Why Your Filter is TOO SMALL and NOT CYCLED

Hello there, welcome back like my previous video that I put out about aquarium related stuff where we took a look inside filter media to see what the structure was like this video is very much born of frustration and that frustration is probably two or three fold firstly it is that filters are generally sized totally wrong there isn't enough information about them and the various stock that they'll support there's a general I hate to use the word ignorance, but there is just a general ignorance of the nitrogen cycle and what that means, how it's achieved, and why it sometimes doesn't work. And the third way that I'm frustrated and very disappointed is that the big channels on YouTube simply ignore what I'm about to talk about today. It's probably going to upset them, it's probably going to upset the manufacturers of a lot of these canister filters. But ultimately my duty is to the fish keeper, you. There will be links to all this gear that I'm going to talk about in the video description as well as full descriptions of what I'm talking about and timestamps. So if there's something that you're not particularly interested in, just check out the video description or the pinned comment, hit the timestamp, jump straight to that point in the video. Now you're probably going to see me looking at this bit of paper or my other bit of paper a few times during this video. That's because I've actually written bullet points. I don't normally do that, I normally just say things off the top of my head, but there's so much to get through in this video that I've had to write it down. I really don't want to miss anything out. So first of all, misleading information from manufacturers. Okay, this is an All Pond Solutions EF2000 filter. The flow rate is 2000 litres an hour, that's where it gets the 2000 from. And on the box, it says suitable for aquariums up to 1,000 litres. Now, 1,000 litres is a really, really big aquarium. So I would imagine not many people buy a filter this big, but they should. Now, when a company says this filter is for aquariums up to 1,000 litres, what does that mean? What do you think it means? Have a quick think. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Well... If I didn't understand about filtration, I would think that if I had a 1000 litre tank, I'd buy this filter, water would be perfect. Nonsense. Now before I get going, I'm going to have to explain to probably the majority of people watching, What a cycle is, what a nitrogen cycle is in your aquarium, because if you look on any forums or any websites, you'll see that it is the ability of the bacteria that lives in your filter to convert ammonia to nitrite, nitrite to nitrate. That's it. You see it all over the internet, especially on forums and groups and so on. I cycled my tank in three weeks. Here's the results. Ammonia, zero. Nitrite, zero. Nitrate, 60 parts per million. Well, that's not fully cycled. That's half the job. That's the aerobic side of things. There's a secret part that not many people know or understand about, and that is the anaerobic side. And they don't know about that because the majority of filter media will not support a good balance of aerobic and anaerobic bacteria. If you've got a good balance of that and you've got plenty of media in your filter and the filter's properly sized for your tank, It'll convert ammonia to nitrite, nitrite to nitrate, nitrate to soluble nitrogen which will bubble off or feed the plants. That is a full cycle, that is a cycled tank, that is a filter that's working properly, not a one with sky-high nitrates. These are known as nitrate factories for good reason. They're often very good at converting ammonia to nitrite, nitrite to nitrate. They will not convert nitrate to anything else, so you end up with sky-high nitrates. You need to do huge water changes. Your fish don't grow properly, they don't breed properly, and ultimately they're not happy. Now hopefully that made sense, so now we can continue to really properly size in these filters to not only the size of the tank, but also the stock in the tank as well, based on full cycle filtration. Up to 1,000 litres is basically a best-case scenario, and this is not what the manufacturer is telling you, this is what I'm telling you from feedback we've got from hundreds of people. It probably would give you a full cycle if you set it up properly, and if the tank was a fully planted tank with a few neons, corries, maybe there's a couple of platy in, that would be a best-case scenario for a 1,000 litre tank. Under normal circumstances, for a normal community tropical tank, you can halve the up-to figure. Therefore, a filter which promises to be for a tank up to 1,000 litres is in reality more suited to a normal tank of half that, 500 litres. Now, I should really explain how I get to that figure, how I get to halving the up-to figure. It's basically based on the amount of filter media that a filter will hold. Now since I've been involved in the development and also the selling of the BioHome filter media, we've been getting feedback from people who've been using it. The manufacturer has been getting feedback from people who've been using it for probably close to 20 years, so these figures that I'm about to say are fairly accurate. For a normally A normally stocked community tank, it takes roughly one kilo of media per 100 litres. to see that full cycle to see that reduction in nitrate if it's more heavily stocked say it's kind of medium to heavy stocked it could take 1.5 kilos per 100 liters and if it's heavily stocked or