How to Optimize and Clean a Sponge Filter

Hi everyone, I'm Corey from Aquarium Co-op and today I'm talking about

sponge

filter

s. I love them so much, so we made our own. I want to show you how to use one optimally. They would think it's so simple. device, how can you make it optimal? Well, you know, making cereal is very easy, but if you use 10 parts milk and one part cereal, you're going to get kind of a sweetened milk, so there's some nuances here that I want to talk about first, they're going to be kind of by design. things and then we'll go on from there so this was my previous favorite

sponge

filter

and then this is the one we did well very similar some things I did I made it green I made it a lot heavier so it always sinks if you do.

I have ever used a sponge filter before you are used to it. I put it in and the next day it was floating, you know, and then I had to sink it again and I don't like it, so I liked that it sank right away. Now many of them can come with a lot more fine foam than these, although I'm not a fan of the super fine ones, we don't even sell them, that doesn't mean you don't like them, we just don't sell them. I don't like them, we don't sell them, you can get them somewhere else, but if you like them a course, let me tell you why you can go much longer periods without them clogging up and generally they are going to sink. right away and they are generally easy to

clean

so I like to remove debris with maybe a gravel vacuum that hangs back, change that type of thing and this will pick up debris and fines if you're not

clean

ing them .

I put them in every week, they are actually starting to lose some of their capacity. The other issue I don't like is that most sponge filters out there don't have the ability to put an air stone in them, this one does, which is why I used them. It has been running for many years and ours has too, so the inside when you look at it will be hollow because there is no center stem tube where you would normally connect the air and it does and gets clogged with calcium. time and it's a problem, instead you have this bullseye on the top and we're going to look at the sponge filter without the sponge for a lot of this video and then you plug in your airline here, which, by the way, we have the cooperative airline tube for aquariums, it is super flexible and amazing, read the reviews, don't take my word for it, but we want to put an air stone here because an air stone that changes the size of the bubble and all that is the right way There are also incorrect ways to do it.

The correct way is to use an air stone. I really love the air stones that never clog. A very short piece of tube and I like to squeeze it a little more to make it thinner. bubbles, all you're going to do is put that on the bottom nipple right there and you want to make sure it's relatively straight, if it's sitting on one side the bubbles are going to come off to the side so you want to sit relatively straight . put it in there real good and we're going to put it back in now. You can see that the sponge or, you know, here's the sponge filter, it's right at the top and you're going to get a good flow. and that will lead you to success.

Now what you don't want to do is put a very long piece of pipe in there because the pipe usually tends to bend to the right a little bit and when you put it in there, it goes out. to the side you're going to get bubbles out of the side of your filter and you might say, but Corey, right? The lower the air, the better the lift you will get. Somehow this gets really scientific and nerdy here, so I'm going to gloss over it and you'll have to take my word for it a little bit, but the further the air travels, the more chance it has for two bubbles to come together and form one. bigger bubble and as those bubbles get bigger, they are not as efficient, they end up with blood, so if there are a lot of small bubbles, all traveling relatively uniformly, the lift is huge, so we have a filter which has been running for a while here, has some residue and is running at full capacity in my opinion, this new one I just put in a couple of seconds ago is running over capacity.

If you can see that there are a lot of large bubbles, what is happening is that there are so many bubbles coming out of the tube that they are building up. and making bigger bubbles, if we look at the top of the aquarium, we can see that it is very boiling and makes a lot of noise, like that glug, look, look, look, look, while here we don't have a nice constant flow and movement, so I'm going to lower the air, so now that I lowered the air we have a more uniform flow. You see how the bubbles no longer accumulate as big glugs.

Now it's optimal airflow. This would be considered a very heavy airflow with a lot of suction which you might not want if you had a ton of minnows or something, you can definitely turn it down. I'll show you that the flow would then be reduced, which would be better for the babies and you wouldn't hear it as much. I can see the surface shaking very high. This is a full flow sponge filter and this is a lower flow sponge filter and that's what we focus on here is being able to use not a lot of air to get really good lift so things like our USB nano air pump which runs virtually silent, doesn't even blow out that much air, works great with a sponge filter and that's the type of flow I prefer, unless you have 600 ruminus tetras going through a quarantine tank, in which case I increased it, I increased this one for this video, but they typically run something like this more, even less than what you see in my step down version, so we focused on how we can give you the most lift for the least amount. of air so you don't have to run as much electricity, don't buy big air pumps and all that, instead of just not optimizing and going well, they can buy a bigger air pump, they want more lift, they can do this. want more elevation that type of thing, let's go over some of the differences here between having an air stone versus not having an air stone, so there is an air stone that never obstructs the air stone installed in these, for that's you're getting these fine bubbles down here there's no air stone installed so you're getting that glug glug glug glug and there's a big difference so I'm going to go ahead and remove the air stone from this one so you can see I won't change the airflow or anything, just see what a difference having an air stone in a sponge filter makes, so without changing the airflow at all, now you get this kind of glug glug glug glug and typically what we would find as a hobbyist, we would turn this up and say, ah, that's not enough flow, so you turn it up and you end up using more air to do the same job because you don't have an air stone and because it's going to glug glug, that it's going to be louder and not as efficient as something like that, so let's go ahead and turn it up and we'd actually keep it amateur, which would be more like something like that, probably because people tend to really want to get that boost and I don't.

