Testing Redux: Fixing the Seachem Tidal Bypass

[nabokovfan87]

On 5/8/2023 at 10:41 AM, redfish said:

I recently picked up an AquaClear 70 to replace an old HOB in my 55g.  I read through your mods and thought to myself, I didn't have time to do all of this but maybe one day.  I see flaws or opportunities for improvements in most of the popular HOB's but they work good enough as is I guess.

I used "a few" AC70s.  I think each time they lasted about 3 months.  Wasn't great.  I've had the tidals, all of them, running for over 5 years.  Please be sure to let us know how the pump hold up.  By no means do I advocate one vs. the other.  I think they all have issues.  Turning on the 75s and having to replace parts the way I did was something I seriously was not anticipating.  Thankfully, just some old magnets.

[redfish]

Will do.  It's been running since Feb now.  Hopefully I have better success than you had with them. 🙂

[redfish]

@Pepere   Thanks.  I have the itch to stand up a 75G for cichlids and debating the filter type.

[DeadStang]

So my understanding of your threads regarding the Tidals is that:  (1) the skimmer sucks up your floating plants (check -- red root floaters seem to really like to get sucked up) and (2) the area around the basket allows water to bypass the filter media in the basket and flows out around the blue dial around the top "tray" area (check -- I am constantly messing with my bio-ring bags to prevent them from allowing this to happen)?

So I am wondering if this bypass water situation wasn't part of my issue in setting up a new tank.

Previously I have used my Tidals to upgrade from a 20 to a 40 without issues, and from my 20 to a 29 to a 75 -- all good. But I bought a Tidal 75 and hung it on the back of on of my 40s, along with the 40's permanent filter (another Tidal) to "seed" that new filter. I ran them concurrently for 3 months. So I set up another 40 gallon 10 days ago and used that new, "seeded" Tidal 75 filter, along with an older "seeded" sponge from a different, heavily stocked tank. Within 24 hours my nitrites spiked and have stayed high...I was on day 9 of 50% water changes and Prime with 2 different brands of tank starter daily and was getting nowhere (yesterday).

So with nothing to lose and after thinking about these 2 threads, I thought "maybe my Tidal is allowing too much bypass?" so I couldn't establish my bio filtration system in the tank. I cleaned the sponge filter (NASTY!!! -- Microbe Lift seems like it's just algae spores and bad smell) and I cleaned the Tidal 75. The blue sponge wasn't very dirt but the inside of the housing and the outside of the basket were coated with nasty grunge. I reused that blue sponge, then pulled out the SeaChem white polishing filter that is pre-cut to fit into the filter and tossed it as it seemed too hard and I thought it might restrict water flow. I just put in some Aquarium Coop sponge (black with very large pores) on the bottom, then the blue SeaChem sponge, then some ACO polishing floss (much softer). Over that I replaced my unwashed Matrix bag. Perhaps a confounding variable was that I cut up a few small pieces of a round canister filter nitrite pad and stuck it into my Tidal under the Matrix as well. I am so over daily 20 gallon water changes! Tonight, day 10, nitrites are zero. Maybe the improved water flow thru the Tidal helped get it actually filtering my water, maybe the canister nitrite pads are magical -- I don't know. But I can see how water not actually flowing thru my filter media wouldn't allow bio filtration to occur.

Anyway, just thought I'd add my experience with an unmodified Tidal.

[nabokovfan87]

On 5/17/2023 at 6:42 PM, DeadStang said:

So my understanding of your threads regarding the Tidals is that:  (1) the skimmer sucks up your floating plants (check -- red root floaters seem to really like to get sucked up) and (2) the area around the basket allows water to bypass the filter media in the basket and flows out around the blue dial around the top "tray" area (check -- I am constantly messing with my bio-ring bags to prevent them from allowing this to happen)?

