Pimp My Filter #28 - All Pond Solutions 1000EF / SunSun HW 302 Canister 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 a filter that is very very popular on both sides of the Atlantic and in fact all around the world. This is the All Pond Solutions 1000 EF And there's a variant with a UV light in, which is called SunSun 302B. also known as SunSun 302. All those different names basically describe the same filter. So when I see people online arguing about the All Pond Solutions filters being better than the SunSun filters, or vice versa, I do get a chuckle out of that because they are exactly the same filters, just marketed under different names. Now I'll probably cover the other two variants of this filter in future videos. But I'll just give you a few facts and figures about this one. This one pumps 1,000 litres per hour, or approximately 264 US gallons per hour. Remember, that is the maximum middle pump at zero head. By the time you get all the pipes and all the media and foams and everything in, you can normally halve that. And All Pond Solutions, or SunSun, say it'll be suitable for tanks up to 400 litres. Or 104 US gallons. I'll go into detail about the other filters in specific videos, but the setup for the 1000 EF, the 1400 EF and the 2000 EF will be the same. So this is the 1000. If you've got a 1400 or a 2000, the setup will be the same, but you'll just need more media for the bigger filters. Same with the SunSuns. I think there's a 303 and a 304, which are the bigger models. So the layout of the foams and the layout of the media will be the same. I'll put extra details in the video description and in the pinned comment, so if you want to know how much media you need for those specific filters, look down there. My contact details are down there as well, as well as links to useful videos etc. Let's get this one out, take a look what's in it and see what we can do. Okay we've got a normal looking canister filter. Big primer button on the top, we've got it in and out and we've got four clasps which keep the lid on. Pump head in here, that's our primer, basically just creates a vacuum, just draw the water through the system. That one is our in-pipe which marries up with all the holes in the trays, water goes down to the bottom and then it flows up through the trays, so all our mechanical media needs to be in the bottom. All our biological needs to be in the tub. Let's have a closer look at exactly what is in here. Okay now as I mentioned before water goes down here all the way through this pipe into the bottom and rises up through our trays. So instantly we know that this polishing pad isn't in the right place. We have it there all it's going to do is concentrate muck behind that in our filter media which isn't good so we can take that out. And in here we've got a bag of carbon. That actually is the right place for the carbon. Generally you'd use the chemical media last, so that's what the water's going to hit last. But for this setup we're not actually going to be using that. Next tray down we've got another one of those pads. They're actually quite nice quality pads, which is great because it saves me cutting any of these. So we'll keep those. And then we've got quite a good quality sintered glass ring. I do actually quite like these. You know, as far as the quality of filter media goes, these aren't bad. But unfortunately, they've got this huge flaw, which is basically the hole through the middle. That means that as far as supporting anaerobic bacteria goes, you've only got a tiny little bit of media here. So you're going to have highly oxygenated conditions which isn't going to lend itself to anaerobic bacteria. So basically this is pretty much all aerobic. Great for ammonia and nitrite processing, not good for nitrate processing. This filter will basically be a nitrate factory so that can go out. And then in our very bottom tray we've got a few plastic balls. And whilst they're no good as a biological media Media, they will trap a bit of muck. Unfortunately they're a little bit too big to fit in underneath the trays so I think we'll go with something else in there. So they can go out and in the top of that we had another one of those nice fine pads. Now I've managed to find quite a lot of old ceramic rings. Now ceramic rings as far as a biological media go aren't as good as the sintered glass rings. Sintered glass rings aren't The bio home. Although the bio home and the sintered glass rings are made out of roughly the same material, the actual structure of them is very very different. So I would still use these, but I would use them in the bottom of the filter to catch the heavy muck, to settle the flow out, and really just protect our foams in the bottom tray a little bit. I'll drop a layer of rings in there and then we'll get on to the bottom basket. And what adding the rings in the bottom of there is gonna do, it's basically gonna send the flow in all different directions. And hopefully a lot of the heavy dirt will just be held in the bottom of here, which should save our foams that are gonna be in the bottom tray from getting clogged so quickly. So that's basically what I would call a primary settlement area in the bottom of here. And then we're gonna follow that with a coarse pad. In the bottom of the bottom tray with the bumpy bits of the pad down over. Not sure whether you can see through there, maybe just about. You can see all those little bumps and ridges in there. That gives us a big contact surface area. So the muck that's coming against there and hitting the foam is hitting a lot of foam. If you use a flat foam it's fine. I tend to use the bumpy one just for extra contact area. Then we're going to go with a medium density pad like so. And again that one has got the bumpy side down. So here in effect we've got the bumpy side against the flat side and that creates cavities which will hold a lot of muck. And what that will do, it will extend the cleaning times and by that I mean the intervals between needing to take this apart and clean it. And then we cut that off. with one of All Pond Solutions or Sun Sun's fine pads and that fits in there absolutely beautifully. That couldn't be a better fit. So basically that dropped into there means that all our mechanical filtration, all our muck is going to be held in the bottom third of this filter. When the water comes up through here it's going to be clean and because we're going to fill I'm gonna fill the two trays above that mechanical zone with good porous sintered glass media. It's gonna work hard and it's gonna work a long time, not gonna get clogged up. So I'll fill this with the BioHome Ultimate and I'll let you know how much I got in. Okay so we managed to get 1.2 kilos which is about 2.4 pounds of BioHome Ultimate media in each tray and that's actually a little bit more than I thought would fit in here. I thought I was going to get about a kilo in so it's nice to get a little bit more in. Yep, and those trays still fit together very, very well. You might squeeze a little bit more media in there. I always like to go slightly under just to make sure all the trays fit together so you don't get any bypass. But you could maybe get another 100 to 200 grams in each one of those trays. So that's basically the setup there. Top back on, we're done. So we've got about 2.4 kilos of media, which is maybe 4.5 pounds. That makes this suitable for a tank of roughly, 240 liters or around about 60 US gallons which is pretty good because that's a reasonably compact filter. I've certainly seen bigger filters that hold less. You know there isn't much wasted space in here. It is a cheap filter. It does perform well. I know the after sales care for All Pond Solutions is pretty good according to what people say. I assume it's the same for Sun Sun. So all in all it's a good cheap filter. Gets plenty of media in as well which is the main thing. So I mentioned that this would be suitable for about 240 litres or 60 odd gallons for a normally stocked tank and what I mean by that is a community tank with a few plants in and a mixture of mid-water fish. Fish on the bottom, fish on the sides. Just a good community tank. If your tank creeps towards being heavily stocked, say it was a Predator tank or a Cichlid tank, even a Discus tank, you know, they're quite demanding and really need perfect water. If we're talking about full cycle filtration, you can halve those figures. So in effect, it's going to be nearer 120 litres or 30 US gallons. And that's if you want to see a full cycle, which is zero ammonia, zero nitrite and very low nitrates. Remember, we don't want this thing to be a nitrate factory. That's why we're using the bio home. We could have just stuck with the ceramic rings and it would have kept the ammonia and the nitrite perfect, probably well beyond three or four hundred litre tank. But we're after a full cycle. We're after a total job done. So that's how we're setting these filters up in this series. And with that said, I don't think there's any other points to go over with this particular filter. I've already given you my summary of it, we've discussed what size tank would be suitable for, for different stocking scenarios, in litres and also in gallons, and I think that's about it. So, with that, I will leave you, if you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up, share it wherever you want, and I shall see you next time, thanks for watching.