I don't know if you'll be able to hear that on camera, but we definitely have a clock-like appearance compared to this, so the other part is a lift tube. Yes, a riser tube helps keep bubbles contained. It would be installed like this. it works well, they go up, you get your elevation right, you can

optimize

if you want, if you just want to be, I like to run more air than anyone has ever needed, corey, yeah, yeah, you might want to run the long version, you're like me. I don't care what you say, I want to do it and you want to run the world's largest air pump.

You can get another one of these tubes from another sponge filter. You could cut this one in half. You could make a little piece of PVC, but that's all you need. What you have to do is put this at the bottom. Now all the air that will come out stays in this tube, so you could put in a lot of air. Why would you want to do it? I do not know I do not like it. It sounds like I'm in a hot tub when I walk into a room with a fish tank. I don't want to hear it like that.

I don't like that, but maybe you have a reason, maybe you have a reactor or something you're doing, something crazy that most people don't do, you would have it in there like that and it could handle that, that's your prerogative too, maybe Maybe if you had to have the sponge filter installed on its side, which I don't know. Why would you do it? Maybe you have an Oscar that loves to fly this thing around your tank and it's pretty heavy because we did it. Hopefully Oscar can't do that, but maybe he likes to hit it and you're tired of him coming. on the side, that's another way you could help prevent that problem, but I think the best way to use it is to keep that installed air stone shorter, keep it on top, you don't have to run this by the way in that we did it intentionally. a little narrower so that less plecos and snails get in and voila, now I have a sponge filter that in my opinion is not set up optimally and correctly, one of the signs would be well, it is not level so that's it hint, but that one doesn't work well either, but we have bubbles coming out of the top of the sponge, which isn't really optimal.

We are using additional air and yes, that helps a little bit, but it is the least amount and we are pumping. more air on this side than on this side to achieve those results it all comes down to the way you have the length of the tube here it needs to be very short and the other thing you also need to know is with the air stone never clog That you choose. how fine do you want the bubbles this is now basically set up for how it would come out of the package and I usually squeeze it so we have a little bit tighter bubble like this let's go over each of these so we can see the changes we're making and The first is that we want to fix the bubbles that come out of the top of the filter and that do not pass through the tube and to do this we do it by making sure that the inner tube is straight and is not too long, when it is very long, if the Air is very low here, it has a chance to come out the side, so we want that nice flow, we want to get good suction through the sides that are fluffy and straight. to the center, this is how long the piece of inner tube was, which is much longer than what we recommend on the package and I'm going to shorten everything and give you an idea of ​​that before I do it. tighten this so you can see the different sizes and bubbles so we don't change the airflow at all we just adjust the discs that are on the diffuser stone so you have a finer flow which is good because the more uniform it is more water will move so now I'm going to replace it with a shorter piece of airline tubing on the inside so now we have the short piece installed and you can see it's basically the same length to connect that air. stone to the nipple at the bottom as possible and you will see that unless you turn it sideways the air already wants to rise through the sponge so let's install it from time to time we will adjust the flow if necessary, so we didn't move the sponge filter at all, it's still as unbalanced as it used to be and you can see here we're getting all the flow through the tube, nothing is coming out the sides and we have quite a bit coming out the top, that It's a lot more flow than I would normally use.

There are extreme cases where if you just swirl a huge amount of air around here, no matter what you do, it's going to come out the sides and I. I'll show it, I'll try to show you that I hope I have enough air to do it, that takes a lot, but we'll try too. I'm maximizing the amount of air I can get through this, but I know. I've been able to do it in previous tests where I use just an incredible amount of air and I want to show you how you could prevent that problem if you actually said Corey, I have to lift a mountain with this airlift much more than any normal one. would anyone ever need to assume correct installation, there's actually a solution for that and I'm going to go ahead and set it up right, so I actually had to turn the filter on its side so much with so much flow to get some bubbles. to come out with the correct installation, so let's say this is how it had to be installed, see corey I need a solution, I just can't live with this happening.

The good news is that you can put this piece of pipe right here. Cut it up, you could buy another one, not really from us, but another piece of tubing that you'll put inside, that way you could, uh, you need to leave a little bit of room for air to come in. running out, it needs to stay confined so it can go up and we'll show it here right now, so now you can see we put it at the bottom, now you can see it probably wouldn't have to be like that. long but it contains all the bubbles and no matter which direction you turn it, it will contain all the bubbles.

Yes, putting a ton of air in like that makes it noisy, but when you install it it will allow you to do it there. Come on, it'll let you do what you know, you can put a blower on the end of that thing and it will basically take any amount of air. I'm sure there is a limitation. Someone is going to use it. Hey, I wouldn't support a wind turbine on a plane, okay, yes there is a limitation, but for any practical purpose in your aquariumIt can require an incredible amount of air. Yes, do you lose a little lift?

