Pimp My Filter #62 - Jebao 404 Canister Filter Upgrade

Hello there, welcome back to another edition of Pimp My Filter and in this video we're going to be taking a look at the Eheim Professional 2 model number... Hold on, it's not an Eheim. It looks damn like one though. Okay, ignore my silliness there. This is actually the Jibao model 404 canister filter. It's a pretty good size and if you're familiar with the Eheim series 2 it pretty much looks exactly the same. We've got the big priming button on the top there. We've got some nice click fit connectors there of a reasonable diameter. We've got the familiar four clips on the side and we've got a gap of about that much under the trays there. Now I don't actually know how many trays are in this so let's get it taken apart see how it works and see what can be done to make it more efficient. Lovely big in and out there that's probably about an inch internal diameter that's really really good. But when it comes in and enters our filter and goes down this pipe it's probably near a half an inch. That's going to restrict the flow straight away so that's not a very good start. It'll still get a decent flow coming in but you can see the difference there. Look at that if that size was maintained down there all the way down this pipe to the bottom you wouldn't get any restriction in the flow or at least you wouldn't get as much restriction in the flow. So water comes in Through here, down, all the way to the bottom of the filter, rises back up through our trays, and then gets sucked out by the pump and returned to the tank. That's how 90% of canister filters work. Okay, I better keep a hold of that seal, I don't want to lose that. We've got a familiar plate on the top of there, and in here we've got one, two, three, four trays. Very good. And as you can see we've got a lot of usable space in the bottom which we can fill with primary settlement media. We've basically got up to the top of these little fins here which support the bottom tray so we've probably got a good two inches in there that we can fill with usable primary settlement media. So straight away in there I'm going to put about a litre of ceramic rings. These are the things you see a lot of the guys on YouTube raving about and how marvelous they are. Just a smooth cheap ceramic ring. Not really any good for supporting bacteria, but they are very good to be used in the bottom, where it's going to be exceptionally mucky. And when these fill up that bottom area, these will really help to catch heavy muck, which would otherwise just go straight in here and then rise up and hit our foams in the bottom tray. So adding these can greatly extend the times between maintenance on these sorts of filters. Room for more, so let's add more. And these ones that we've just added in there are actually a much better grade. These ones are out of a Fluval filter as far as I know, but again, they're just a ceramic media, very dense. Much of the internal structure isn't available for bacteria. In there, to catch muck, they do a cracking job. I'll just check that this will sit on top of those support fins okay. Yes, it does indeed. We might be able to get another half a dozen rings in there, but I'm gonna leave it as it is. Because there's quite a lot in there, that's going to catch a nation of muck. So now, we need to set this bottom tray up. Okay, now in the bottom of there, you don't have to use ceramic rings. If you've got those awful plastic balls that sometimes come with filters, just use them in there. Use some old media, just use anything. As long as it fills out that area, and it can trap muck or slow the flow down that's coming in from the tank, that is going to settle out muck very, very well. Bottom tray, coarse, medium, fine pad, that's all we need in there. Although it is fairly shallow, should be able to get all of our three important parts in there, which is coarse pad, just a pond pad, replacement pond foam. Followed by a medium density pad, again, just for pond use. Well, not just for pond use, but primarily sold for pond use. You can buy these cheaply, I've got them on my website, link in the video description. Or you can get them all over the place online. They are more common in the UK and Europe than they are in the US or other parts of the world. But you can still get these on eBay and also on Amazon as well. If I can find any, I'll put them in the video description for you guys abroad. Of course, then medium, and then fine. Again, you can get fine pads all over the place. Go for the ones that are sold for pond use, because you get more for less money. And with regard to the bumpy bits on these foams, they want to be facing down. So when the water comes up, it hits the maximum surface area first. Doesn't matter if you can only get flat ones, just put flat ones in. I prefer these ones because when you put them together, Like that not only do you get the water hitting maximum surface area then maximum surface area but the voids that are created in here trap a hell of a lot of muck so it basically just extends your maintenance time or the time between maintenance that's what it's all about. It's just about trapping as much muck and