Pimp My Filter #21 - Oase Biomaster Thermo 600 Canister Filter Upgrade

Hello there, welcome back. In this video we're going to be taking a look at another filter from Oase. Now you may remember in the very, very first episode of this series, I took a look at an internal filter from Oase. I'm damned if I can remember the name of it. I wasn't very impressed with it. This one, the canister filter. I've already had a quick look at this when I was at a show recently. I pulled it apart and initially I was impressed. It's got some nice features with this. But when I get a close look at it now, is it any good? Okay, I'm just going to read straight from Oase's blurb off their website. So, shut-off automation and safety locking mechanism prevents undesired water escaping. For example, when removing the pre-filter module. That is basically that and that. They're shut-off valves. Similar to the ones you would find on a lot of canister filters that would be on the top. Basically you just have a lever there which would shut the flow off and then you could lift the pipe work off and take the canister away. This is a similar thing. It has one for the pipes and one for the pre-filter module which I'll get to in a moment. Easy clean pre-filter module. No more bothersome removal of the filter. The pre-filter module is simply taken out, rinsed and inserted. I'll show you that in a moment but basically that is this thing here on the top. You loosen it. That slides out and you've got foams that you would clean out. That is quite an innovation. I don't know of any other filters that have that feature. So I'm looking forward to getting into that. Practical. Vent button for effective water intake. For a fast and easy start up when installing and after cleaning. That basically relates to how you prime the pump. Listen to this. Hear that? That's basically a floppy one way valve. You've got one that sits up near the top of this pre-filter and you've got one that sits in the bottom. So when you do that it draws water in one way only and that is towards the pump. I like that. Optimal filtration. Fine 45 ppi pre-filter foam for optimal mechanical filtration of the coarse debris and longer service life of the biological media. Because the biological media in here is plastic We don't have to worry about service life. You could probably just leave that outside for the next 10,000 years and it would still function as a biological media. This also includes an integrated heat-up adjustable heater in the top there. It can also be retrofitted, so what that means... You can buy this without the heater in if you don't want the heater in it and you can add it at a later date. That's good because it's going to keep all your filtration and your heating outside of your tank. And the heater that's on top of here is 300 watts so that's going to be suitable for a tank of up to 300 liters. And for you guys that like counting in units other than 10 that is 79 US gallons. So, that heater would be suitable for up to 79 US gallons. Now, I have seen one of the reviews online. Somebody only gave this like two stars or something, and the reason was that the heater wasn't big enough for their tank. Their tank was 450 litres, and you generally use one watt of heating power per litre. So, if you've got a 300 litre tank, you need a 300 watt heater. So a 450 litre tank ideally needs more than 300 watts, that's just simple maths. However the manufacturer does say that this filter is suitable for up to 600 litres so you do need another heater in your tank if you've got a 600 litre tank. But will this filter actually be suitable for a 600 litre tank? Well time will tell. Large filter volume. Well, it is a decent size. Whether that space inside is efficiently used, we'll find out. The combination of mechanical and highly effective biological filtration through Helix, which is the plastic media, which I'll show you in a minute, ensures healthy and clear aquarium water. Okay, economical. Quiet operation and energy-saving pump. Inside here, that shifts 1250 litres per hour, or 329 US gallons per hour, is only 22 watts, so that is indeed economical. The guarantee on these is good as well. It's got a three-year guarantee if you just take it away and don't send anything off to Awaza, but if you extend the guarantee, which is free, by registering it with Awaza, you get an extra year. So in effect, this thing has got a four-year guarantee, and Awaza are really, really good with their guarantees. I've dealt with Awaza for... 20 odd years, and they were by far the best company as far as sorting anything out that ever went wrong with any of their gear. They're a German company, and they do pride themselves on making good stuff and looking after their customers. Okay, suitable for aquariums up to a maximum of 600 litres, which is a lot. That's 158 US gallons. Aaaand I think that's about it. That's all the important stuff out of the way at the start. Now let's get it pulled to bits. I'll show you how the water flows through it because it is very different to pretty much every other filter. And then we'll get into the trays and find out what's in there and if there's anything we can do to make it better. Okay, so to take the top off, we lift up this really substantial carrying handle. That's by far the best handle I've ever seen on a canister filter. One, two, three, four clasps. Top comes off. So the water comes in from your tank. It then goes into this pre-filter module, which is removed like