# The ultimate professional canister filter for aquascaping



## Gold Fish (22 Nov 2021)

I was wondering, how it will look the ultimate professional canister filter for aquascaping?

I think that it will be highly adjustable, allowing the user to choose all characteristics of the system. Now, what exactly we need is up to you guys to tell me, because each person sees this issue with different eyes. For example, I don’t feel that an UV light is required in the system, but I may be wrong. So therefore, can you please take turn and wright a detailed description, as much as possible, of your ideal canister filter system?

My personal view is that will look as follow:

The canister will have a box shape, with a square footprint in order to fit in the cabinets as before. It will need to be made, as standard item, from clear plastic such way we will create the effect of a sump visibility where you can see all the bubbles going around and the media getting dirty in time. This will allow us to have easier trouble shotting and a better maintenance of it. Options of a non-transparent buckets should be available. Now following the water path, we will have: First the tap, which will be separate for in and out flow, something like the Eheim taps on the Eco Pro or the double taps for hoses. From there the water will go straight into a prefilter similar to Oase Biomaster placed in the corner of the canister box. The sponge will have the same cylindrical format with options for PPI. Inside the pipe will be replaced by a strainer shape cage which will allow a good flow area in the filter. The water will exit the prefilter through the bottom, this way when you pull the cartridge out of the canister not much water will be trapped in it. In the bottom chamber we will find the heater as in Eheim thermo filters but with a range of powers to choose from. Four screws and you take it out and replace with a new one. If is not required a blanking cap will be fitted. From there the water will rise through clear plastic trays of a similar shape as in Allpondsolutions canister filter, just maybe with a bigger cut out tube. The numbers of trays will be dependent of the hight of the bucket which will come in different heights.  This way if you need more media, you can buy a bigger bucket and trays and move the rest of the system on to the new bucket. At the top of the bucket a sunk-in lid will be closed by four clamps. It needs to be sunken in in order to not overflow when is opened. From the opposite corner, from the prefilter, a pipe similar to ADA super jet filters, will come out to an external pump. Also, on this exit pipe, a priming pump can be located, if required. This will have a horizontal piston, pointing towards front, like Aquael but with the handle of the 07 series from Fluval. Here before and after the priming piston, we will have the two one-way valves. The pipe and the pump will be replaceable by a simple pipe if is not needed. The external pump will be installed on a rubber insulated raft in order to reduce generated noise. The range of pumps, whit different powers will provide us with the desired water flow. The water will exit the pump trough another independent tap which will be able to control the flow. Both pump and heater will have removable cables similar to Ehem Pro e5 head, and if required will have Bluetooth capability.

The system has no safety system as many canisters do (for example: oase, you need to close taps in order to open prefilter), but is made for professionals, which know what they are doing…😊

Regarding CO2 and UV light, I left them out, but you guys may be of a different opinion.


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## Garuf (22 Nov 2021)

Just update the 2213classic or better still 2224experience series and give it a low wattage,really high turnover (adjustable by a knob), realllllllly quite pump. You can add a window to see if the fine floss is dirty or not but it’s such a quick and relatively speaking tidy job it’s no low without. No bells, no whistles. Just a pump in a bucket that is powerful and silent.

Only whistle id add as an optional extra is a heater.


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## Angus (22 Nov 2021)

For me, i would like to see a filter with a high flow rate, full biological media included (not activated carbon) Rubberized bottom, increased soundproofing in the filter head, ceramic impeller shaft,  a "vibration unit" of some sort to force air out of the system so i don't have to shake my filter, pre-filter, and a co2 injection inlet with a removable internal reactor/diffuser that you can close when not in use.
Interested to see what others think.


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## dw1305 (22 Nov 2021)

Hi all,


Garuf said:


> Just update the 2213classic or better still 2224experience series


I like <"both of those">.


Garuf said:


> Just a pump in a bucket that is powerful and silent.


<"That one">. I like the idea of an <"Iwaki pump">, but <"they are expensive">.


