Pimp My Filter #14 - Boyu EF-25 Canister Filter

Hello there, welcome back to another edition of Pimp My Filter. In this video we're going to be taking a look at another canister filter. Now this one is from a company called Boyu and it's an EF25. Now there's two versions of this available, there's one with a UV light and there's one without a UV light. This is the one without the UV light, but the setup for both will be exactly the same. And this filter is promising to treat a tank between 250 litres and 450 litres. And that's quite a claim. It only pumps around 750 litres per hour, which isn't a huge flow. Not for a canister filter, but if it's moving it through the media properly and it's got big enough baskets for the media and you can get enough media in, the flow rate really isn't that important. Now this was actually sent by yet another person called Adam. In the last two or three weeks I think every other person I've spoken to has been called Adam and I really don't know why. They've all wanted different things. Some have been emailing, some have been phone calls, some have been sending me filters, some have been asking advice and I'm absolutely lost with all these Adams. Must be a very popular name for fish keepers I think. Now when people ask if they can send filters up, I always tell them just to send the filter, not the pipes or any of the other fittings. To be honest, for the canister filters all those fittings are pretty much the same anyway. Really this is what we want to look at, the canister, how it's made, how it works and if it can be improved. This is the important bit. As far as I can see it looks just like a normal canister. Okay, yes. Now this one works differently to the previous canister filters we've been looking at. All right, so this canister's new and the only thing we've got in it is a fine pad. That's good because 99% of the time I'll just throw everything away that came with the filter anyway. So to only send it out with a pad, which we are going to use, is a good plan. Camera in. I'll bring the camera in just to let you see exactly what happens with this top piece because there's a buttload of wasted space here. There's really enough room for another tray in here if it was set up differently. So things so far aren't looking too good. Okay, so our water comes in here, then comes out of here, spills onto the top tray, it then goes through the two trays, and it's sucked back up through this configuration here. What a total waste of space this is. I can only assume that's where a UV would normally go if you had a UV version, but this, it's wasting four inches in the filter, that's enough room for a huge tray. So it comes in, spills onto the tray, sucked back out. Blown back to the tank and you can see what I mean about the wasted space. I've got little midgets digits but just look at that, that's pretty much how much wasted space we've got in here. Get another tree in there man, you could get another tree in there. So our water spills down onto here, it's through that one, through that one, it's then sucked up through here and pumped back to our tank. Now as far as making efficient use of space goes, this is just wasting space. There's a lot of wasted space in here. However we are going to be able to do something with it but because there's only two trays that only leaves us one tray for media. It's not going to get much in but we'll see what we're going to do. This pad that comes with it is pretty good. We're definitely going to use that. That's a good quality pad. Is there going to be enough room in this little tray for three foams though? Really you know the score by now. We're just going to cut out a coarse foam and a medium foam. Using our tray as a marker, we're going to cut round it, making sure that the foam covers the entirety of the tray. Don't worry if the foam is slightly too big, it's easier to trim bits off than it is to add bits on. Okay, so that's our foams cut. Normally, we'd have coarse foam, bumpy side down there. Next one would be medium foam, bumpy side down. Next one would be fine pad, not bumpy side anywhere, because it hasn't got a bumpy side. That would be our normal setup for a normal canister filter because the water would be coming up. In this one the water's going down so this needs to be reversed. So on the bottom of this tray goes our fine pad, next goes our medium pad, bumpy side up, not down, next is our coarse pad, bumpy side up. There you go, that's our top tray. Water hits it from the top and believe it or not I've actually experienced quite a lot of hostility from so-called fish keepers going on about the bumpy pads being no good whatsoever because they say it's all about surface area and a full pad would give you more surface area. However, it doesn't give you more contact area. We're after contact area. Look at that. Hills and valleys, hills and valleys. It's all about the contact area. You can get a nation of filth lying in there before the top surface becomes clogged. If you have a flat foam, as soon as that flat surface is clogged, your foam needs to be looked at and squeezed out and changed. This gives you more life to your filters, and when you've got a flat surface, like underneath all this, against a bumpy surface, it creates loads of little cavities, because the bumps keep the flat foam above all the little valleys and everything. That