Fluval 206 Filter: http://geni.us/qQsF90 Foams and Biohome Ultimate: http://www.filterpro.co.uk (FilterPro site has links to suppliers in other countries) The Fluval 206 is a good canister filter which is well designed, has excellent mechanical filtration and decent provision for biological filtration. However, since it 'only' holds around 1kg of biohome ultimate it is really suited to normally stocked tanks of up to 100 litres (26 US gallons) or heavily stocked tanks of up to 50 litres (13 US gallons) if you want to achieve a full cycle.
A full cycle is completed by bacteria - the aerobic part of biological filtration which processes ammonia to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate followed by an anaerobic part which processes nitrate into soluble nitrogen which bubbles off to the atmosphere. Therefore it requires a suitable amount of excellent quality filter media to be able to provide the environment for both aerobic AND anaerobic bacteria - that is what Biohome ultimate does perfectly but even with such good media there are limitations and we recommend the following amounts for different stocking scenarios: (1 US Gallon = 3.8 litres) (1kg = 2.2 lbs) Average community tropical aquarium = 1kg per 100 litres Average coldwater aquarium = 1kg - 1.5kg per 100 litres Predator aquarium = 1.5kg - 2kg per 100 litres Large cichlid aquarium = 1.5kg - 2kg per 100 litres Malawi / Tanganyikan aquarium = 1.5kg - 2kg per 100 litres Marine aquarium = 1.5kg - 2kg per 100 litres Average mixed fish pond = 1kg per 200 litres Average koi pond = 1kg per 150 litres
You may be disagreeing with the above figures but remember that they are for a FULL CYCLE not half a job - achieving 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite is quite easy since aerobic bacteria grows freely on any surface but the anaerobic bacteria responsible for COMPLETING the cycle needs more a specialized habitat. Size a filter properly, set it up sensibly and you will have perfect water - it's that simple....and your filter won't be the dreaded 'Nitrate factory'.....you'll spend less money on treatments too......basically the filter is the foundation of a successful aquarium.
This series of videos is all about trying to squeeze more efficiency out of internal and external aquarium filters which generally have a limited filtering capacity - If you have a filter you'd like me to feature in a video then please contact me on: [email protected] 07772848730 (Richard)
Anyone who sends a filter (UK only at present) will have it upgraded and returned to them for free and the only cost you will pay is how much it costs to ship it to me - I'm helping to boost your filter and the resulting videos will hopefully be useful to viewers all over the world so it's a win/win.
The following videos will be useful to anyone interested in learning more about filtration, bacteria and making the conditions for your fish as good as possible: Sizing a canister properly and filter set up: https://goo.gl/om19un Looking INSIDE different filter media: https://goo.gl/hZWS6c Bacteria and filter media: https://goo.gl/123gAF How to clean an aquarium: https://goo.gl/bPMhvh Aquarium tips / filtration playlist: https://goo.gl/pXgqVj
Check out my channel for hundreds of videos on a wide range of my hobbies - many of the videos have educational content so if you have enjoyed any give them the thumbs up and share.
This channel is purely a hobby for me so I will never ask viewers to donate money for any of my projects or charge anyone for information - information should be shared freely and I certainly don't consider myself an 'expert' in anything I pursue as a hobby so please do your own research, never accept anything as 'fact', reject anyone claiming to be some sort of authority or 'expert' and make your own minds up about anything you wish to study.
If you've enjoyed this video please check out the playlists on my channel for hundreds more - on a variety of subjects. Feel free to share or link any of my videos on facebook, twitter, forums etc. for the benefit of anyone you think may also enjoy watching. See you next time. Pondguru
Hello there, welcome back to another episode of Pimp My Filter
and in this episode we're
going to be taking a look at another one
of the filters that I would consider
as a bit of a heavy hitter.
Now this one isn't a heavy hitter because it pumps loads of water,
it's massive, it has a huge filtering capacity.
It's a heavy hitter because it is one of the
most popular filters throughout the world.