if it's a marine tank it could take two kilos per 100 liters now that sounds like a hell of a lot of media but in reality it isn't it's very very realistic and bear in Bear in mind we're talking about the full cycle of filtration. With this you could fill it with plastic rings and it would probably keep the ammonia and nitrite at zero in a 1000 litre tank. Your nitrates will be off the scale. We're talking full cycle in this video. Now I'm going to run through how to set this up a little bit later in the video but basically we've got four trays in here. The bottom tray would be used for your coarse, medium and then fine foam so that would strain out all the muck. Then your remaining three trays would be used for media. Each tray holds roughly 1.7 kilos of media. That equates to about five kilos of media in this. Five kilos of media should give you the full cycle filtration in a normal community tank of around 500 liters. That is half what this promises to treat. Works out perfectly. Now I'm just going to run through some of the filters that you guys may actually have running on your tanks and if you've got any of these you'll be able to tell if your filter's big enough for your tank or if it isn't based on the information I've just given you. First of all Fluval FX6 or FX5 both the same size. Online you'll find that it's suitable for tanks anywhere from 600 1500 to 3500 litres. That's just super confusing. Generally it says up to 1500 litres. That one is way off the mark. Now the FX5 and FX6 water flows a little bit differently to most filters. Most filters it'll flow from the bottom up so you'd have all your foams in the bottom. In this one you've got foams around the trays and the water goes through that first and then it travels down through the trays. so all you need is a fine white pad on top of your top tray then you can fill your trays with media if you do that it'll hold up to five kilos of media that's the same as this which costs a fraction of the price and ultimately it'll treat the same amount of water 500 liters that's a normal community tank to see the full cycle of filtration 500 liters or a very heavily stocked tank of about 250 liters Sticking with Fluval, we'll just run through the 06 range, so we've got Fluval 106, if you sacrifice the bottom tray for foams and a fine pad, that gives you one tray spare, that's 500 grams of media, so that's really only suitable for a normally stocked community tank of about 50 litres. Next one up, Fluval 206, it's got an extra tray, each tray still only holds about 500 grams of media, so that one's going to be suitable for a normally stocked community tank up to 100 litres. 306 this is a little bit different because the trays are a little bit bigger it's got three trays again sacrifice the bottom tray for your foams and fine pad that leaves two trays each tray will hold a kilo that's two kilos of media you're going to get in that filter making it suitable for 200 litre normally stocked tank Lastly, we've got the 406. Trays are the same size as the 306, but you've got an extra tray, so you'll get three kilos of media in there, making the 406 suitable for a normally stocked community tank of around 300 litres. I've got a few of the Eheim filters written down, and Eheim are actually one of the only companies who do give realistic... sizing of their filters but you have to go to the website for that. Generally you wouldn't find that on reseller sites like retail sites. So the Eheim 4 Plus 250 suitable for tanks up to 250 litres but if you look on their site it'll say for aquariums of about 150 litres. That is the realistic figure and coincidentally that one you sacrifice the bottom tray for your foams and fine pad Will hold 1.5 kilos, 1.5 kilos, suitable for a normally stocked tank, 150 litres, it works out fine. The Eheim 4 Plus 350 suitable for tanks up to 350 liters but if you look on their website for aquariums of around 180 liters that one will hold just over two kilos of media again works out perfectly and stepping it up to the Eheim 4 Plus 600 again if you look online it'll say for aquariums up to 600 liters but if you look on Eheim's site For aquariums of around 240 litres, well, that one will hold 3 kilos of media. It works out perfect. Now, I'm not going to go any further through that list. I have got a load more written down here. But if you use that rule of thumb of halving the up to figure for a normally stocked community tank, you won't be far off. So, in essence, if you pick a filter that's suitable for up to 600 litres, For a normally stocked tank, it would be suitable for a Around 300 litres. 300 litres, it should hold about 3 kilos of media, so that's what you would need to order. That is a very, very easy way to work out the correct size for your filter and how much media you need to give you the full cycle. Now, if you're thinking, oh God, I've got a filter that's half the size it needs to be, well, then you need an extra filter or you need a bigger filter. to properly filter your tank otherwise you're never going to see that full cycle but if you've got a filter that's more or less big enough for your tank but you're still not seeing the full cycle even if you've got it set up properly this fella may be of use to you. That is something that doesn't crop up in many aquarium videos and this is actually a booster filter. Now this would sit in your cabinet next to your external filter and the water would come from the inlet into here It would travel through a series of foams, you can add a fine pad if you want, to really polish the water. It would then go into the inlet