holds a hell of a lot of muck. So ordinarily you know I would say use every little square inch of your filter. There is a place for cavities and that place is between bumpy foams. It stores so much muck and it'll extend the cleaning times no end. That's what it's all about. It's about maximizing the efficiency of this. You don't want to be looking at this every five minutes you know. You really just want to be looking in your canister filters when the return flow slows down a little bit. Most people will check them after a month but that's probably pampering them a little bit too much. If you check your filter every month and it still looks pretty clean and the fine pad isn't totally clogged, why not leave it six weeks next time? Time after that, leave it eight weeks if you think it'll go that far. Extend and extend and extend and extend. Some people don't look at their filters for six to eight months, possibly even longer if they've got a good size filter on their tank. A dirty filter will clean better than a clean filter, and you can't pamper them too much. Okay, media time. It's a big tray. It's not particularly deep, but it's got a good size to it, so we'll see how much BioHome Ultimate we can get in this. There's about 1.5 kilos in there. That's not really enough media for a 250-liter normally stocked tank. Not if you want to see a full cycle. Certainly enough to get rid of the ammonia and nitrite. We're after trying to create a full cycle to get rid of the nitrate though. Not quite enough media in there. Okay so that's our media tray. That one goes in the bottom followed by our foam tray. Wasted space in there man. Then our top goes on and the job's a good'un. Now this thing's well enough made but it doesn't hold anywhere near enough filter media. There's so much wasted space in it that it is a filter that I couldn't recommend. It's been good to get one to show you how it should be set up It just doesn't hold enough media, just simply doesn't hold enough media. Now although this one has been an exceptionally easy filter to upgrade, it's probably the most frustrating one that I've done. It's well enough made, it's a good size, but you've just got so much wasted space in here. 1.5 kilos of media in something that size is scandalous, absolutely scandalous. You know what, in a previous episode we did that little Eheim Classic. Was it a 200 or a 300? That one held 1.5 kilos of media and it was tiny. Admittedly, this one does have a bit more mechanical filtration than that Eheim, but it's a huge disappointment. Now I'm not even gonna look up how much these things cost because the cost is irrelevant. That takes up a lot of space under your tank. All that space wants to be used to make that water healthy in the tank. I couldn't recommend anybody buying one of these because of that's wasted space, there's easily enough room in there for three good sized trays. You could double the amount of media in there up to three kilos instead of only 1.5 kilos that would make it suitable for the recommended 250 litres. At present it's really only suitable for a normally stocked tropical tank. Of around about 150 litres if you want to see a full cycle. That is the reduction in nitrate, the aerobic and the anaerobic part of the cycle. If you're not really interested in having low or no nitrates, if you just want the ammonia and nitrite sorted out, like would happen in most filters, that's certainly big enough for a 250 litre tank, no problem. However... In this series, we're all about the full cycle. I'm all about the full cycle. The bio home that I've used in there is all about the full cycle, but you need to get plenty in. This doesn't allow for it for a 250 litre tank. It does allow for it for a tank up to 150 litres. So that's all I could recommend this particular filter for. I didn't think it was possible to make an arse of a canister filter but they've well and truly made an arse of this one. There's a lot of wasted space in there and I don't like wasted space. A void that can't be filled with anything is sackless. Okay now I'm off to lie down for half an hour with my light-emitting glasses and chill out for a while because this thing has got me frustrated, I'm not a fan of it. But if you've got one of these, at least you know now how it works and how to set it up properly, and also the limitations of it as well. Okay, so that's been the Boyu EF25. If you thought this video was useful, please hit the thumbs up button, share the video wherever you want, and if you know anybody with a Boyu filter, please, by all means, share the video with them. Now, they might not take too kindly to me pretty much slating that filter, but, you know, I can only just say what I find. And if you're not truthful, then you're not doing your job. There's a lot of improvements that can be made with this. The glaring one is just setting it up properly. Hopefully I've showed you how to set it up properly. So if you've got a filter of any type you'd like me to take a look at, by all means get in touch at the moment. Please only people in the UK because of the shipping costs. My details are in the video description and also in the pinned comment. That is an email and a phone number. Either of those are fine, get in touch, send me your filter up, I'll upgrade it, send it back to you for free. Thanks very much for watching, see you next time.