It's a canister filter and it's from Fluval.
So you can probably guess that it is one of the 06 series.
This one is the 206.
Now it hasn't got the pipes in the top because they weren't sent to me.
But it has got the trays and it has got the foams inside.
So let's get the top off and take a look inside.
Okay, we've got two clips on the top.
First of all, I just want to say that the plastic
that this is made of is very good.
It doesn't feel brittle. It feels nice and strong.
It's a good quality plastic.
So anyway, water comes in here, comes out through here,
through like a one-way valve with like a flap on,
drops into here, it then goes through a couple of foams down
to the bottom before rising back up through these trays and being
drawn out through here into the pump and back out to our tank.
The foams are in like a cartridge, so you lift that out
and you've got four separate reasonably coarse foams in there.
And you're probably thinking that that's
the first thing I'm going to change, but it's actually not.
And I'll explain why.
When the water drops in,
it actually can split off into two different directions.
It can go down the side of here.
See these fins here that keep the foams off the back?
So the water can get down the back of there
and come through these foams,
but it can also go through these other foams
and out the bottom, out here.
Because we've got a similar sort of thing here.
We've got these little fins that keeps
the foam just a tiny little bit off the frame.
So really you've got all the foams being equally used.
Which is an absolutely great design.
Water then drops right down to the bottom.
And it rises up through three trays in the 206.
The 106 has got two trays of the same size.
So let's put that out of the way there.
And I shall show you the trays.
Now the trays fit together pretty well.
And it's super important that these fit together very very well
because when the water is coming
through the foams it doesn't just want to go in here
and come straight up through the trays,
it wants to go down the bottom,
up through all the trays and back out into the pump. So the first
tray has got a lid on with a perforated top
that fits up against our pump and that allows water
to be drawn up through here.
What's in here, we've got a little bag of carbon, a foam pad,
In the next one we've got some pretty good ceramic media.
That's actually not bad. I don't know
whether it's the Fluval one, but it's pretty porous.
Obviously it's got a lot of sealed parts
because it's ceramic, you know, it's just made of dust,
but as far as the ceramic goes it's not
bad that one. And then in the bottom tray we've got one big block
of Fluval foam. Notice the
dimples. Fluval are a sensible enough company
to realise that when water's coming up,
If it hits something with a huge surface area,
it takes a long time to block.
So that's bottom tray,
middle tray, top tray.
And if you've watched any of my previous canister filter videos,
you'll realize that that is the wrong place for the fine pad.
If it's in the top tray, all it does, it concentrates the fine muck
into our media, clogging it prematurely, making the filter inefficient.
I did say I wasn't going to do anything with this foam cartridge,
because I quite like the
design of it and I like the way that every piece
of every foam is used, but I will show
you a different option for that later,
once we've concentrated on the trays.
So this carbon that came with it is wet,
I don't know how long it's been in the filter
so it has to go out.
Carbon generally only lasts roughly seven to eight weeks.
Before it gets clogged up and becomes useless.
If you leave it in any longer than that,
all the toxic stuff that it's drawn in can actually be released again.
Which isn't good for the fish.
The fine pad looks a little bit tired, so we'll get rid of that.
Not even a handful of media in there,
so we might as well get rid of that.
The coarse pad in the bottom,
although it is a good coarse pad, I'm not going to use that.
But I will keep it and send it back.
So this is a pretty simple setup for this filter.
The bottom tray wants to be our mechanical
filtration. I know we've got a lot of mechanical filtration
in this cartridge but it's all pretty
coarse. So in the bottom tray we need a minimum of a medium density pad
and a fine pad to catch
the medium muck and the fine muck before it gets to our media.
Because of the height of the tray
I think we're going to get a coarse,
medium and fine in there, so I'm going to cut all
three and
then we'll
see what
will fit.
People in the US keep asking me where you can get these bumpy foams.
This one's the medium, the one I've just put in there is the coarse.
