Pimp My Filter #1 - Oase BioPlus Thermo 200 Internal Filter

Hello there and welcome to the very first episode of Pimp My Filter. Now, if you're familiar with my aquarium-related and filtration-related videos, you'll have already seen me upgrade quite a few different filters and make all sorts of DIY filters for aquariums. But in this series, I'm taking viewers' filters, I'm taking a good hard look at them, Explaining to you guys how they work and also explaining to you and showing you how they could work, how they could be upgraded to work harder and better, ideally to provide full cycle filtration. And if you're unfamiliar with what full cycle filtration is, I'll just run through it quickly because this is the first episode of this particular series. Full cycle filtration is basically the full nitrogen cycle in your tank. A lot of you'll think you know what the nitrogen cycle is. If you look it up, you'll have a supposedly better idea about what it is. But what you see online is only half the job. Ammonia converted to nitrite, nitrite converted to nitrate. And in most people's eyes, that's where the cycle ends. All of that work is done by aerobic bacteria. But there's another sort of bacteria that can be cultured under specific conditions in your filter that's anaerobic bacteria. Therefore, it is possible to end up with zero ammonia, zero nitrite, zero nitrate. That is a full cycle. Generally, it takes either a really very slow flow, like you would find in a nitrate reactor, or it takes special media. Media with an internal structure that will support both aerobic and anaerobic bacteria. And you need enough of that media for the size of the tank and the stock of the tank to support enough bacteria of both types to give you the full cycle. I'll put relevant links to relevant videos in the video description because a lot of this I have gone through before, so check that out. Okay, you're probably waiting for a fancy intro. You're not going to get one. That's one thing I never do is put intros on videos. Okay, first episode, first filter. This is the Oase Bio Plus Thermo 200. Basically, at it's heart, It's just a sponge filter, powered by a pump, and it has a slot in the back here for a heater to go in. So your heater would slide in here, that would sit in the corner of your tank, water would be drawn in, up through the foams, spat out here. Okay, before I come in for the close-ups, I'll just take the filter apart. Actually, I'll put a link to the Oase video about this filter. in the video description. So if you want to see Oase's video about their filter and it shows you how it works and how it comes apart and so on, check that out in the video description and in the pinned comment. Basically it comes into two parts, so this bit, which would normally be stuck on the side of your tank, can just be left there and all your foams and muck can just be taken off the way it'll be cleaned. That's a very good idea. This is where the real magic happens, or where the real magic should happen. It's basically got a top piece. And then you've got three compartments with foam in, one with a base plate on there. I'll put this back together, come in for a close-up, and I'll show you how it works presently. Okay, that's our filter. That's the front of it. That's the back of it that goes into the corner. We'd normally have little suckers on here and here. That would enable it to be stuck to the side of the tank, and obviously it would normally have a heater in here. So as it is now, water is drawn in through these little slots at the side here. See how its slots there? It goes down, it hits that base plate, mills around in here and then it flows up from this point, that's where it's flowing up from, up here through this tube. Okay, so in here, mills around in here, comes up the back and from there it goes through these tiny little holes in the top of each section. Get rid of that, start with the bottom one. So it goes round, comes up through here, And it can get down the side of there, it can also get over the top of there as well, and it can go down here. No drainage holes in the bottom so we collect a lot of muck in here. I think you're seeing the problem here. Where does the water go from here? Does it go up through the trays? Well no, because the trays are actually closed off. You've got that on there, water goes in here, it can just shoot across the top of the foam and it actually comes up the front here. Got a little slot there. And we've got one there. Water goes up the front, just inside the front of here, through that little slit, through some foam, in a little container here, there you go, through the grid, into the pump, and back out to the tank. Either through the main vent, or through these little holes going along the side of here. And you can alter the flow depending on what you want. Now if only you could guarantee it would go through all the trays, that would be good. But all it takes is this to become clogged, and this entire tray gets missed out. Then on this tray that gets clogged, it's all on the top tray. Plus it's only got foam in. Foam will generally only support aerobic bacteria so whilst it might be very good at processing ammonia and nitrite this is going to be and is a nitrate factory. So what we want to do is give the water that's coming through here as much dwell time inside the filter as possible. have places where the muck can settle out and also have places where we can hopefully get enough good filter media in to make a real difference to the water quality and in an ideal world reduce the nitrate. okay so this is what i'm going to do first of all the little foam in the top is definitely coming out and because all of these foams in these three sections are exactly the same size and exactly the same density