Pimp My Filter #39 - Aqua One Maxi 103F Internal Filter

Hello there, welcome back to another edition of Pimp My Filter and in this video we're going to be taking a look at another internal filter and this one is the Aqua One Maxi 103, I remember these from the days when I had the shop and whilst they were okay, I did find them a little bit overpowered, found that the pump sucked a hell of a lot of water through a small area and it tended to suck the little fish into it so I regarded these as a bit of a fish killer. I always thought they were reasonably made and they had a few decent fittings but I never really considered updating them or upgrading them or altering them at all at that point. I would always just kind of warn people that if you had small fish maybe don't use this particular filter but that's an obstacle we might be able to overcome with a few changes. Let me explain. I'll take it out and show you what comes with it. Okay, so we've got the main pump, two areas which contain foam, quite a good long spray bar, and a range of fittings including a venturi fitting. Okay so we can have this just with a basic outlet like that, just a straight outlet, and if we take this little rubber nipple off on the top of here that will enable us to fit this airline onto there. And this would hang outside our tank and that's got an adjustable intake to control how much air gets pulled in. So basically the water would shoot out and it would be an aerated stream of water. Or we could use this Z or S shaped fitting, push that in and attach the spray bar like that. So now our water would come out and it would come out of all these little individual holes and it would diffuse the flow. So that would be a good one if we had fish that didn't like a heavy flow. And here we've got a couple of suckers with little clips on and that would clip on the side of the tank just to secure the spray bar. But let's get all of that off. We're not going to need any of these fittings for what we're going to be doing today. Okay so as I mentioned before we've basically got A foam in each one of these sections. That's our pump. That is our main intake. It looks like it takes water from there but it actually doesn't. It's sealed inside of there. It takes it in through the bottom of here and through here and here through little slits so there isn't many places where it draws water. Which as I mentioned before, can pull little fish into it. I forgot to mention this before, but there's also a sucker on each corner of the filter to stick it on the side of the tank. And they are reasonable quality suckers as well. Right, let's get this taken apart. I'll show you what it's all about. That affects the amount of water that's taken into the pump in here, which in turn affects how much is actually able to be pumped out of the pump. We'll move that to one side. And then we've got two sections. Here have a block of foam in each of them. Two. That is basically all we have for mechanical and biological filtration. And that's a bit of a problem because this is allegedly suitable for tanks up to 100 litres. That ain't gonna hold much muck or much bacteria. Both of them are quite coarse foams. So as far as actually clearing the water goes, as far as good mechanical filtration goes, the majority of fine to medium muck is just going to fly straight through this filter and just keep circulating in the tank. So we definitely, definitely need to do something with these if we're going to improve it. So here's what I'm going to propose and remember, you don't have to take my suggestions. If you want to buy one of these and just leave it with two blocks of foam, be my guest. This is merely a suggestion. Okay, so we've got two main containers to go at, but we've also got that that fits on the bottom, our intake there. This is actually a void, so first thing I'm going to do is just slot a very coarse foam into there, like that. So that will go on the bottom. Any water that's drawn in here will hit that coarse foam first. The coarse foam is inside of there, so it won't interfere Here with whatever is going to be happening in this part of the filter. So in that part of the filter, which is the next one up, we're going to go with a coarse and medium foam because the water comes up through these holes and through the bottom there. We put coarse and medium foam like that. The majority of the water is going to hit that coarse one first, travel through it into the medium foam, up the side of here, out of these little holes and into our next section. So that is our bottom compartment done and in this section we've got holes in the bottom so we cannot really pack it out with a bio gravel without doing something else. So what I've done here I've cut a piece of carbon foam that's going in the bottom of here that will offer a little bit of chemical filtration but mostly what it'll do it'll allow me to fill this space here entirely with bio gravel for really good biological filtration. And in here we can get up to 150 grams, which really isn't much. Our top goes on, then we put the filter back together. Whoops, like so. There you go, so now we've got coarse foam, coarse foam, medium foam, carbon pad, biological filter media, pump and out. Generally the carbon pad would go last, I always like to have... chemical filtration last but in this situation it doesn't really matter. You know you're going to have all the mechanical plus a little bit more mechanical and chemical then the biological. Now other than feeling that it's a little bit heavier you cannot tell that anything's being done to this filter but we need to address those issues of the draw points here here and here. They are very small And that does create quite a draw which can suck in little weak swimming fish. So around this bottom we're just going to cut a few more holes with the dremel around here, basically anywhere where it's safe to do so around this bottom section. And that'll diffuse the flow, oh sorry, it'll diffuse the draw and