Yes, because it doesn't have the top tube, but it's not that critical most of the time I don't use the top tubes anyway and then down below you're going to wait, you put a tube in for so long, it's just going to suck down here, yeah, so that's why would you cut that tube just to make it long enough as you need it if you're using it in this critical case? We've designed a filter that can basically take in any amount of air you want to throw at it. Don't know. I recommend you run too much because you're wasting resources and you're going to have a noisy aquarium and that kind of thing where you can go with something more moderate, in my opinion this is as fast as you want to run one.

Nowadays you can either run one more light if you're filming or it's in a bedroom or something like that and this also works really well and what I'd like to show you is you can see the junk that's in this filter that's picking up stuff. up well this and I didn't change the flow that flow has always been that way this flow has always been this way we come here this is picking up things with just that flow so it's mostly not about whether or not you will pick up the Flow depends on how far it will suck stuff in here over time, that's really the big difference and most people tend to put too big sponge filters in their tanks anyway, I recommend running it normally, never clog the stone of air with this. with an air valve so you can control the amount of air, and running it more moderately than Captain Insano levels, you'll get a lot quieter, you'll get a much smoother flow, even though there's more air and I'm not going to set this test up, but even though there's more air going through here, if you were to set the test on how much water is moving, this actually moves more water because it's your uniform, it has constant lift.

It's more like a shake so every time it shakes it goes up and down the water, this is a good upward flow pattern so although visually it will look like it's doing more it's actually doing less and you can see it happening on top. all these bubbles at the top here go to the top and are released. It's so turbulent here that you can see that the bubbles are pushed down when the big glug breaks up, it goes up so much that it causes that recoil and that's why you don't get as good a lift even though you're going to use three times as much air, of course it's better, it's one of those things like this, this is how the flow works and this is the recommendation, so I hope this is helpful. rest like many I don't understand why mine doesn't work like theirs or something is wrong the short tube is the key the right amount of air is the key and you know everything is made according to a recipe and the recipe is short amount of airline tube, use an air stone and keep it relatively level and you will have a great trouble-free experience for many years.

You can see that there are many variations in ways to adjust your sponge filter, your optimal goal in my opinion. is to get it to good elevation, it's accumulating debris and service it at a rate that will make sense for you if you do water changes once a month, service it once a month if you do water changes once a month. weekly service once a week i like to use it in outdoor ponds i like to use it in very large aquariums i must say these are made for 20 gallons right here but i used two of them in 125 gallons with 600 rumino tetras and they thrive no We wanted to play the game of over-promising and under-delivering, instead we will under-promise and over-deliver, these are my favorite sides, they are much easier when it comes to cleaning and I will touch on that.

While we're here, I like the fact that you can put your hand around the bigger ones, it gets tough and you'll start to get carpal tunnel trying to clean it, so when you clean it, I wish I had a bag handy, but you want to. a ziploc bag or an old fish bag, this is now bubbling up in your aquarium, you bring that bag and you go up under the bottom, you grab it and then you lift all this up with the water, it will start to have water with brown poop and everything. you pick that up from there and then you're going to hold the bag and take it apart.

I usually just move this around and this comes off and this is floating in the bag. Now I just reach into the bag and grab this part and then I take this part off now I have a bag of water with poop in it I squeeze it a few times I pour that water into your favorite houseplant and then I get some more water out of your aquarium clean it out there until it's basically almost clean, it's never going to be 100% clean because it's very difficult because there's a lot of poop in there, but it should be like the water is pretty clean, so you go ahead and put it back together and put it back together. put and now you drop it into your aquarium, go, hey, a few more things came off, that's okay, in an hour or two it will pick up what little is left.

You know, it's like when you sweep something and no matter how many times you sweep it, that little fine dust remains. stays, that's what happens in your core, no matter how long you squeeze, you can do hours, you're going to put it back like things are still coming out, it'll pick it up, no problem, the goal is to get 99 out, leave that one percent . no problem and do it regularly and you won't have any problems and it's super easy if you just scoop this thing out with a bag it will just release everything back into the water so you'll have to Wow that's right he said use a bag or a jug or a bowl, something to catch the dirt as you lift it out of the water, because as it comes out of the water, all the debris will follow the water and that's it. down easy to clean should be quick i love it because there are really no breakable parts works on air only you can tell if you are using our usb air pump it can run on a battery backup if you have one of those and a power outage really makes it easy and you can move around with them having cycling sponge filters, you can start up new tanks, quarantine tanks and all that, and the biggest disadvantage of a sponge filter is that they take up space and they are a little bit ugly, we improve a little aesthetic by making it green and mixing it with green plants.

We made it so you don't have to use a lot of air and it's not as loud, so we've gotten rid of most of the drop and left all the benefits and that was our goal. You know there's no such thing as a perfect product, but we could push it a little bit towards that and that's what we've done, so I hope you'll go and buy some if you like using them. sponge filters, try ours if you only like thin sponge filters, sorry but if you haven't tried a thick one yet, I recommend you do because once I was able to do it I never went back to it.

Most, I would say most breeders fall in love with them, but not all treats are made for everyone. You know, there are different sides to choose from, so it's okay, thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.