which would be classed as very coarse they're coming out as well May as well just tell you now, that is what's doing all the filtering job in that big filter. That's not much. Look at that. A little sponge filter, air-driven, would do just as much as this filter. And it would cost a fraction of the price. So we'll put those to one side for the time being. Let's concentrate on this bottom container. Because this is where we want a lot of the muck to settle out... I'm not going to start drilling holes all over inside of here because then when it's lifted out that muck is just going to come out the side and back into the tank. However what I am going to do is put some very small ceramic heavy rings in the bottom of here to trap and hold the heavy muck and hopefully keep it away from the foams because the last thing you want the foams blocking with is heavy muck that gets pulled in here. Really the first point of contact doesn't want to be the Repeat the coarse foam. Although that will trap the muck quite nicely, because you've got a very small surface area, it's also going to clog quite quickly as well. Therefore we're going to use Eheim Mech. That's reasonably inexpensive. I actually bought a two litre one specifically for upgrading filters for people. And that's all we're going to use in there, just a little bit, to half fill this container. So that goes in there, half fills it. I'm going to drill holes above the rings. And that'll encourage the majority of the water to enter this bottom container first. Hopefully that'll pull the majority of the muck into this bottom container. And hold it in the rings, which will sit under two coarse pieces of foam, which are pushed together like that. We could always just cut one of these through the middle, if you didn't want to buy extra foams, that would be okay. Just half the depth of that, that would push in the top, no problem at all. But I've gone with two pond foams that I've cut, Simply because they can be taken apart. I've cleaned really really thoroughly. I'm not sure if you can see there but if I shone a light through there you'd see a core of muck in the middle of there where it's very very difficult to clean it out and these filters aren't very old at all. So really you've got that core of muck in the middle full of just rotten stuff that you can't get out. That's why we're going with two smaller foams. So the bottom tray, we've got the settlement media and the coarse foam. Okay, and I'm just going to put rough marks. Where I want the holes to be and I'm just going to roughly mark out where I want the holes to be. Remember the holes are above that settlement media because that wants to hold the heavy muck when we lift it out. Above there little slits in here and about six holes in the back. Other handheld tools are available. I'm using a Dremel, a small round drill bit to drill the back and then I'm going to use a little cutting disc. To cut slits on the inside of here because it's difficult to get in with a drill. Should be easy to get in with a disc. I'll just tidy that up a little bit. So now we can put the media in there. See the holes are just above it. Important thing is the foam comes right up to the top of here so when the water comes through the back it has to go through the foam or just down the sides and into our settlement media, those rings in the bottom. Muck will be contained in the bottom here. And the clean water will still be able to get out up the sides of the foam and also through the foam and into the other sections. Now ordinarily our next section would cap the top of this off, so none of the water coming through the foam would be able to get up into the next section. It would have to go out the side through this little chamber here and be drawn up into the pump. Now that's the most difficult part done. That bottom tray can go over there. So now we're left with two other main trays. We're going to be drilling holes in the bottom of this next tray. It sits on top of here. What I'll do, it'll allow water to come straight up through the top of this bottom tray, through the bottom of this next tray and directly into media or directly into another foam. Bumpy bit of foam downwards in there and then on top of that we're We're going to put some media, but let's get the holes drilled first. Now the bottom of this has got little fins in the bottom. See them? We really don't want to be drilling through those but we can roughly see where they are. A slight bit of discolouration there so we're just going to mark on with a pen where those fins are. We'll be drilling in between there. So there we go. Nice neat holes in the bottom of our second tray. Into there we'll put our medium grade foam and on top of that we're going to put some bio gravel. And basically what that is, is a very porous gravel, it's made of the same stuff as bio home which is primarily sand, so it's basically hundreds and thousands of little sand particles all stuck together, and that makes it lighter than ordinary gravel. It also makes it very, very porous, so it has an incredible surface area on the outside and also on the inside, and the specific structure of the inside of this allows it to support aerobic and anaerobic bacteria, which in turn allows for full cycle filtration, as long as plenty is used. Here's an internal shot of what the structure looks like. Just a quick note on cleaning this media as well, because you might look at it and think, how the hell are you going to clean that? Tip it out with your filter into a sieve. Put that into a bucket of water that you've drained off the tank, give it a shake. Any muck that's settled on the media will come off and end up in the water. And then on top of that we're going to put fine pad. I know what you're saying, that's not the way