that. And we'll concentrate on this bit first. Now that is a really unusual feature. You don't see that in canister filters. So Oase have made a bit of an innovation here. That's actually a one-way valve. So your pump head would be down I'll be down about here. We'll come and see it. Through the one-way valve water swirls all the way around the inside of this thing and then it goes out through here, through the pump head again, not actually where the pump is but through the the top of the filter and then it travels down where the heater is, down to the bottom of your filter and rises up through the trays. So by the time the water gets to the bottom of your filter it's already traveled quite a distance. Now this shroud is removed by un-clipping it here. That slides off. You hear that? Got a one-way valve in the bottom of there. That helps when you're priming it. That's what you heard before. You heard that flappy valve and this flappy valve both draw in air or water in the right direction. So that is our pre-filter module. And on there, we've got six pieces of foam, which in an ideal world would be coarse. These ones, I would class them as medium. And you'll find out why that's a problem once we get to the trays. Because you've got the medium foam first. The water goes around all those medium foams and it has to go through them. And then it travels up this little pipe which has got holes in. And as far as I'm concerned it hasn't got anywhere near enough holes in here. You could drill probably four times as many holes in there. That would help with the flow. Currently you've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. doubled up 18 you've got 18 small accessible holes for the water to travel through which isn't much and this pipe is approximately half an inch maybe 12 millimeters diameter in an ideal world that would be 20 mil 3 quarter inch diameter that will enable the pump to suck much more water through Now flow restriction is something that has been reported about these filters we're going to try and address some of those points in this video and really from a manufacturing point of view they could be addressed simply by drilling more holes in a bigger diameter pipe so if you've got a 20 mil pipe instead of a 12 mil pipe you're going to get water through there much much easier also if you substitute medium pad for a coarse pad It's gonna let water through here but it's not gonna let the heavy muck through. You are gonna get some fine muck through but that'll get caught in the bottom of your filter. We'll get Mr Dremel out and we'll drill maybe another 20 to 30 holes in here. Okay so I'm basically just going to drill holes up and down this clear tube. And what that'll do, it'll increase the amount of places that water can actually be drawn through the foams and into here because presently, you've got that down there, you've got, yeah, you've got four places per foam where water can get drawn in and they're going to quickly clog those particular parts of the foam. We increase that four holes to maybe eight holes or even ten holes. There's so many different places. The inside of this foam, where water can be drawn through, so you're going to get a better flow through the foams. That's what we've got now, that's a hell of a difference. I was on before about making a bigger diameter pipe. This one actually slots inside this fitting here. If you had a pipe that simply went on the outside of that, you could easily get the 20mm pipe or even 22mm pipe on there maybe. That would make a hell of a difference, just increase the diameter, you know, you wouldn't restrict the water flow like you're going through a little pipe, and hopefully because that one now has so many different places where it can draw the water, it isn't going to be as restricted as it once was, but we really need to take a look at those foams. Now these pre-filter foams are 30 ppi, what I would suggest is making them maybe 20 ppi Or even 10, 15. That would be a lot more coarse, that would still catch all the heavy muck, but it would allow the water to flow through much longer before these needed to be taken out and cleaned. But I have made a bit of a DIY sort of setup for this pre-filter using a coarse pad which is, I don't know, 10 ppi maybe? It's very coarse. I basically put the tube on it and roll it up like a huge fajita like that. And I've cable tied it at various points to make a foam sleeve. Now ideally this would be a pre-made foam sleeve, it wouldn't be something that was just cable tied together. But I made that just to demonstrate what could be done. So there you go, now you've got a coarse pad as your pre-filter. And that pad was wrapped up twice, so you've got like two layers of coarse pad there. That is now your pre-filter. That fits on the bottom. So all your coarse filtering is done in here. Hopefully without slowing the flow down too much. If you don't fancy using something like that, by all means, just use the foams. But one of the common problems or faults or inefficiencies that have been reported about this filter online is that this tends to trap almost all of the muck and the inside of the rest of the filter stays very clean. That's okay if you're going to be cleaning this out very regularly. But if you want extended cleaning times you do want a graded approach. So when your filter was all running and everything you just turn the filter off, unlock it, lift that out. Because you've got a one-way valve on the bottom you shouldn't get