Fx5 Modification :)

[jgray152]

Well I got the foam sheet that I ordered a few weeks ago today and found out it was the same PPI (Pores per inch) as the old spunges and felt it would be usless trying to cut them to shape. I was hoping the foam I ordered was a higher PPI but I was not sure what PPI the original ones were. So I came up with a different Idea while I still look for a high PPI open cell foam.

why not remove the baskets all together, use some egg crate as seporations and hold possible close to 15-18 liters of bio media?

I only have a couple pictures of the foam cut to a snug fit for zero bypass. I will fill about 5/8 to 3/4 of the Fx5 with bio media and then put egg crate on top with some filter fiber, egg crate then 2" thick foam.

reason I would use egg crate is for horizontal support so that the foam does not bend down at the edges and create a possible bypass. Although I think the biomedia would do find at supporting the foam though so I may not use any egg crate at all.

I removed the intake tube that is inserted on the cover so the water just falls right onto the foam.

I would like some input on this.

This modification is good for a few things.

1. ) Increase bio media capacity. Possibly around 12-15L
2. ) Decrease velocity of water flow for more contact time with bio media
3. ) Large area for flow which decreases the flow restriction.
4. ) Should help increase flow output since the water only has to change direction ONCE instead of THREE times.
5. ) Cleaning should be even easier and you will not need to remove bio media to clean the spunges like you had to before.
6. ) Eliminate about 5 possible warn o-ring issues
7. ) Original Foam blocks don't seal as nice as I would have liked to the basket above.
8. ) Increase the time between change intervals. In original form if you had fine filter foam in the center baskets, they could clog up real quick causing a drastic decrease in flow and lots of cavitation of the impeller and you would get LOTS of air bubbles everywhere. Should be able to use fine filter pads for longer periods of time.
9. ) Due to the decrease in flow resistance, hopfully this will help with the cavitation problem in the Fx5.

 

[SJ2K]

Looks good to me, aslong as the foam is cleaned etc good move!

 

[jgray152]

Thanks.

The flow should be increased as well I hope since the water only has to change direction ONCE instead of THREE times plus the column of water is much larger which should have less resistance and possibly reduce the cavitation that seems to be the norm. I'll use some flow meters when I finish this. Its nice having a spare Fx5 to work on

Another major plus for doing this is since the water column as increase drastically, this will allow the water to flow slower through the filter media for more contact time at the biomedia instead of before where the water through the biomedia was much faster since the water column was much smaller.

I always thought Hagen's design was a little odd and knew it could have been better

 

[jgray152]

What is some good bio media?

I like using the Fluval Biomax since it seems to have a ton of surface area. The only problem is, that there are gabs in between all the cylinders. Is there something else I could use? That would have more surface are but with less gap? I think bioballs are out of the question.

I found 2 bio media, both from Ehiem.
[URL="http/www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod...amp;pcatid=8983"]http/www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod...amp;pcatid=8983[/URL]
[URL="http/www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod...amp;pcatid=4327"]http/www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod...amp;pcatid=4327[/URL]

 

[peedee]

This is the idea i was going to experiment with but i was going to use bioballs. Why do you think they are out of the question? Bioballs were the source of my wanting to experiment. I think it's an great idea keep us up to date on how it works out.
p

 

[jgray152]

The reason I say that is because if you use bio balls similar to these

There will be much larger gaps between the balls then there would be with smaller media. You can fit more smaller media in one square inch and have more surface area than with bigger media such as the bio balls.

That was my only concern

Now if you went with something like this you might be ok since the bio balls could fall together better and have a smaller gap between them.

I can see this being much more efficient than the Ehiem 2080 Pro3 :

 

[peedee]

Ok right i see what you mean. I was thinking of the coral life type when i had imagined it. I think there will still be plenty of surface area. I had asked a while ago about which one had benefits over the other and didn't get too much response. Have you thought of doing two layers the top being about two inches of biomax type and filling the rest with bioballs? I'm still new to all this and very amature but i would think once the bioballs are matured everything would be fine if the flow rate was slow enough for the bacteria to do it's job properly. Once question about the bioballs....should they ever be cleaned or rinsed?
P

 

[jgray152]

I think I may just stick with the fluval biomax rings. They have worked great for me and have never clogged up. I don't think I really need to be worried about the max surface area since the volume will be so large. Its cheaper than the Ehiem supstrate pro which I was going to use but the price is so damn high. Plus the biomax rings will not fall into the impeller and will be easy to contain.

One issue I need to try and resolve is where can I trap sandy substrate. I don't think it will be to much of a problem when I get my large 180 gal up and running but in my 55 I have sand which works its way into the filter.

All biomedia should be carfully rinsed in Aquarium water. What I usually do is just dip the biomedia a few times into a container of water to dislodge and loose particles that may have been caught in it. This can and most likley will also disloge some bacteria so depending on the bio load and the volume of bio media you may want to clean the bio media in sections. This can be hard though.

 

[jgray152]

I found a website with rolls of foam that might work for extra filtration. Here is the site.
<a href="http/store02.prostores.com/servlet/ponda...edia/Categories" target="_blank">http/store02.prostores.com/servlet/ponda...edia/Categories</a>

Im going to try it and see what happends.

I changed my mind on the bio media as well. Going with Bio Bale. Its cheaper to get more than fluval biomax which can run up to $20 per 17oz bag. Not much at all.
Bio Bale has about 250sq ft per cubic foot. Not to bad.