They generally come as a pack of two or three,
you get medium, coarse and fine or you just
get medium and coarse.
In America, they seem to be really difficult to get a hold of,
so if I can find any links, I'll put them in the video description.
You may have to go to Amazon, and they may have to come from China.
But I'll find links, and I'll put them
in the video description for you guys.
In the UK, and in most of Europe...
These are just the normal foams that are used in pond filters.
They're all over the place,
every shop's got them, so getting them isn't a problem for us.
I've never understood why these
don't seem to be available in the US.
It's just one of those strange things.
Now I don't expect many people watching will have
a guillotine on hand. That makes it very
easy for me to cut foams
because I'm always fannying about with filters and so on, you know.
That's why I bought the guillotine, specifically for cutting foams.
If you haven't got a guillotine, just use the tray,
put it down on your pad, and just cut around it.
It's really simple.
Let that one send down,
and then that one will go in there really well.
So in our bottom tray, water is going to hit coarse, medium, then fine.
We're fine. There's our medium. There's our coarse.
They all fit in like that. Really nice.
So that's our bottom tray done.
And in these top trays, we can put our choice of media.
I would normally recommend BioHome Ultimate.
Think you should be able to get about 500 grams in here,
which is about a pound in weight, if you're in the US,
and you're talking imperial
measurements, so we'll see.
Yeah, that's not far off, 500 grams.
If you pack it in neatly, you
would get 500 grams in there.
Awesome.
Okay, so that's two trays in the 206. Each one has got 500 grams
or a pound of BioHome Ultimate in total for the two trays.
That is one kilo or 2.2 pounds.
That should be enough to give us a full cycle.
That's the reduction in ammonia, nitrite
and also nitrate for a normally stocked aquarium of about 100 litres.
That is half what Fluval says this will treat up to,
but you'd always halve that up to figure anyway.
That works out pretty well.
Cartridge goes back in and we've got
a well set up, very efficient,
hard working filter.
But I'll show you what you could do with the foam section
if you wanted to, and this is not essential.
Now when we slot this into the canister we
do have a little bit of space on this side
and a little bit less space on this side.
Therefore we could get slightly thicker bumpy foams in.
That's what I'm going to cut now.
So because we've got four foams to go at I think I'll cut
two foams out of the coarse dimpled foam
and I'll cut two out of the medium density dimpled foam.
See what they look like. I don't know whether
that's actually going to improve this particular section
but it might give us a little bit more contact surface area.
We'll see what they're like when
they're in. As I say, this is not essential.
Now they fit in there quite beautifully.
Let's just take a close look at this.
There is an argument that the water won't just fly
past them. It'll actually get stuck in here a little bit
and slowed down and diverted a bit.
Will it settle and muck out better
on these foams than it would on the Fluval ones?
I don't know. I'm not sure.
But it just shows that from ordinary pond foams you can easily cut
replacement foams for your Fluval filters.
They fit in there really, really nicely. That's okay.
But if you just want to keep the Fluval foams,
by all means just keep the Fluval foams.
I don't think performance-wise there's going to be much difference
between using these ones and those ones.
But you can get replacements from ordinary sheets
of foams that were designed for pond filters.
That's one thing for sure, and that's going
to save you a hell of a lot of money.
Because the replacement ones, the official ones anyway, are expensive.
And the compatible ones you can buy haven't got the dimples on.
So yeah, it might be an improvement.
Just give you a look inside to show you how I've done that.
Now these foams are a little bit thicker than the Fluval ones,
so they do pack it out a little bit more.
But here we've got the medium density
and here we've got the coarse ones.
It looks cool but I don't know whether it's going
to do a better job than the standard foams.
I'm just feeling down underneath the trays to see what sort of
height we've got underneath there
with the possibility of putting something in
as a mechanical media like the Eheim mech to settle out heavy muck.
I think we've only got about quarter of an inch
so that's not really an option.
Therefore foams
go back in,
top goes back on.
And that's another filter, fully pimped.