allowing the filter to work as efficiently as possible for as long as possible before you need to pull it apart and clean it. Basically, all we're trying to do when we're setting the filters up, like I'm showing you in these videos, is make them more efficient, allow them to support more fish, allow them to process more waste, and therefore enable you to keep fish happier for longer in healthier water, and not have you looking inside of here every week to two weeks to clean it out. I mean, one of these on a tank should go... Easily a month before you need to check it, possibly six months if you're oversizing this filter for your tank, which I always advise doing because it's always better to have a bigger filter to have that filtering capacity and not need it than need it and not have it, which is the case for 95% of fish keepers. Now with regard to cutting the foam to go over this pipe here, I'm not going to try and cut a perfectly round hole in here. I'm basically just putting that on there, feeling around so I can feel the pipe. Sticking the scissors through and then cutting a star shape in there. When we slot that over, that'll allow the pipe to come up through the foam, just like that. If you try and cut a perfect round hole, the chances are, like me, you'll make balls of it and it'll be too big. And that's no good. Always better to have the foams being a nice tight fit. I'm actually talking of a nice tight fit. That's pretty much filled this bloomin' tray. It might squash down though. I'll cut this out, try and put it in there. We don't want the foam's too compressed but if it's squashed down a little bit it's still okay. And with regard to the fine pad obviously we need to cut a hole in there of some sort. Slip the scissors through, another star shape and then we can add this one to our tree as well. Yeah that's not too bad. At the minute it's sticking up a little bit above there. It's not going to take much compression to get it down to the level of the height of our tray. So that's going to work, but two inches is really the bare minimum for a size of a tray. Okay, so we'll drop that one into our filter. That one's done. Now all we need is one, two, three trays of media. And as normal, for these types of filters, we're going to go with the BioHome Ultimate. You can use whatever filter media you want, but as always, we're looking to achieve a full cycle. That's the processing of ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, so we're going with the BioHome Ultimate. If you don't want to use that, the BioHome Mini Ultra is pretty much, well, it is exactly the same media, but it just hasn't got the added trace elements that are found in the Ultimate. So that is another choice. It's a slightly cheaper one and ultimately it will do the same job. But the BioHome Ultimate will set up faster because of those trace elements which are basically used as a catalyst by the bacteria. So those trace elements don't leave the filter media but they're used in biological processes by the bacteria. It's a simple but difficult to explain process. Right, I've just noticed on this bottom tray There's actually a rubber seal that goes all the way around it, and I think what that's for is to stop any bypass, so when the water's coming up, if your foams are not sitting perfect, or this isn't sitting perfectly on top of that other tray, the water has to go through the trays, it can't get up the sides, and if that is what that is for, that's a nice touch. I like that, because you want all of that muck that's coming from the tank to be held in the bottom part of your filter. Unfortunately I don't have the instruction manual for this filter and I can't find out anything online regarding this seal so I'm not exactly sure which tray it should be on. Should it be on the top? Should it be on the bottom? What I'm going to do is put it on the bottom tray that has our foams in, so no water can get up the side of there. It's forced to go through all the foams. After that, it doesn't really matter if there's any sort of bypass, because ultimately it's all going to go through our filter media. So that's where I'm going to put it. To save me emptying those foams out and swapping it over, I'm literally just going to put that on there. That's definitely designed to sit under the lip of this. basket or tray. That's good. That should ensure that all of the muck and the water is forced through our foams and fine pad. Yeah, and that actually makes it a nice tight fit in there. So that's going to make sure that there's no bypass at all. Everything's forced through the foams and the fine pad. I can only assume that's where that ring is meant to go. That is a cracking Three trays, each one holding 1.5 kilos of Biohome Ultimate. And 1.5 kilos is approximately 3 pound for you guys in the US. So that makes a total of 4.5 kilos of media, which is pretty good. That's more than the hell of a lot of filters this size will take. And again, for you guys in the US, 4.5 kilos is approximately 9 pounds. And just like the Eheims, the main body of this filter is see-through. So you can see if the trays are fitting together properly. It's always worth checking that they are fitting