any muck draining out and you can take that away at your sink for cleaning. And I like that idea. The flow restriction in there does concern me but there is possible ways around it. So that's where our pre-filter would slot down into. That's where our... Just looking on the viewfinder there. Where the hell is it? I hope so. Yeah. That is where our heater would go down and effectively that makes a tube. You know all these fittings on the various trays make a tube to send the water right down to the bottom and then rise up through all the trays back out to our pump. So let's get the trays out and take a look at them. I'll put them in order and then we'll talk through what happens in them. All empty and we've got one, two, three, four, five, six trays in this filter. Let's start with the bottom one. So the water comes up from the very bottom of the filter, and that's the first thing it hits. That is a, well, ideally a moving bed media called Helix. I would recommend this every single time for anybody with a Nexus, Koi filter, any sort of big DIY filter for a pond or even a sump, because it's got approximately 40% more surface area per litre than K1. Standard K1. So it's instantly going to improve the biological function of a moving bed by 40% if you use this instead of K1. But here it's used as a static media. I can understand that if it was used in the very bottom of the filter, if there was space under the trays to catch heavy muck, because the design of it allows for that. It's got a really good design for trapping muck. But here it's used as a biological media. Plastic is the... Most inefficient thing ever in a static bed for supporting bacteria so that is definitely 100% coming out. It's not a bad media in fact it's an excellent moving bed media but as a static media no So that's the bottom tray now empty. Next tray up has another bag of Helix, same story there. Next tray up has a massive block of coarse foam. Now remember, our pre-filter was a medium grade, possibly even fine foam, so all the heavy crap is already taken out, you don't need a coarse foam there. I know Oase say it is for supporting bacteria, but why not use a proper ceramic or sintered glass media, which is going to have a ridiculously massive surface area and be way more efficient than a block of coarse foam, so that can come out. I've got another block. Coarse foam, next tray up, guess, you're right, another block, coarse foam, I'm putting all this coarse foam out with no intention of using it, it's nearly the same thickness as that, if I could cut circular pieces out, I could use that as the pre-filter, that would be absolutely perfect, yes it would, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to cut it as neatly as that, but I'm going to have a go, right, I'll come back to you with our pre-filter coarse foam, At the end of this video, it's a much better solution than a wrapped up flat pad. It's going to take some cutting out, but the time spent will be worth it. Okay, right, and the top tray has a coarse to medium density pad, which again is doing next to nothing. That is a real waste of the potential of this filter. I've got no doubts that it'll keep the water clear. And healthy, as far as the ammonia and nitrite go. But everything in here is just geared towards aerobic. It's all aerobic, everything's plastic. It's all foams, plastic media. We can do a hell of a lot better than that. So starting with the bottom tray. Here's one I made earlier. Right, that's a coarse pad that I've cut for the bottom of there. But, if we've already got a coarse pad on the pre-filter, we don't really need that. So I'll just include that one back in the box as a spare. We can step straight to a medium pad. In there. So our pre-filter will be coarse, this would be medium, next one would be fine. That works out well because these trays aren't very deep. By the time the water gets through our pre-filter, through the medium, through the fine, water is clean. That gives us all of these trays for biological media. Okay so if we have it in loose in total and not including this top shallow We could get 3.4 kilos, maybe 3.5 kilos, and in pounds that is about seven and a half pounds of media in the filter. That's not bad. The time and the patience I'm sure you could get more in by packing it in neatly. Now in filter trays where you've got quite an awkward shape to fill, it might actually work out better stacking the media in very neatly. In a normal square tray, it might not make that much difference. Ten minutes later, ooh, we're nearly there. Okay, good. That is our media neatly stacked in. That's it laid in loose. There's 850 grams in there. I'm just going to weigh this with it neatly stacked to see if there's any difference. 