Garuf said:


> Only whistle id add as an optional extra is a heater.


I've got an old 2213 style Eheim Classic with a kettle element type heater in it, although I'm not sure the heater still works. I'll find out what the model number was. I assume it wasn't a success as an idea.

cheers Darrel


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## MrClockOff (22 Nov 2021)

I'd love to see filter flow specs matching filter actual output at max head height, quiet, integrated heater and pre-filter 👍


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## Aquahorti (22 Nov 2021)

A square filter is an inefficient use of the filter material. Looking at hydrodynamics you will see that the optimal container for flow is a cylinder, or just look at nature for an empirical proof, as you don’t really tend to find any other shapes than cylindrical tubes for moving fluids. The boundry conditions leads to a very low flow toward the corners of the filter, that in turn will be able to cause anoxic conditions to occur there far before it would happen in a cylindrical filter. So why these box like filters have become so popular is an enigma to me.

I never understood the need for placing a heater inside the filter. First of all it take space away from filtration material, and we have inline heaters. Second of all, unless the heater is placed so that it in not in contact with the filtration material the temperature right next to the heater is so high that the nitrifying bacteria are not having good working conditions there, again wasting filtration unless you limit it to mechanical filtration there. That would though lead to a more convoluted internal design reducing the flowrate due to resistance. So it is far better placing the heater outside as an inline heater on the outlet. I don’t know if you have looked at the optimal temperature for the nitrifying bacteria and then looked at the temperature right next to a heater, but a heater inside a canister filter is not particularly beneficial, but for the most part not a disaster either.

With regards to the flow through the filter I would suggest looking at the design of the ELOS F100 filter. The pump have variable speed and is placed in the bottom of the canister. This means that priming the pump after cleaning is limited to adding water, closing the lid and then starting the pump. After a min. you turn the pump off the the air that was in the pump will run back up the inlet tube. Because the pump is in the bottom of the filter, it runs very quiet as you never experience air in the impeller.
The pump is modular so you can change the volume of the filter material compartment meaning that you can use the filter in many different setups.
The F100 will due to the outlet being at the bottom of the filter make it easy to place inline heater, UV unit and other things on the outlet. Only downside is that they are not in production, but you can still use pictures of them to build your own.

I agree that a modular design is nice to have, but if you want all the modules to fit in one filter you are limiting yourself more than having the different modules that you then can mix and match inside the cabinet.

To date I have used and owned the following brands of filters: ADA (Vuppa-I/II all the way up to ES-1200), BLAU HOB filters (never again) Dennerle (Scapers Flow and some of the internal filters from them), EHEIM (Skim 350, a couple of the internal filters, and all the Classic filters), ELOS (F100), Fluval (HOB and internal in the Spec range) and JBL (CristalProfi series 702 to 1902).
I would say the best bang for the buck is the EHEIM Classic series, and they make most of the external items needed for making a very good modular system with pre filtration. ADA is nice and just works, but… If money does not stop you, I would only use the ELOS F100 filters. I am lucky enough to own two of them and my wife keeps refering to them as her filters and says that it is good that we have two of them in case we would ever divorse so we could get one each. They are that good…


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## Angus (22 Nov 2021)

Aquahorti said:


> So it is far better placing the heater outside as an inline heater on the outlet.


What about a heater but in place of the usual outlet pipe and built into the plumbing shut off system? the only pet hate i have about inline heaters is just that.... they are inline.


Aquahorti said:


> placed in the bottom of the canister. This means that priming the pump after cleaning is limited to adding water, closing the lid and then starting the pump. After a min. you turn the pump off the the air that was in the pump will run back up the inlet tube. Because the pump is in the bottom of the filter, it runs very quiet as you never experience air in the impeller.


Far easier and much more intelligent fix than what i was thinking... makes absolute sense, priming is definitely annoying.


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## Garuf (22 Nov 2021)

Aquahorti said:


> The F100. Only downside is that they are not in production.