of your canister filter, which would be totally filled with biological media. The reason it could be totally filled with biological media is, all your mechanical filtration would be done in this. You could basically free up that bottom tray that you would normally use for your foams and fine pad, giving the filter more filtering capacity. I don't know why these aren't generally known about or aren't shown much. They are a very good idea. They can reduce the overall output of your filter a little bit because of the restrictions and bends and going through the foams and so on, but it's a small price to pay for extra filtering capacity and achieving the full cycle. Now before I go into a demonstration of how to set this filter up properly, I'm going to have to explain how long it generally takes for a full cycle to develop. Now the nitrogen cycle is basically a biological process done by bacteria. First stage is aerobic, and that would be the conversion of ammonia to nitrite, nitrite to nitrate. And if you're using very good media, that should take two to three weeks. So after two to three weeks, your ammonia and nitrite should have gone up and come all the way down, so you should have zero ammonia, zero nitrite, but your nitrates will probably be climbing. That's half the job done. The last part is anaerobic. And that is the conversion of nitrate to soluble nitrogen by anaerobic bacteria. Anaerobic bacteria is quite picky. It only lives in very, very certain, specific conditions. Not many filter medias will support any appreciable amount of anaerobic bacteria. So take something special. to develop that and achieve the full cycle. That should take four to six months. Aerobic bacteria live absolutely everywhere in your water, on your glass, in the gravel, in the sand, anywhere in your filter. Anaerobic bacteria does need special conditions. Now there are quite a few things that will either stall, prevent or completely kill off the full cycle from ever occurring. Obviously filter media is the biggest one of those, the choice of filter media is critical, but there are others and when I've finished running through how to set this up I'll explain about them so please stay tuned for them because whilst none of them are absolutely nailed on and concrete we've had feedback from people who have had problems setting up a full cycle even when everything else was right and there were specific things that were preventing it because when they were removed The cycle developed properly. Okay, first thing we need to do obviously is get inside the filter. And I'm going to show you what comes with this filter. And I'll explain why most of it's going to get thrown away. So we'll take the trays out first. We better put them in some sort of order as well. Get that out the way. Basically the water comes down here, spirals down there, goes to the bottom of your filter and it rises up through these trays and then pump back out to your tank. So the water's flowing that way. Okay, just bear that in mind. So in the bottom one, we've got a fine pad. We do need a fine pad, but that is in entirely the wrong place. That's going to clog within the first week. In the next one, we've got some carbon. Carbon's not a bad thing. It can help with water clarity, but it's in totally the wrong place. Another fine pad, totally the wrong place. And then we've got plastic bio balls and yet another fine pad, again, in the wrong place. Bioballs are absolutely hopeless, plastic media should never ever be used in a static filter. It's fine in a moving bed because it creates a hostile environment where only really strong bacteria will survive. In a static filter it's only going to ever support lazy aerobic bacteria. And then in the top tray we've got some standard quality ceramic rings and yet another fine pad. So there you go, we've got four fine pads. We only need one of them. Okay so the first thing we're going to need is a coarse pad and a medium pad. These are different grades. You should be able to see there that the black one is the coarse one and the blue one is the medium grade. Now the reason that we're adding two extra pads is that dirty water needs to be gradually cleaned. Coarse one will filter out coarse muck. Blue one, which is the medium grade will filter out medium muck. White one will filter out fine muck, so this one isn't just taking the brunt of all the muck that we're pumping out the tank, it's getting gradually cleaned and basically why we do that is to greatly increase the time between filter maintenance. Okay so we're basically just going to cut around our template which is our fine pad, it doesn't matter if we're slightly big, slightly big is better than slightly small. Now the foam I'm using here is 17 inches by 11 inch Pond Foam. Normally comes in a pack of three and the reason I'm using that is because it's a hell of a lot cheaper than buying pre-cut sheets from aquarium stores and generally it's better quality as well. Right now that's how our foam's cut so that's going to go in the bottom tray and we're going to go coarse first, lovely snug fit, followed by medium, followed by fine. There you go, coarse, medium, fine. That's all our mechanical filtration. And if you look in the bottom of there, we've got some little fins at the bottom. That keeps the bottom tray up off the bottom, but it also allows us to fill it with something to take the very, very first heavy muck and settle down the flow. I'm going to throw some bio balls in there. There you go. That should trap really heavy muck. And our first tray to go in is the mechanical filtration with all our