perfect weather when I film, you know if it's sunny it's generally windy which cocks up the sound, or if it's a calm day it's usually dull, so I couldn't really demonstrate these panels, Nothing is perfect but try that. Oh yeah. Even with heavy cloud the 20 watt panel is delivering quite a lot of air there. See if I can put a black background on it so you can see the air bubbles better. That's a decent output. Certainly enough to run that little filter and it's definitely enough to run the next filter that I'm going to show you. But before I show you the next filter I'll just quickly show you this. This is quite a novelty sort of an item. It's An air pump that's designed for keeping live bait for fishing alive, you basically clip this on the side of a bucket, you would angle your solar panel towards the sun and that would not only power an airline through the line here, so once that's connected it would power your air stone, let's just see, it does have an on-off switch, again we'll just put that there so you can So you can see the bubbles. So, not only does it power the Airstone, but it also charges a... 18650 battery inside of here I think it's a 2500 milliamp one although it can be swapped out for something up to a 3200 milliamp one and an 18650 18650 and an 18650 battery is what you would commonly find in little flashlights so they're readily available. You can run this just on the the battery so you can take this whole lot inside or you could run it outside Run it on the solar and that's what it looks like inside. There's your electrical gubbins, there's your air pump and there's your storage battery. As you can see you can just pop the battery out if you just wanted to swap the battery over and I might have said 3200 milliamp battery before but I think some of the bigger capacity 18650 batteries are actually 3400 milliamps. I could be wrong on that though, I'm making this from memory. Now this thing is actually designed to sit outside as well. It's got a rubber seal that goes all the way around there. Once you fix that down, it can just sit outside. Now I've shown you a hybrid air pump, which also has the solar and the battery backup. May as well show you a hybrid battery pack. This one has got a solar panel here, so it trickle charges this 26,000 milliamp battery. It's a pretty heavy duty substantial sort of battery. It can also be charged from the mains as well or by other means like a solar panel. This one has got multiple outlets, two outlets. One is your ordinary USB and one is a quick charge 3.0. So if you're running something with a little bit more draw just plug it into the 3.0. That's a pretty robust sort of unit. These are available all over the internet as well. I won't bother connecting it up because you'll just see it running and it's exactly the same as it running off the smaller ones or off the solar panel. I'll get this filter out and then I'll show you the other one because I think the other one is actually, well, it's a nicer design and it takes up a lot less space in the tank. Okay, so this one is made using the same 4-inch pipe, but it's got a cap on. This is actually classed as a blanking end. As you can see, it slots over the 4-inch pipe. Hype. I've cut. All the way around the bottom, I just did that using a circular saw, you could use a jigsaw, you could use a hand saw, you could use a dremel, you could drill holes around there, you could just do whatever it takes just to drill some sort of holes around here so the water gets drawn in. As you can see, we've got the coarse foam in the bottom, and when that sits on the bottom of your tank, You've got a little bit of a void under there, so all these holes help to drag the water in and feed it up against the bumpy side of the foam, which is where your biggest surface area is. So, in a similar fashion to the last filter, we've got coarse and then medium. Then we've got a bag of bio gravel again. I think there's maybe about 700 grams in there. Obviously, you could fit more than that in if you made this thing taller. But I didn't want it too tall because this tank is pretty small. And then the last thing we've got in there in the way of filtration is one of those. That is an ammonia pad. So this is a real emergency setup. You know, if you've had your tank go off overnight, you notice the next morning that the fish are gasping. Quickly just put this thing together. Watt your ammonia pad in, it'll just draw in and lock in all the ammonia and that will help to save the fish. It's after all of the filtration because that gives your bacteria and all that sort of thing first go at the ammonia. So as the water gets drawn up from the bottom goes through coarse and then medium through your filter media and then through your pad then to the pump and then it gets spat out through these two different outlets which is basically just the tee piece back to your tank. A very simple setup. Now with regard to the pads, currently you can get an ammonia pad, a nitrate pad, a phosphate