together properly before you put the top on. And then you know there's going to be no bypass. Yes, they all seem to be fitting together nicely. So we can put that on. And that just stops any parts of the filter media that may happen to get smashed off from being sucked up into the pump. Put that rubber seal back on top of there and we're good to go. Now, I've never actually known any muck get sucked up and damage the pump. But the good thing is if this gets tipped over This plastic grid on the top will stop any media from being sucked up into the pump. So it's really there in case of this being tipped over. Under ordinary circumstances if you didn't have that on it wouldn't really matter. The filter media is heavy it's not going to get sucked up into the pump. Enough of me rambling on let's get the top put on. Three and four and we've got a fully upgraded filter. Which now weighs a hell of a lot more than it did when it arrived to me because it did arrive empty and it's probably a little bit late for this but I really should thank Darren for sending me this up. I actually thought it was another Boyu filter because I get mixed up with Jibao and Boyu, they're both Chinese brands you know and I did a Boyu EF25 filter in a previous video a while back and it was absolutely awful. I thought this was from the same manufacturer so I initially said no, I don't want to look at another one of those Boyu filters. But then when I realised it was Jibao I got back in touch with them and said ah yeah, I will have a look at one of those, I looked them up on the internet, they did look very much like the Eheim and you can tell that's what it's been modelled on. They seem to have done a good job, the construction quality is fine, I don't know what the pipes are like, they didn't arrive with it, but it's got a flow rate of about 1250 litres per hour That again is similar to the Eheims, holds a lot of media, you can see through the sides, you've got that all-important space in the bottom to trap the heavy muck which as you know I really like to see in a canister filter and overall I really like this one and the price of it is exceptionally cheap as well. Time for some facts and figures from the manufacturer. I actually got the flow rate wrong. This is how bad my memory is. The flow rate's actually 1200 litres per hour. So I wasn't far off. And that is approximately 316 US gallons per hour. That's a reasonable flow rate. Unlike other manufacturers, Jibao don't actually say this is suitable for aquariums between 200 and 400 litres or up to 600 litres or up to 500 litres or whatever. They simply say, fit for 100. to 150 centimeters aquarium. Again for you guys in the US 100 centimeters is a meter which is just over three feet and 150 centimeters is around about five feet so in effect they're saying this filter will be suitable for a tank between three feet wide and five feet wide. I'm not sure that that is a better way than just saying look it's suitable for tanks up to 500 liters or 300 liters Because tanks come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Now the height is obviously going to make a difference. The measurement back to front of your aquarium is obviously going to make a difference as well. So for instance, if you've got a five foot tank that's 12 inches from front to back, this would more than likely be big enough for that tank. But if you've got one that's 18 inches from front to back, that is going to have 50% more volume. It's going to have 50% more water in there and probably going to have 50% more fish. So again that's not a very good way to size a filter. If you've watched any of my previous videos you'll know that our size filter is based on how much media they'll fit in there. Because we know how much media is needed to provide a full cycle for a normal stock and also for a heavy stock that enables us to say this one holds 4.5 kilos or 9 pounds of media. Therefore, 4.5 kilos should see you achieve a full cycle for about 450 litres, or about 118 US gallons for a normally stocked tropical community tank. Or, if it was a heavily stocked tank you were fitting this on, you could halve that 450 litres down to 225 litres. Or... 59 US gallons. So for a heavily stocked tank, roughly 59 US gallons or 225 litres. And when I say a heavily stocked tank, I mean something like a goldfish tank, a predator tank, a cichlid tank, like a Malawi tank or something like that, or a marine tank. So it still should achieve a full cycle in quite a big aquarium. So I like to compare the filters that I'm showing in any particular video to ones I've done previously. This one, holding 4.5 kilos of media, is a little bit short of what we managed to get in an FX6 and also in the Hydor 600. But it's a little bit more than we managed to get in the Aqua One Aquas 1250. However, it's cheaper than any of those, so it is a good filter for the price. Check it out, I'll put the link to it in the video description and if you've got one you want me to take a look at to feature in this series, by all means, either send me an email or phone me up. Both those details are in the video description and also in the pinned comment. Thanks for watching, see you next time.