To Flugal or not to Flugal

[john1]

Many years ago I just had a couple of small u/g filters in my 4' tank.

A wall to wall was unheard of. I added an Eheim cannister (the word cannister didn't exist either). It did a marvelous job. Cleaning was messy but at least you saw how much dirt was in it. It also had a spraybar. The hoses were only 8mm.

This time I decided on a Fluval 204. Hoses are ribbed. Makes it easy to bend. Also the size increased to about 12mm. The troughput is quite good. But how efficient is it really. When you look at the cross section, water comes from the inlet pipe, passes through a coarse filter then it supposed to go through all the baskets. But does it really. Can't some water, unfiltered that is, go straight up to the outlet pipe? I dont know how the new Eheims work, but on the old ones either no water, blocked by dirty medium or only clean, that is filtered water could go to the outlet pipe. If my theory is correct then the Fluval is not as efficient as it could be if it were somehow re-designed. By me that is . HE HE

I also use the best filter for the short term. A Vortex. It used diatomaceous earth. It didn't matter how dirty tha water was, my 4' tank was cleaned in approximately 1 hr!!!. The water was absolutely crystal clear. One would call that now, polished. They are still available in the states. But here, nobody has even heard of it. What a shame. Maybe one day I can get hold of one.

BFN John

[Ira]

Well...No, the water can't go straight from the intake pipe to the outlet pipe. Not at more than a trickle anyway, when you close the lid it's basically sealed so that the water is forced to go downwards because there's a wall in the sponge holder and another wall made up of the media baskets. The outlet is also sealed so that it only sucks water from the top media basket. This is of course if everything is all tight like it should be, they're not sealed with o-rings and pressure fittings or anything. I guess with wear it could get worse, but I'd guesstimate that even with a lot of wear the water that's bypassing the sponges and media to be negligable.

If you really want to go to all the trouble to modify your fluval to eliminate that 1 Liter per day that doesn't get filtered, have fun.

[Derek]

A Vortex. It used diatomaceous earth. ................ They are still available in the states. But here, nobody has even heard of it. What a shame. Maybe one day I can get hold of one.

I am surprised that a Vortex diatom filter is unavailable in Australia. They are certainly available in New Zealand. The club I belong to purchased one a couple of years ago for the use of club members.

Try going to http://www.diatomfilter.com/Default.htm and asking if they have an Australian distributor.

[Warren]

I've got one too. Works well for quick tank clean-up jobs.

[john1]

Warren

The prime reason is to move the vortex from tank to tank for about an hour or two maximum. About 20 years ago a chap in the states ran his for 14 days continually and subsequently killed most of his fish. The reason, the water got too pure.

John

[Derek]

About 20 years ago a chap in the states ran his for 14 days continually and subsequently killed most of his fish. The reason, the water got too pure.

[Warren]

I agree with Derek, I use very low micron filters on all my tanks 100% of the time. They only remove mechanical waste. They do however improve the water quality a lot. By regularly cleaning the filters (every 4-5 days) most of the organic matter that would normally decompose is removed from the system.

The only water too pure for fish is RO, DI or Distilled. Virtually any other source should be ok if the pH, Hardness, Chlorine ... levels are ok. Most natural waterways (with the exception of some African and some Central American) are very soft and very pure with less than 400ppm TDS (ref The Optimum Aquarium (Kaspar Horst / Horst E Kipper) ISBN 3-925916-02-4).

[Ira]

Even the RO/DI water isn't likely to kill most fish. Well, maybe if it's lived in hard water all its life and you just plonk it into a tank full of RO/DI water. I've read of a lot of discus owners using nothing but RO/DI water and doing huge, like 90% water changes daily with young discus. Seems the only real problem with it is that you can get bigger PH swings because of the lack of buffering. I guess a PH of 7 also wouldn't be quite ideal either, but I guess they must consider the more extremely clean water to be more advantageous than the disadvantage of the slightly un-ideal PH.

Ooops, off on a bit of a tangent.

[Midas]

Wouldn't those discus breeders also be adding some salts (Ca & Mg etc) to their RO water before they use it to do a 90% water change? I don't think they would get away with using just pure RO water would they?

[john1]

Hi Ira

You remember my post regarding the efficiency of the fluval.

I inject CO2 into then inlet pipe of my fluval 204. Ihoped the CO2 goes up then downthe pipe to the bottom and hopefully disssolved to the outlet pipe. NO. I apparently goes down to the inlet of the cannister , and then straight to the impeller housing . Subsequently making the filter USELESS because of the air (CO2). NO flow whatsoever. The partition wall you mentioned is not high enough to stop flow from then inlet straight to the outlet.