25 grams difference. For this particular filter, don't bother neatly stacking it. You're going to gain 25 grams of media, which is literally two or three pieces extra in a tray. Right. Top tray. Next tray. So that's media, media, media. Where's the foams? Where is the foams? Ah, there you are. Right. The bottom tray. Medium foam. Fine pad. That's the last bit of our mechanical. Then we've got a tray of media. Another tray of media. And another tray of media. There you go. Four trays of media. That gives you just under 3.5 kilos which is about 7.7 pounds of media. That's not bad but we have a top tray you can put more media in there you're easily going to get five to six hundred grams which is about a pound or a pound and a bit but in that top tray I'm going to go for a bit of chemical filtration. That is a carbon impregnated pad it fits in there beautifully. So now we've got mechanical Biological. Chemical. That's how a tray is done. I don't want to alter them at all now so they can go in here and stay in here. Put that out the way. And we'll try and cut some circular pre-filter pads out of this. Ooh, that's slicing through it like butter. Beautiful. Not particularly straight, but it is cutting through it. And that's bloody awful. I clearly need more practice. Now, in an ideal world... The way to cut one of these out would be to have a really sharp copper pipe of this diameter and literally just push it onto there, twist it backwards and forwards and it would just cut its way straight through here. I do not have such technology. What I'm really hoping is Tom, who sent me this filter up, doesn't say, did you keep those blue pads? I had a job for them, I was going to use them for something else. Oh groovy. Right, that's our new foams. Actually not cut too badly, I've got the hang of it towards the end, that's reasonably circular. The existing foams are this high, our new foams are this high, so we've got about half an inch difference. That's not going to be a problem because they will squash down with very little effort. And that little floppy valve that's in the bottom of the pre-filter module has a little plastic cage going over it, so no matter how much you squash down on these, that little floppy valve can still work. Right, let's get the atrocity that is my previous solution to this problem off. Those cable ties off and use that in another filter. And onto here we'll slide our coarse foam. It allows for good water flow, but it'll still catch the heavy muck. It should extend our cleaning times. Shish kabab. Perfect. Actually fits on there beautifully. Absolutely marvellous. I'm pleased with that. So now we've got the Helix spare. We've got a full coarse pad, roughly half a coarse pad, a medium pad, and all of our pre-filter foams. They can all go back to Tom. Oh, and we've also got another coarse pad for the bottom tray. That's what I cut Oh, it didn't lose. You've got to push that in, wait for like a little click to know that it's far enough down for the lock to work properly. That's it. I was worried about these at first because to get this pre-filter one out, you've got to put a lot of effort into it, but it's a good substantial fit and it's not cheap crappy plastic like I've seen on a lot of filters. I've got to do some weight in that now. Okay, so that is the filter fully pimped up. Hopefully that has improved some of the flow issues which have been reported about this filter. It's definitely addressed the lack of biological filtration issues. Right, and because we've got round about 3.5 kilos of media inside this thing, that should allow it to provide a full cycle, which is zero ammonia, zero nitrite, and very, very low nitrate. through aerobic and anaerobic bacteria in a tank of up to 350 liters which is round about 92 us gallons if it's a heavily stocked tank you can halve that so either way the heater in here should be big enough it's recommended for up to 600 liters but you know that manufacturer's figure This figure is never, never accurate, you know. 350 liters. It is accurate as far as a full cycle goes, the way it's set up now because of how much media we've got in there. If you weren't concerned about a full cycle and you were prepared to do water changes all the time to keep the nitrates down, I've got no doubts that it would keep ammonia and nitrite at zero for 500-600 litres. So the construction of this filter is very impressive. The features on it, with a little bit of tweaking, are also very impressive as well. Well, I do like the idea that you can just remove... That pre-filter cartridge, like that, and take that away for cleaning, instead of pulling all this to bits to clean it. You will have to get into the main body of the filter, but the vast majority of the stuff, even with the coarse foams in there, is going to get caught in those foams initially and just pile up in there, you know. Now, if you just want to go with the ordinary foams that come in that pre-filter, by all means, be my guest. I'm just trying to extend the maintenance times as long as possible with every filter that I feature in this series, you know? And I'm merely just putting forward a set of opinions and guidelines. You don't have to follow them. You know, you don't have to agree with them. And if you don't agree with anything I say in any of these videos, by all means, just put a comment in the comment section. As long as it's a well-structured, well-argued comment, I will respond to it if I see it. There's no point people just going you're a moron you've made an arse of it without actually offering another solution you know. It's all about offering different ways of looking at things, trying to make things better and hopefully succeeding. Sometimes I won't succeed. This time in my eyes I think I have greatly improved this filter but You be the judge of that. You let me know what you think in the comments section. And if you've liked this video, give it the thumbs up. If you've got a filter and you're in the UK, you'd like me to take a look at it, by all means get in touch. My contact details are in the video description and also in the pinned comment. Thanks very much for watching. I'll see you next time. Alrighty, I think my work here is done. Come along, Charles.