Aquahorti said:


> If money does not stop you, I would only use the ELOS F100 filters.


Is it discontinued or just a nightmare to get? ‘Cause that would be very Elos, they’ve great products that no one can buy.


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## Aqua sobriquet (22 Nov 2021)

I’d like a *silent* Eheim 2213 type with a handle on the top and a removable power lead so I can easily carry it to the sink. An internal input pipe would be nice together with a heater option. A case colour option including clear would be nice.


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## Gold Fish (22 Nov 2021)

Aquahorti said:


> With regards to the flow through the filter I would suggest looking at the design of the ELOS F100 filter.


So this one is like an ADA power jet but in reverse, going top-down. But I have a question: after you are stopping the filter, in order to allow the traped air to rise through the inlet hose, how you will remove it from the crouch if that is going all the way to the bottom of the tank? Or is it running all the time with some air on the top of the canister? Did you ever clean the impeller? How easy is that process to do? And how expensive they are?
Sorry for all these questions but I can't find much on the internet. 🙂


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## Hufsa (22 Nov 2021)

Aquahorti said:


> A square filter is an inefficient use of the filter material. Looking at hydrodynamics you will see that the optimal container for flow is a cylinder...


I think there are two possible ways to see efficiency. One would be water flow per surface area, the way you propose. But you can also look at it more in the way of surface area per cabinet space. That is where I think the square filters are beneficial. Square filters can also afford to be shorter than cylindrical filters while keeping the same filter volume, allowing the filter to fit into a wider variety of cabinet heights.



Aquahorti said:


> The boundry conditions leads to a very low flow toward the corners of the filter, that in turn will be able to cause anoxic conditions to occur there far before it would happen in a cylindrical filter. So why these box like filters have become so popular is an enigma to me.


I dont really buy that flow towards the corners is that bad. And I would argue that there is still a net benefit to the additional surface area provided by the corners, even if the flow is less than what it is in the cylinder area. I have a square Eheim, and the sponge seems just as dirty in the corners as the center. If someones filter is going anoxic in the corners I would be seriously concerned about the state of their filter media.


Aquahorti said:


> The pump have variable speed and is placed in the bottom of the canister.


Downside to having the pump on the bottom is that it becomes very vulnerable to sand, potentially getting into the impeller.


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## Aquahorti (23 Nov 2021)

Garuf said:


> Is it discontinued or just a nightmare to get? ‘Cause that would be very Elos, they’ve great products that no one can buy.



To my knowledge they have been discontinued. And I will agree that they make great products, and that they are hard to get hold of. 
I have a couple of their Aquascaper series aquariums and they are the best aquariums I have ever seen. I have also been very impressed with their lights. The wife is using an ELOS Stella 20 light on a 43x43x40 aquarium and growing a HC carpet that was supposed to be a mix of MC and HC, but the HC just took over, and that is with a light that is 20W.


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## Aquahorti (23 Nov 2021)

Gold Fish said:


> So this one is like an ADA power jet but in reverse, going top-down. But I have a question: after you are stopping the filter, in order to allow the traped air to rise through the inlet hose, how you will remove it from the crouch if that is going all the way to the bottom of the tank? Or is it running all the time with some air on the top of the canister? Did you ever clean the impeller? How easy is that process to do? And how expensive they are?
> Sorry for all these questions but I can't find much on the internet. 🙂


First question: Don’t know, never had the inlet going more than 2/3 down, but with the setups we have used them in there might be a tiny bubble left, as the momentum of the water rushing through the pump through the outlet have been enough to expel the air.

Second question: You might get some air at the top of the filter, but you will only notice when you turn the pump off.

Third/fourth question: Never needed to clean the impeller, I flush it when I clean the filter, but that is all I have had to do the 3 years we have had them.

Fifth question: 300 - 350€ for the base model, and around 75€ for the expanded filter compartment unit (three different sizes). They did cost more than the ADA filter of the same size when I got them.