pad, you can get carbon in little pads like this, I'll put the link to them in the video description. So that top comes off, and then hopefully you can see I've just put a slit down there, that enables the cable to go through there, and then when we put the top down, we've just got a tiny little hole for the cable to come out. And we've just got exactly the same model of pump as we showed in the last filter. Just make sure it's set to maximum. Yes, it is. And this would actually be a cracking filter just to set up in the corner of your tank if you wanted to reduce the nitrate. Just set this to the lowest setting. Pack that full of good media and you've got a pretty effective nitrate filter. So in this filter, the pump just sits bang up to the top of there. The outlet has a little bit of airline attached to a T piece. And that's pretty solidly attached. But if you did want to deassemble it, You just take the pipe off, pull your pump out, service your pump and then stick it back together like so. It takes seconds and if anybody's thinking of making one of these I got that to be the right length just by putting the cap on, drawing around with a permanent marker and then going a little bit beyond the line. Just enough room to get the cable out and secure it down with the top. So to put this back together we'll just put the cap on, stick our pad in, And the pad actually fits perfectly into this four-inch pipe. It's a really, really good fit. Filter media in, our medium pad, and then our coarse pad. And then when that's flipped upside down, we're ready to put it in the tank. Bear in mind that if I take my hand off here, that is likely just to drop out the bottom. So you do have to support that while you're lifting it in and out of the tank. There you go. It's running. Spot on. And hopefully you can see that the water's going around. It's actually delivering quite a good turnover pattern. just bring the camera in. I'll just take a little bit of water out of there hopefully you'll be able to see the ripples. Hopefully you can see the water coming out each one of those outlets. Of course you can just go with one outlet if you wanted to but I went with two. Just like the other filter that'll run for as long as you need it to or as long as this battery will last or if you're running it from the solar as long as the sun shines way high no problem. It's got to be pretty dark, to be honest with you, for a panel that sort of size, not to run a little pump like this, or indeed a little air pump. As far as running it with an air pump goes, instead of having your water pump at the top, you would just have your airline fed in through the side, just exactly the same, with an air stone at the top. As the air bubbles come up, they displace the water, comes out of the top, and the water that is then flowing around the tank gets drawn in to the bottom. Pushed up or drawn up through the filter, so it just continues around like that. Yeah, it's going to work better if we take the T-piece off. Again, I'll just bring the camera in. See that's producing quite a lot of air. Obviously, as the air is being ejected out of here, it's displacing the water in here, and the water's being dragged in the bottom, drawn up, and then spat out the top. A very posh, air-driven filter, that one. So there you go. Some extremely useful gear to have on hand, just in case. Okay, plus. Two very simple filters to make and as far as this four inch pipe goes if you go to any building site and just look in the skip they'll have off cuts of this more than you'll ever need and as I mentioned at the start it doesn't matter if it's the push fit type of pipe or the solvent type of pipe as long as you get the appropriate blank end to go on the top It's all good, and I mean with this filter here, you don't even need any ends because your ends are effectively just the foams that you push in. So the cost of these filters is next to nothing, and also the running costs, as far as the power consumption, is exceptionally low as well. So you might want to consider making something like this if you've got a fish house. This holds a hell of a lot of media, it doesn't take up much space in the tank. It doesn't cost much to run, and if you've got 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 tanks, having a little USB pump running each one of these filters means that you're going to be consuming hardly any electricity. And with the cost of electric now, that's a real consideration. If you found this video useful, give it a thumbs up. Share it wherever you want, because I know the algorithms do not help my channel. So I kind of rely on you guys to get the word out, you know. I'm not on Facebook or any of that sort of nonsense, so if you could share it, if you thought it was useful, that is very much appreciated. And if you're interested in any of the gear that I've shown, it'll all be linked to in the video description, as always. Thanks very much for watching, I'll see you in the next video.