Right, just a few notes about what size
of filter you would need for a normally stocked tank
if you were expecting to see full cycle filtration.
And these figures will relate to the 106 series and the 105 series.
Not sure about earlier versions,
but certainly the 105s and the 106s will be applicable here.
Now, in all of these filters,
you would sacrifice the bottom tray for foams and your fine pad.
So, I'm just going to say how many trays are available for media.
For example, this one's got three trays.
Bottom tray will be used for your foams and pad.
That leaves two trays for media.
So, we'll start with a 106.
106 has got one available tray for media.
That'll hold 500 grams or one pound of BioHome Ultimate, therefore
that filter is suitable for tanks of around 50 litres or 13 US gallons.
The 206, which is this one, has two available trays for media.
Each of those will hold 500 grams of BioHome Ultimate,
just as you've seen here.
That is a total of one kilo, so that is 2.2 pounds in total.
And that makes this suitable for a normally stocked tank
of 100 litres or thereabouts.
That is 26 US gallons.
The 306 has the same amount of trays as this,
but they're slightly bigger.
So the 306 has, again, two available trays for media.
Each of those trays, however,
holds one kilo of BioHome Ultimate, which is 2.2 pounds.
And because you've got two kilos in total, which is 4.4 pounds,
that makes the 306 suitable for tanks of around 200 litres,
which is approximately 52 US gallons.
And lastly the 406 has four trays,
three of which are available for media,
each holds a kilo that gives you three kilos
or 6.6 pounds of BioHome Ultimate,
making the 406 suitable for tanks
of around 300 litres or 79 US gallons.
I can see you now just rewinding that last bit over
and over because it's got loads of
figures in there.
I had a hard enough job remembering it
and I've got notes so hopefully the information's
in there.
If I remember I'll also replicate that information
in the video description and also in the pinned
comment along with links to this canister filter.
It's a very, very good filter, I would recommend it.
Now if you're in the UK and you yourself have a filter you want me
to take a look at and upgrade or you know somebody who has,
by all means get in touch. Please either ring me or send me an email.
I'll put my contact details in the video description
and in the pinned comment. Remember it's a free service.
All you pay for is the postage. Up to me.
I upgrade it with new gear and send it back at my own cost
because I want this series of videos
to build up into some sort of database of knowledge
and information about specific filters.
I know they're not going to get millions
and millions of views but that's not what it's about.
It's about people putting specific search terms into Google
or other search engines, say they're
They're searching for Fluval 206 setup, for example.
Hopefully one of my videos...
On these filters would come up, they'd be able to go,
all right, okay, so that's exactly how that filter works
and this is what I can do to improve the situation.
And hopefully they can also learn the limitations of the filters.
So if they've got one of these on a 200 litre heavily stocked tank
and it's struggling, the fish aren't doing well,
nitrates are through the roof, they know why.
When a filter is sized properly and set up properly,
there's no reason why you shouldn't get a full cycle.
And remember, when I'm quoting these figures,
I'm quoting figures for a normally stocked tank.
If you have a heavily stocked tank, you can halve those figures.
So for instance, the 206 I said was suitable
for a tank of around 100 litres.
That's a normally stocked tank.
If you had a heavily stocked tank, you could halve that again.
So in essence, a filter that's marketed for up to 200 litres
will be halved down and then halved again.
So really, it's suitable for a heavily stocked tank of 50 litres.
Which might sound like absolute overkill
but remember we're talking about full cycle filtration.
And for that to occur we do need a certain amount
of biological filter media in order to support a
big enough population of not only aerobic bacteria,
which goes everywhere, but also the anaerobic
bacteria. That's a key to the full cycle.
So that's it, that's the 206. If you've liked the video,
So, give it a thumbs up.
And feel free to share it wherever you want.
There's a hell of a lot of forums and Facebook groups out there.
And I would imagine there's tens of thousands of people in those groups
who own a similar filter.
So if you think they'd benefit
from watching this video, please share it.
See you next time.