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## Aquahorti (23 Nov 2021)

Hufsa said:


> I think there are two possible ways to see efficiency. One would be water flow per surface area, the way you propose. But you can also look at it more in the way of surface area per cabinet space. That is where I think the square filters are beneficial. Square filters can also afford to be shorter than cylindrical filters while keeping the same filter volume, allowing the filter to fit into a wider variety of cabinet heights.
> 
> 
> I dont really buy that flow towards the corners is that bad. And I would argue that there is still a net benefit to the additional surface area provided by the corners, even if the flow is less than what it is in the cylinder area. I have a square Eheim, and the sponge seems just as dirty in the corners as the center. If someones filter is going anoxic in the corners I would be seriously concerned about the state of their filter media.
> ...




There are many ways to look at things, when it comes to taste and preferences there is no right answer. 

If you want to argue that having as much filter material in the filter is good without looking at how that filter material is used, that is up to you. You and I have different metrics we measure things against (or so it would seem) and I could start posting links to peer reviewed articles on hydrodynamic simulations (after all I did work with hydrodynamic simulations for years), but my experience is that they would be lost on people. I would suggest looking at how waste water treatment plants are being designed, or even just look at the fluid flow profile of a river.
In any case I disagree with the way you look at using filter material, where you are much less focused on how it is used and having the focus on volume alone.

I don’t know how often you get sand in your filters or how much sand you get in them either, but I use a fine sponge prior to the water going to the impeller so any sand would get trapped there. That being said I have only once seen sand in any of our filters, and that was because I used that pump for cleaning a growout tank where the pots were standing on sand. Still no sand in the impeller, as I never run them without a finer mechanical filter material just before the impeller.


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## Hufsa (23 Nov 2021)

Aquahorti said:


> There are many ways to look at things, when it comes to taste and preferences there is no right answer.


100% agree 😊



Aquahorti said:


> If you want to argue that having as much filter material in the filter is good without looking at how that filter material is used, that is up to you.


If I gave that impression then that is my mistake, im not interested in having as much as possible regardless of any factors, I think there is definitely a balance to be struck.



Aquahorti said:


> You and I have different metrics we measure things against (or so it would seem) and I could start posting links to peer reviewed articles on hydrodynamic simulations (after all I did work with hydrodynamic simulations for years), but my experience is that they would be lost on people. I would suggest looking at how waste water treatment plants are being designed, or even just look at the fluid flow profile of a river.
> In any case I disagree with the way you look at using filter material, where you are much less focused on how it is used and having the focus on volume alone.


Fair enough, im not really looking to get into a fight about canister filters, I just wanted the OP to consider some of the potentially positive sides of the square canisters 
I wouldnt discount the ability of the people on this forum like that, what makes you say that it would be lost on us? Could it be that people understood your references, but had different goals?



Aquahorti said:


> I don’t know how often you get sand in your filters or how much sand you get in them either, but I use a fine sponge prior to the water going to the impeller so any sand would get trapped there. That being said I have only once seen sand in any of our filters, and that was because I used that pump for cleaning a growout tank where the pots were standing on sand. Still no sand in the impeller, as I never run them without a finer mechanical filter material just before the impeller.


Yeah I suppose it comes down to differences in tank setups as well, I have very fine sand 0.1-0.5mm as the only substrate, and two large catfish that whip up the sand near the filter intakes occasionally. So I usually have to pour out a small amount of sand when I clean the filter. The risk of getting sand into the filter is probably much less for an aquascaped tank with predominantly aquasoil and different fish stock.


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## Aqua sobriquet (24 Nov 2021)

I would have thought square containers would have dead spots in the corners with little flow but much would depend on the size, style and location of the inlet pipe.

A top to bottom flow sounds like a daft idea to me but who knows. Certainly if I was designing a filter I’d make the top of it funnel shaped inside with the output pipe in the middle so that trapped air would be expelled quickly and easily.