foams. We're not going to mess about with numerous other things in here. We've already got our mechanical filtration sorted out. This is our biological filtration. There you go, five kilos of BioHome Ultimate. Ready for action. Oh, spot the deliberate mistake. Pond guru, you moron. You haven't put the grate on the top. That's it, ready to go. And because we've got some... Fairly crappy quality ceramic rings. They could have easily been used in the very bottom instead of the plastic balls. So don't throw these out. They can be useful. We've also got three spare fine pads. We will need those because that is the thing that needs replacing semi-regularly. Anywhere from a month to six months depending on your stock. The other foams can be just squeezed out. These ones really need to be replaced because they get... clogged they really do trap the muck and this was the other thing that we didn't retain in that filter that is the carbon carbon is useful to draw in residual fish treatments so you've just trapped your fish for something whack some carbon in it'll suck all of that remaining treatment up lock it away then you throw the carbon away it can also help to draw in the staining from bog wood peat almond leaves that sort of thing This really does do a good job of keeping the water clear and I'm going to go into why this should be really the only chemical treatment that you put in there towards the end of this video. But this would generally go in the top of the top tray. It's not how it came from the manufacturer and that's generally not how it's recommended to be used but that is the correct place and I'll explain why. Filtration always should go mechanical, biological, then chemical. Your mechanical mechanically cleans the water, then clean water passes over your biological media, has all your biological processes and bacterial things happening in there, and then in the cleanest part of your filter, which is the very last stage, your chemical media gets to work. If you have chemical media further down, it's going to clog up a hell of a lot faster and be effective for less time. Basically, it's going to cost you more for it to do less. Now, you don't have to use chemical filtration, but if you do, that is definitely 100% where it should go. And I know there's a lot of people looking at what I've got in my hand thinking, this fine pad, the polishing pad, it should have gone on top of the top tray. That's what I've been told, that's what I've read. Yep, that's what you'll hear all over the internet. That, again, is wrong. And it's also... Harmful in a efficiency sort of sense for your filter, and I'll explain why. All your mechanical filtration needs to be done in the first stage. In this particular filter, all the crap is going to be held in the bottom. Anything that gets beyond that mechanical layer will be very, very fine. It'll travel straight up through the trays, be pumped back out into your tank, shock, horror, but it'll be caught second time round. It isn't a problem. All your crap will be down here if you choose to use a polishing pad or a fine polyester pad in the top of your top tray in a filter that works from bottom to top it'll be the last thing that the water hits and what that's going to do it's going to confine and retain all the fine muck in your biological zone and that'll cause your media to prematurely clog and be inefficient. Hopefully you can see the sense in that. A lot of supposedly learned people can't. Hopefully you're one of the ones who can see it. It makes perfect sense to do all your mechanical filtration before your water gets to your biological zone. So whether you go to a sewerage works or a water treatment plant, it'll always be the same. Mechanical, biological, chemical. Clean water at the end of it. It's the same in here on a smaller scale. I may as well mention very quickly about cleaning the filter. Obviously you need to pull it apart to clean it. You would basically take the top off, remove all your trays, manually clean out the sponges ideally in water that you drained from your tank so that it was mature water. You just squeeze them out, replace your fine pad as and when it gets dirty. With the biological media all it should need is just a gentle shake in a bucket of water that you've drained off your tank or in a bucket of treated tap water. That's all it needs. It doesn't need scrubbing or anything like that. Even if it's got a fine layer of dusky muck over the top of it, a gentle shake in a bucket of water will take it all off and clean it. That's it. Obviously, if you're using a booster filter before your main canister, then this would be the one that you'd be doing most maintenance on. This would be your mechanical zone. That would be your biological zone. I know a lot of people that run these and they check this. Once every month, once every two months, replace the fine pad if they use it in here and this would hardly ever need to be looked at. I know a lot of folks that have a quick peak in once every six months and I know other people who never look in there if they've got one of these running. These are really, really good. Now we've touched on chemical filtration and it's chemical filtration that may just prevent the full cycle from developing. Now really the very first time you'd probably use a chemical is when you first put water in the tank. You'd add a dechlorinator. Dechlorinators aren't a problem for bacteria. Treatments which promise to toxify or bind ammonia, nitrite and nitrate possibly are a problem. I've had numerous reports of people who've had everything in place to get a