yeah that's mostly the just of it.  There are some small details I can elaborate on.  The skimmer, unmodified, is something like 60-80% of the water intake into the pump.  The water drops down and it basically just goes from the skimmer into the pump.  This happens so often with plants, food, and so many things.  Once you plug the skimmer, then you see all the other holes that suck up the plants and food, namely all the cutouts around the pump (like the one for the heater attachment) and the grate around the pump that is labelled as the "mid-level" intake.   The main issue there is that once you have say 60% of the intake coming from the upper skimmer, another 15-25% coming from the mid-level skimmer, by the time you get down to the normal pump intake tube at the bottom of the tank you are barely moving any water at all.  This is very poor for overall circulation! It also does not help that 1/2 of the intake tube is cut off due to having that blue dial in the water.... without it, you can't close off the tube so it comes from the factory already blocked with a plastic rib at the tube attachment point.

When it comes to the bypass specifically there are a few key characteristics that cause major issues. 
A.  The pump is "sized" for a saltwater application in some aspect.
B.   The basket has 2 very large cutouts that freely allow water to flow past all sponge and directly into media.
C.  The water is pushed into the filter chamber in such a way that water easily bypasses the basket and is pushed against the right side and commonly flows over the basket walls as opposed to into the foam and filtration media.  (i.e. you're running a pump, not a filter)

The only way I was able to determine that C was an issue above was by filling up all of the gaps in the basket itself and seeing what the water did at that point.

On 5/17/2023 at 6:42 PM, DeadStang said:

Previously I have used my Tidals to upgrade from a 20 to a 40 without issues, and from my 20 to a 29 to a 75 -- all good. But I bought a Tidal 75 and hung it on the back of on of my 40s, along with the 40's permanent filter (another Tidal) to "seed" that new filter. I ran them concurrently for 3 months. So I set up another 40 gallon 10 days ago and used that new, "seeded" Tidal 75 filter, along with an older "seeded" sponge from a different, heavily stocked tank. Within 24 hours my nitrites spiked and have stayed high...I was on day 9 of 50% water changes and Prime with 2 different brands of tank starter daily and was getting nowhere (yesterday).

Definitely an interesting issue!  The media being constantly covered in muck from the way the filter flows by default may have been hampering surfaces for the bacteria to colonize, especially strong bacteria.  If the media is clogged, it's harder for it to get in there.  I like to add that very fine sponge as just a lazy way to cover up those holes and keep the media clean.  The irony / main issue there is that given everything we know you shouldn't have had any issues.  The sponge should've been enough by itself and the media is generally regarded as higher quality compared to others.
 

On 5/17/2023 at 6:42 PM, DeadStang said:

So with nothing to lose and after thinking about these 2 threads, I thought "maybe my Tidal is allowing too much bypass?" so I couldn't establish my bio filtration system in the tank. I cleaned the sponge filter (NASTY!!! -- Microbe Lift seems like it's just algae spores and bad smell) and I cleaned the Tidal 75. The blue sponge wasn't very dirt but the inside of the housing and the outside of the basket were coated with nasty grunge. I reused that blue sponge, then pulled out the SeaChem white polishing filter that is pre-cut to fit into the filter and tossed it as it seemed too hard and I thought it might restrict water flow. I just put in some Aquarium Coop sponge (black with very large pores) on the bottom, then the blue SeaChem sponge, then some ACO polishing floss (much softer). Over that I replaced my unwashed Matrix bag. Perhaps a confounding variable was that I cut up a few small pieces of a round canister filter nitrite pad and stuck it into my Tidal under the Matrix as well. I am so over daily 20 gallon water changes! Tonight, day 10, nitrites are zero. Maybe the improved water flow thru the Tidal helped get it actually filtering my water, maybe the canister nitrite pads are magical -- I don't know. But I can see how water not actually flowing thru my filter media wouldn't allow bio filtration to occur.

Yeah! This is basically the "phase 1" setup I recommend most people do right out of the box.  🙂  There should be a video floating around on my youtube or at the intial post.  I'll dig it up if you need it.  Basically, exactly what you did but also add the medium / fine foam to cover the window cutouts. (when you lift the basket, it is the large squares you see by where the water flows out of the filter and back into the tank)

On 5/17/2023 at 6:42 PM, DeadStang said:

Anyway, just thought I'd add my experience with an unmodified Tidal.