Sadly too many products like this seem to have design criteria set by the marketing department.

Edit: And could it be made from transparent aluminium please!


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## dw1305 (24 Nov 2021)

Hi all, 


Aquahorti said:


> I would say the best bang for the buck is the EHEIM Classic series, and they make most of the external items needed for making a very good modular system with pre filtration


I like a <"big sponge block as a prefilter"> and an in tank heater.  I don't find either of these visually intrusive, mainly because I have <"very weedy tanks">. 

cheers Darrel


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## Aqua sobriquet (24 Nov 2021)

If any of you where copying say the ADA external canister what pump would you use? Anything good and quiet and 12V or 230V?


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## dw1305 (8 Dec 2021)

Hi all,


dw1305 said:


> I've got an old 2213 style Eheim Classic with a kettle element type heater in it, although I'm not sure the heater still works. I'll find out what the model number was. I assume it wasn't a success as an idea.


This is it, "Eheim 2313" I still haven't tested whether the heating element works since I changed the internal fuse.








cheers Darrel


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## Kerrycarp (30 Mar 2022)

I remember those, blimey Darrel you must have that a long time!


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## john6 (30 Mar 2022)

I think you cannot much improve on the Oase Biomaster filters, it has an easy to clean pre filter, heater inside the filter, Safety features, (even professionals make mistakes), lots of space for medias of your choice, i dont know what else any body could have the need of. Filters work full stop. We dont need all the bells and whistles which are basically pointless, just a filter that filters. Lets hope manufacturers dont start going down the reef route.


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## dw1305 (30 Mar 2022)

Hi all, 


Kerrycarp said:


> I remember those, blimey Darrel you must have that a long time!


They were all pre-owned when I bought them. I recently changed the  fuse for the light  and I think it is now working but I'm not entirely sure.  The filter itself is nearly silent.

It is on the tank in the lab. (without any fish in it).

cheers Darrel


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## Kerrycarp (30 Mar 2022)

What it all boils down is not the aesthetics but whether it does the job properly. That is all the fish care about! 
Not many of my fish have even seen the filter apart from 2 curious weather loaches who went on an expedition when i forgot to put the end on my inflow pipe


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## Hanuman (31 Mar 2022)

Perfect filter for me should:
1 .  be completely silent. No matter the size, a filter should NOT be heard. Full stop. Not in 1 week not in 6 months. Never. Not because you have tilt it right and left etc etc. Ok maybe after a few years due to things being wore down. Most filters I have had started making noise within less than 6 months. Oases and Aquael included. Eheim here is a winner.
2. Manufacturers. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE. Advertise the approximate flow of your canister full of media. Not empty. I don't see why I need to make calculations just to figure out if the flow is the one I need. Or at least make the customers aware that he will basically lose 50% of the flow after filling your canister...
3. Pre-filter. All filters nowadays should have pre-filters inclued. Well at least the bigger sized canisters. Understandably this is not feasible in smaller canisters. Kudos to Oases and Aquael for having understood this. I do think Aquael's pre-filter is still better than the one of Oase which clogs way too fast and needs some hacking to lengthen maintenance. Some improvement could be done on both though.
4. last but certainly not the least: RELIABILITY long term. None of the filters I have had are reliable long term. When we build cars 40-30 years ago they could last many many years without hardware maintenance and spare part changing. That's all what companies care about nowadays, selling you stuff so they create products that last less. Programmed obsolescence if you will. I hate it profoundly.


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## fredi (31 Mar 2022)

Agreed, however, using the car analogy, parts are cleaned and or replaced during servicing, how many people dismantle their filters and clean, or replace (worn parts), when cleaning (i don’t), rubber feet will harden with age, bearings will wear
I have just replaced the impeller and ceramic shaft on an Eheim 2217, as i checked the shaft for wear, after a rather noisy start following previous cleaning
It’s silent now, it’s only now that a realise that the barely audible hum, that i have heard for some time, was due to wear


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