things go. Mechanical should always be first, followed by biological. But we've got a certain amount of bypass going on here and we really have no other option. If we put this underneath the media it's It's gonna get crushed by the media. So that's our bottom two trays done. That leaves our third main tray and again all we're going to do is drill holes in the bottom exactly the same as we did with the second one. There we go again nice neat holes allowing the water to come up into our media. That media will again be bio gravel and the level of that in both trays is just below these intakes here and then we're going to add another fine pad. Now that's where the water is going to come in ordinarily through there There and there by having a fine pad here and a fine pad here hopefully that should discourage it from coming in here and here, encouraging it to come in the bottom where we want it to come in. Still okay if bits come in here but the majority wants to come in through this bottom section so where the heavy muck's going to be then the water's going to flow up through the trays and out. Right so that just leaves our top section, tiny little tray in there, bio gravel. You might notice that those bits are a little bit bigger, I've selected bigger bits because that grid has got quite big holes in, I don't want any of this being sucked up into the impeller of the pump. Now you want to try and fit as much as you can in there but don't go crazy, this needs to fit properly, like that, nice tight fit, and that weighs quite a lot more than it did when it just had those foams in, that's because it's now got quite a lot of proper media in here. I think there's roughly 450 grams of bio gravel. Which, strictly speaking, isn't enough to give a full cycle, but it's certainly going to help. Now, in an ordinary tropical community tank, you'd normally need roughly a kilo per 100 litres to give you that full cycle, that reduction in nitrate, when you're using any of the Bio-Home products. But, internal filters generally have very little provision for proper filter media. They normally just rely on foams or a series of pads, replaceable things that, um... You need to spend money on every two or three months. This, hopefully, is a little bit more DIY, but also cost-effective as well, I think, in the long term. Because that's the size of the foams that we've been using. That is more or less a full sheet. How many foams can you get out of a full sheet? A hell of a lot. It's the same with the fine pads as well. You can buy big, fine pads, just cut them up yourself and use them. Never buy the manufacturer's ones. So now after those changes the water will still come down through these fins into the bottom but before it gets to the very bottom some of it will be drawn into where those ceramic rings are. We want a lot of the water to hit that bottom section first for that heavy muck to settle out before it starts to rise up and hit the foams. It then flows up through a medium density foam into our filter media which is bio gravel. Through a fine pad, which should hopefully catch the last of the fines that manage to make its way through the medium pad, which will catch most of the stuff. It then goes through more biogravel. There's another little fine pad, and it goes through even more biogravel, back out to our tank. So there's a hell of a lot of biological activity provision in here. Certainly more than that. I mean, a tiny little handful of the biogravel will give many, many times more surface area than a foam. Okay, let's get this tipped out. I'll show you what I've put in here and what was in the filter here. You can compare the two. Okay, this is what was in. One, two, three little blocks of coarse foam and an even smaller block of medium density foam. Not a lot. And next we've got what is in now. Got ceramic rings for primary settlement. Coarse foam for catching coarse muck. Medium foam for straining out medium muck. Possibly fine muck, because that's reasonably fine. Bio gravel, fine pad, bio gravel, fine pad, bio gravel. I can hardly lift the camera high enough to get everything in, but that's a hell of a difference. There you go. I hope that's been useful to owners of this particular filter, or one very much like it. It's vastly improved the biological capabilities of this filter, and And... This going back to Ian today, along with his original foams and spare foams that I cut. I might as well give him that as well, and I might as well give him a little bit of spare bio gravel, because I know he has got a smaller version of this, so he might want to upgrade it. That should be enough, more than enough. There you go, all of that is yours for the low, low price of zero. And if you're watching this and you've got a different filter that you want me to upgrade, please get in touch. My details are in the video description and also in the pinned comment. I'm basically looking for different filters to upgrade. Preferably got to be in the UK because in order for me to send this to America it cost a fortune, especially when it's made heavier by adding proper media to it. So really this is just for UK viewers unfortunately. Hopefully viewers around the world will get benefit from watching me upgrade particular filters but only one person in the UK will be lucky enough to have one particular type of filter upgraded. So many different types of filters, this is a series that could go on and on. If you've liked this video, give it a thumbs up. If you've got a filter you want me to upgrade, get in touch. And feel free to share this video wherever you want. Wherever you think anybody might benefit from seeing it, by all means share it. Thanks for watching. See you next time. Son of a bitch. Hold on, this isn't going to work, is it? I need two hands.