full cycle going and simply can't get it going but they've been using I'm not going to give names of specific products, but they've been using ones that do promise to detoxify those particular things. And I don't know whether they've got something in it that poisons bacteria or whether it starves it, but they just kind of get the cycle going. So I've said, look, just swap to a normal dechlorinator, just a straight dechlorinator. When they do that, and they've managed to clear all that other stuff out of the system through water changes over the next few weeks, the filter has developed naturally. And I've also had reports from people suffering a similar problem when they've used chemical filtration in their filter. Now that doesn't include carbon. Carbon doesn't seem to affect the development at all. It just seems to draw in colour and treatments from the water, but certain things do. There's one that's recharged with bleach, which just seems to instantly kill off the anaerobic bacteria. Again, I've had numerous reports of people, zero ammonia, zero nitrite. Zero or five parts per million nitrate. Everything running perfectly. They put some mugwort in. The aquarium develops a little bit of staining. They put this certain treatment in. Draws it in. Think, oh, that's good. Still a little bit of staining. Recharge it with bleach. Boom. Nitrates through the roof. That indicates that the anaerobic bacteria has been exterminated. And it doesn't just happen when they recharge with bleach. It seems to happen sometimes just by using those particular treatments. I cannot quite put my finger on why. It's possibly a starvation issue. It's possibly a poisoning issue. I don't know, but it seems specific to the anaerobic bacteria. As I mentioned before, anaerobic bacteria is quite fragile. It needs a specific environment. It takes a long time to get going. Doesn't take much to upset it. Certain chemical treatments can upset it. Obviously, fish treatments like methylene blue or powerful antibacterial treatments. can just wipe out all the bacterial activity in your filter so bear that in mind as well bacteria is a living organism this thing is alive you know everything that's happening in here is due to natural processes so it's pretty easy to upset that but if you have a filter that's big enough you use good media you should get hardly any problems with your fish which would mean you would hardly ever need to treat the fish Which in turn means that you've got a very, very small chance of destroying the bacterial activity in your filter. Everything starts with filtration. 99% of fish problems are caused by inefficient filtration. Your lack of filtration. A filter being the wrong size for your tank. Hopefully some of the information that I've relayed to you in this video will help you properly size the filter for your tank. BioHome offers the most suitable, the most accessible, the most variable environment for bacteria of aerobic descent and anaerobic descent. Therefore, it will allow you to complete the cycle, to achieve that holy grail that a lot of fish keepers only dream about and whinge about. If you use something like this Quite frankly atrocious Chinese filter media which I showed in that video where we looked inside the filter media. It's got hardly any accessible surface area. It's crap. It won't last five minutes. You need to use good media to get good results. That doesn't just apply to aquariums it also applies to ponds. Here's one. Here's a version of the Chinese media which is meant for for ponds or indeed aquarium sumps. It looks fantastic. It feels pretty good nice and light and on the face of it it would seem to have a lot of little tunnels going through. Now they're just places where bubbles have popped in this mix and this again won't last five minutes. Total rubbish. Now before I go on a total rampage and start smashing all of this stuff up I just want to thank everybody who's watched this video and I hope that you've taken something useful from it. I've tried to put in as much useful information as I can in this time. I am going to do a follow-up video and that one is going to be on the nonsense that's talked by a lot of manufacturers. It's basically going to include far infrared media. I'm going to explain why that is absolute nonsense and there's going to be a whole heap of other stuff as well, so look out for that. I'm more than willing to take the flak for that video and also for this video. A lot of it goes against what a lot of people believe simply because they don't understand. The information that is correct has to get out there. I don't know why it isn't more widely available. I feel as though I've got to pop up every so often just to lay down some of this filtration knowledge. But I guess that's why I call myself the guru. I'm not an expert, don't give myself any regal titles. A guru is there to lay down knowledge. Hopefully you've appreciated this knowledge that I've laid down in this video. If you have, please give the video the thumbs up, share it wherever you want, and most importantly, post it anywhere where you think anybody else might benefit from watching it. There's a lot of people who are really struggling with fish keeping, and they don't have to. And the way I always approach making an informative video is by remembering the words of a great man called Terence McKenna. Who said, if the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed. Hopefully, even if you were sceptical at the start, you've believed some of the truth that I've told in this video. Thanks very much for watching. I'll see you next time.