First cleanout of the cichlid filter

Today we gave the Interpet External Power Filter (EPF350) a cleanout for the first time. I was a bit pensive about cleaning out the filter canister as I was worried about backflow and flooding the lounge-room (mostly because I worry…).

We did the normal aqua-vac and syphon of the tank, taking out about 1/3rd of the water from the tank and removing the solid waste (fish poo) from the tank. For this we have a normal plastic aquarium vacuum syphon that we attach a 6m hose to (19mm hose). When the syphon starts to draw water from the tank, we water the plants on the balcony and store some of the waste water for later watering of the balcony plants.

The EPF350 hasn’t been functioning as well as I’d like because the aquarium cabinet outlet hole is not very well positioned and the pump hoses have a nasty kink. This reduces the water flow and makes the pump function diminished. I want to point out that this is NOT the fault of the pump! I need to cut a larger hole in the back of the cabinet so that the pipes have a better path to the pump. To get around this in the short term, I have applied a pair of pipe clamps to the pipe to squeeze the deformation of the pipe out at the kink. This seems to be working well so far.

The EPF350 has a very nice design, there is a cut-off valve integrated into the pipe clamp so that, when you detach the pipes from the pump, the water flow is cut-off … no flooding!

The EPF350 has 4 outer layers of filter medium (ceramic tubes, and three grades of foam from very coarse to medium) and 3 internal layers of medium (ceramic tubes, bio-balls and charcoal). The water pumps through the three internal layers of medium and then up through the outer four layers. There is also a filter pad between the charcoal and the bio-balls. This all works pretty well, but the tank still gets a little cloudy. This may well be a consequence of the poor water flow due to the kinks. I decided to add a filter pad between the bio-balls and the ceramic tubes in the internal stack to add another layer of water scrubbing.

After reconnecting the EPF350 to the tank and turning it back on again, I fell foul of the low water level problem. That is, there wasn’t enough water in the canister to complete the water circuit, simple enough … funnel some more water in to the canister through the priming hole and, presto!, it all works again.

While cleaning the filter I noticed that the outflow bar has a bit of a design fault. The plastic around the flow valve is brittle and, on mine, broken. This isn’t a big problem because the flow valve isn’t intended to do much more than slow the outflow … not stop it, I don;t really care about it so much because I can fix it if I really want to.

Overall, I am pretty impressed with the EPF350, I would be happy to recommend it to anyone with a 350l tank. My next job with the aquarium is to cut that hole so that the pump hoses are not as stressed.