it'll prevent small fish getting drawn in at this point and at these points because when that's stuck on the side of a tank, Fish can only go through that way and they can't easily turn away and swim that way because obviously you've got the side of the aquarium there. Swim down the back here and they get stuck to the back so we want most of the water to be drawn in the bottom here where the fish if they feel a draw they can just swim away from it. There's just a close-up of that bottom section. See that's the only place it draws through. I'm actually going to drill more holes through the side of here. I'm going to actually open Let's open these slits up. And then drill more holes through here. That should be enough. If you didn't have anything to cut slits in, you could drill holes in. It isn't a problem. Basically, as long as you have extra draw points in round here, it is going to help. On the inside of here, you may notice just a little lip here. And a little lip here. That is the clip that enables this to clip to the next section. So we want to be drilling holes below that. We want to keep well away from that. Or away from anywhere where it may interfere with it actually clicking into place. So really where all these fins are on here, they are easy guides. We're just going to basically go in between there. Open up all of that. Cut a few slits in there. Cut a few slits in there. Now we'll just clean it up with a good strong knife. Okay, so that's our bottom section now. So that's gonna diffuse the draw. So, you know, not all of the water's just gonna be drawn in here, trapping the fish. Should be much more controlled, much more manageable. Now, I could drill more holes in here, but I don't really want to because ultimately, when this is stuck on an aquarium, those suckers are gonna spread out and they're gonna obscure most of these intake holes on here. So I think we'll just leave it. Look at that, that has improved the draw area. Right, there we go. So externally, really the only thing you can tell we've done I cut a few extra holes in here, and that's it. Most of the work was done internally. So there you go, that is that pretty much done. That's really all we can do with a filter that works the way this one does. So we've got a decent amount of mechanical filtration, which is graded. We've got some biological media in there, albeit not very much, and we've worked on those draw issues that these particular type of filters seem to have. That's pretty much all we can do. So this one will be going back to Colin. Thank you very much Colin for sending me this one. And if you have one of these, now you know that something can be done with it. Really, Really as far as the actual tank size that this one would be suitable for. 100 litres, because of the quite high flow rate with this, which is 960 litres per hour, 100 litres is quite realistic, but obviously we've got nowhere near enough filter media in there to provide a full cycle for a tank of that size. So whilst it will help you're not going to get low nitrates from this particular one unless you use it in a very small tank and then you're going to have to turn the flow right down otherwise the fish are going to be spinning around like they're in a washing machine. The construction of these doesn't seem to have changed at all since we used to sell them many many years ago. The plastic however feels a little bit cheaper. They're still not really very well put together. And when you take this apart, there is the chance that it'll just blow apart and bits will fall all over the place. But it does go back together. And once it is together and stuck on the side of the tank, it stays stuck on the side of the tank. And it will provide a good water flow. And if you use the aeration facility, it will aerate the water as well. You know, it'll catch plenty of muck. Hopefully now it won't catch plenty of fish. And all in all, for the price that most people sell these things for, they're a reasonable buy. I would never advise anybody buying one at full retail price, but I know Aqua One often do deals with retailers where they sell things at crazy prices, which enables the retailers to put these out at like half retail price. So at half retail price, they are a decent buy. I'm a little bit underwhelmed with most internal aquarium filters, And this Aqua One. Version is no different, you know, I'm, you know, it's all right. As I say, if you can pick it up cheap, by all means, go ahead. It'll make a good backup filter as well. This one is nowhere near as impressive as the Aquis 1250 canister filter from Aqua One that I took a look at quite a long time ago. That is a cracking filter, really well made, a good filter. If you've got a big tank, in fact no, just go and look at the video. Aquis 1250, I did a one in the Pimp My Filter series. I'm not going to go into it again because it feels like every video that I'm on about like Aqua One or canister filters, I'm mentioning that particular filter. I was really impressed with that one and it can be picked up quite cheaply but obviously that's a big canister filter. This is a little internal, it's totally different. Okay so If you've got a filter you want me to take a look at, please get in touch. My email is in the video description, my phone is in the video description, and it's also in the pinned comment. Please get in touch by those ways because I don't often see video comments. Email or phone is the best way to get hold of me. In fact, phone is increasingly becoming more reliable than email because I'm really struggling to To answer all my emails in a day. Really, really struggling. If you've enjoyed this video, give it a thumbs up, share it wherever you want, and I shall see you next time. Thanks for watching. But let's get all of that off. We're not going to need any of these fittings for what we're going to be doing today because we're going to be concentrating on this, which ultimately is the most important part. That's where the foams are.