John

PS This is NOT a reprimand or vengeful retort. ONLY an observation :lol:

[Warren]

I've had problems trying to use RO exclusively. If no salts are added back into the water my fish suffered. They started to get little holes in their heads. It never developed into Hole-in-the head disease but it didn't look good. There is also risk of long-term osmotic shock to the fish. If the water had no salt in it, it will tend to strip salt out of the fish through its gills, endangering the fish. Adding some of the salts mentioned in the previous posts fixes the problem. I also add a little marine salt mix from time-to-time to keep the trace elements present also. The fish seem to like it better with a small amount of the right slat added.

I use RO on my Discus, Large Cichlids (Oscars, Jags etc), and in my fishroom with Eartheaters, Tetras, Uaras, Killifish and many more. No problems with any if you add salts. Lots of problems with general fish health if you don't. The fish don't die, they just don't look as good and don't breed much without a very small amount of salt (40-60ppm total seems to work ok as a minimum).

[Ira]

Actually, John, I had a close look at my 404 when I cleaned it last because I thought of what you'd said. It's not as watertight as I was thinking bit unless the 204 is different there still shouldn't be much water(Or bubbles in this case) bypassing the sponges and media, I'm pretty sure the partition goes all the way to the top. I've never actually seen a 204. Could be that it's leaky enough and the water flow slow enough that the bubbles sit around the top and work their way over to the outlet side though. I'd have thought it wouldn't have a problem with the small amount of CO2 though, but 404s are a lot gruntier than 204s...Or I'm underestimating the volume of co2 you're putting through it.

Warren, you just use marine salt mix? I'm considering trying it. (Then I think,"Isn't 4 tanks enough work? You want to start adding MORE to them now?)

[john1]

Hi Ira

I was a fitter and turner. And any machinery, equipment interests me.

When I've got to spare a few minutes I'll take out all compartments and media except where the coarse filter is attached. Then I will attach a stiff cardboard next to the vertical partition a bit higher than the existing one, held with elastic band, make a mark with a pencil, close the topcover and see how much the cardboard moved down. If the cardboard is higher than the existing partition then that will prove or not that the existing one is not as efficient as it should be. If the difference IS big, then one can always epoxy some sort of rubber to make it watertight.

I hope I was not too technical.

John

[Ira]

That's an idea. Use some silicon instead of epoxy, I think, then do the same around the lid piece over the media trays so it's sealed off too.

[Ira]

Ok, I've got a 404 completely disassembled here, . I need a life, hehehe.

Ok, first, here's a little drawing of how it's laid out. The red is the sponges, little boxes on the right are the media trays. Is a 204 similar?

This is how I think the water normally flows. It splits off at the top, some flows through one sponge, the other goes down and through the bottom of the first sponge, then through a tiny gap at the bottom to the underside of the media trays and up. Also a bit probably goes straight into each of the media trays or straight into the outlet.

And THIS is a way that I'm thinking might improve it a bit.

Basically, eliminate the top hole and drill a bunch of holes in the solid tray between the sponges. Then remove the second sponge which is basically redundant because most of the garbage should be trapped by the first(Or leave it, shouldn't make a huge difference) Then the bottom tray either drill a bunch of holes in the side OR cut the top half off and raise it up somehow so there's more room for water to flow into it. Also put a seal between all the trays so the water can't bypass any of the trays and another seal between the tray lid and the water outlet. That should at least(If the seals don't leak) eliminate any water that isn't going through each media tray. Probably would only be a marginal improvement at best, But...I think too much.

[john1]

Hi Ira

The the drawings look terrific. BUT, mine does not look like yours. Or maybe you drew them wrongly. According to your drawings, it seems to work perfectly. But the wall which contains the coarse sponges seems to be the culprit. It, the wall, could not go all the way up. Otherwise it would sort of bind with the lid (cover, motorhousing or whatever you like to call it). If that partition would have some sort of seal between IT and the top cover, then it would be the perfect filter setup. Dirty water goes down and only down then up through the baskets. But does it really? Next time I clean mine out I'll check the distance between the partition and the top cover.

If I am wrong , I'm the first to admit it and appologize for taking up everyones time.

Thank for the drawings.

John

[robert]

if any body knows where i could buy one of these filters i would be very interested,discus are messy fish and one of these sounds like just the thing.thanks robert

[Goldie]

If you mean the fluval robert. Any pet shop has them. They range from baby ones to the 404 I am using a 304 and Ira's drawings are accurate and I find mine excellent for the discus.

[AQUAMANX]

Hello Robert,

Yes you can buy them from a pet store. But, I bought mine on line ona place was WWW.THATPETPLACE.COM, or you can goto www.E-BAY.com. Either way tat would be a whole lot cheaper than the pet stores. Trust me I saved at least $75.00 buying it online... Hope this could help. Sorry if I'm not supposed to post websites here....Just trying to Help a felllow fish keeper... See you later ..

Steve X. aka: AQUAMANX

[Ira]

Unfortunately those are american oriented websites, so we'd end up burning up the price difference in shipping and the transformer we'd need to use it with our electricity.