Here is a page that tells you how much sq feet is available for specific bio media.
[URL="http/saltaquarium.about.com/cs/filtration/l/aa071603.htm"]http/saltaquarium.about.com/cs/filtration/l/aa071603.htm[/URL]

 

[england]

I Personally cant see that being any good for the filters impeller?maybe iam wrong,thought everything fine should be housed in some material like tights?when filters running wont it be like a tornado inside wisking all the fine particles about?

 

[jgray152]

It will work the same way as it used to except the water only changes direction once instead of three times and there is a larger usable volume. The Impeller is housed on the side and its impossible for the biomedia to come in contact with the impeller. There is only a small hole for the water to enter to get near the impeller. Im going to put some egg crate at the bottom to allow a safe gap between the impeller intake and the bio media. The biomedia im going to use is not fine. I don't use any fine media such as charcoal. All I need is the mechanical filtration which is the spunges and the biological filtration was woud be the bio bale which is plastic strands.

The nice thing about the impellers design is that it can't get ruined nearly as easy as your standard 3 peice straight bladed impellers.

 

[T1KARMANN]

just out of intrest if this did work then why didnt fluwho give you the 2 options in the instuction book on how to set it up

i think the filter was designed to work a certan way they must have had loads of people testing it to see what way it works best before they put it on the market

it seams strange that you can make this filter work better in 10mins of thought when fluwho paid $10000000 to people who developed this filter

you need to get on to them they may give you a job

 

[jgray152]

just out of intrest if this did work then why didnt fluwho give you the 2 options in the instuction book on how to set it up

i think the filter was designed to work a certan way they must have had loads of people testing it to see what way it works best before they put it on the market

it seams strange that you can make this filter work better in 10mins of thought when fluwho paid $10000000 to people who developed this filter

you need to get on to them they may give you a job

I really have no idea why they didn't think of this before. It seems they were more interested in the surface area of the spunges than anything else.

Another thing I noticed is the intake to the impeller is only about 5/8" in diameter where as the output tube is 1" Maybe I will work on this too

I think they wanted to be different than have a similar setup like Eheim insides. Now I can see one reason why they didn't do it this way and that is for sediment seporation. If the intake happend to pick up sand or large sediment, it would stay on the outside of the baskets instead of getting near the impeller. The way I have it the sediment can possibly reach the impeller which is why I need a fine spunge to trap it. Not to fine though. Other than that, I can't see why they didn't do something similar.

As for a job at Hagen, well, they are only 2hours away from me

 

[jgray152]

I just did some compairing between the Fluval 405 and the Fx5 and the Eheim 2080

405 Media Capacity: 4.2 Liters
Fx5 Media Capacity: 5.9 Liters


Difference............... 1.7 Liters

For a Filter so LARGE they only managed to put in another 1.7L of media.

The Little amount of media with such a high flow rate, no wonder it doesn't cycle very quickly. The Flow velocity is to great for such little media capacity.

Mechanical Area;
405 Mech Capacity: 49 sq In
Fx5 Mech capacity : 294 sq In; 369 cu inches; 6 L

245 sq In increase in Mechanical Filtration from the 405 to Fx5. YIKES! They must have been looking at time between cleaning intervals

Will Keep updating this post when more updated statistics are available.
Last Updated: 3/29/08

Unmodified Fluval Fx5 Stats
Media Capacity: 5.9 Liters
Mech capacity: 294 sq in; 369 cu in; 6 Liters
Measured Flow Rate: 525 GPH
Max Head Height: 3.3m (10.8ft)
Filtration Volume: 11.2 (Hagen says 20L. I call BS)


Modified Fluval Fx5 Stats.
Media Capacity: 14 liters.
Mech Capacity: Est 108 sq in surface area. 325 cubic inches (2" prefilter foam and 1" fine filter foam.)
Filtration Volume: 19.3L
Measured Flow Rate: ??


Will the flow increase even more? We'll have to see. With a pump output of 925 GPH, there is some room to grow. The said filter output by Hagen says 607 GPH. Its actuall output is 86% of the said output which is pretty darn good but in comparison with the pump output thats only 56%. Where is the restriction? Thats what we need to know and I want to find out. If I could get the flow even 70% of the pump output that would be a drastic improvment at just about 650 GPH. Knowing that head pressures will never let me get near 80-85% if the rated pump output which would be 740-790 GPH.

Now I wonder how much of this 925 GPH is Fact and how much is Marketing.

I have a feeling the baskets are a small part of the restriction and its more of the fact that the intake of the impeller is smaller than the output. Flow meters will be needed to measure flow increase.

Ehiem Statistics
Eheim 2080 Media Capacity: 12 liters
Eheim 2080 Estimated Mech Capacty: 1.5L; 92 cu in
Measured Unmodded 2080 Flow: 318 GPH
Max Head Height: 2.2m (6.6ft)
Unmodded Filtration Volume: 13.5 L
318 is 70% of the 450 GPH pump output which is really good.

 

[jgray152]

Well I ordered the rest of the filter foam from Pond and Garden Wholesalers which cost me $25. 48 with shipping. I order Fine Foam and Very Fine Foam to see how well this will really work.

I also ordered 1 cubic foot of CPR Bio Bale from Laguna Koi Ponds for $35.00 w/o shipping. which should be enough. Its has 250 sq feet of surface area per cubic foot. Seems pretty darn good to me. We'll see though.

The Coarse filter foam I ordered first was 2" thick at $9.95 per square foot. I bought 4' of it so it was $39.80

Total of around $100.00

I could have dropped that down to about $70 if I had only bought one square foor of the coarse foam.