Genuinely, I appreciate it!  There's so many small details that go into what we need as a hobbyist and it's particularly fun to dive into those challenges and review a product to this detail.  I have ran the tidals for such a long time and do enjoy them, flaws and all.

[nabokovfan87]

Here is the cleanout from today. A few notes and disclaimers up front:

A. Both filters are running the same pump settings (turned down 2 notches) and run for the same duration.
B.  The modded filter has a prefilter sponge.  That sponge was not cleaned out in these buckets, so this is a straight comparison of the foam trays themselves!
C.  The unmodded filter had filter floss in the window cutout, anything that went through this hole is 100% bypass on all of the foams. The condition of that polyfil was dirty, but the fine material in that cutout should help to encourage the water to go up the basket and through the foams.
D.  As mentioned, this is from the basket cleanouts only, both running 2 sponges.  The unmodded filter is running 2 seachem foams (not cut to fit).  The modded filter is running one seachem foam as well as 1 cut to fit medium pore size sponge.

 

This is the unmodded filter:

 

This is the modified filter:

The bucket on the right did have a few minutes to settle.  Despite this it is very easy to see to the bottom of that bucket.  In person, visually, it was very clear that the sponges on the unmodified filter had a few large chunks of plant debris, but were generally clean.  The plants come in via the skimmer and make there way into the basket.  This does not alter or restrict the filters ability to trap muck.  As the debris catches on the basket it should slow down the flow (as it's in the way) and encourage the water through the sponge.

The other basket did not have as much plant debris due to the prefilter, but did look visually more effective at removing muck from the water column.  I siphoned around both filters and both of them had detritus in the gravel around the filtration zones.  The tank never looks dirty, but it is making its way to the substrate over time.  Especially if the filter itself is bypassing.

Right now the best way to view the unmodded filter is that it is moving water to support biological bacterial.  It is not doing a very good job of mechanical filtration, especially polishing the water.

[nabokovfan87]

A bit of foreshadowing, I believe this may be one of the final posts on this project. 🙂

Ultimately, I opted to remove the unmodified tidal 75 from my aquarium.  There are a few reasons for this and a portion of the reason here is my own personal setup on this tank.  To be clear and fully disclose my reasoning here, I am leaving the modified filter on the tank for a very specific reason!

My main concern here is that I am losing a good portion of biological filtration on this tank.  There isn't a ton of plants in this tank either, which makes things a bit risky from a water parameters standpoint.  One of my biggest frustrations, and one commented by everyone, is that the skimmer is literally a plant eating monster.  I wake up daily to leaves, food, plants, and I've woken up to the darn thing swallowing fish.  That one aspect of the filter absolutely needs to be modified by the company involved for me to feel comfortable recommending this filter in any capacity.  Which means, I can no longer recommend this filter to anyone if they do not fully intend to modify the filter in the method presented in this thread.

There are some wonderful reasons to purchase the filter, but the negatives far outweigh the cons.

As a single example, I want to fully demonstrate the cyclical issue I am having and the main reason I am removing this filter.  Attached below you will see a net full of plant debris, food, mulm, and what amounts to organics rotting away in my aquarium.  While it is very normal to have some amount of gunk that gets inside of your filter, the goal of the filter is to mechanically filter this out, easily let the user clean that filter media, and the proceed to remove it from the system.  I think everyone knows by now how detailed I can be when it comes to cleaning my tanks.  I siphon the gravel, I clean the tanks often, and I finish that with regular water change.  I am not afraid to pull apart the filter if I see things get a bit dirty.  I've checked pumps week to week and I've gone through great detail (see above post) as to what you'd expect to see while running this filter. 

It has been well documented that you will see plants in the skimmer, around the pump, near or on the impeller, inside of the filter basin, and on the bottom of the sponges.  That large debris on the bottom of the sponge blocks flow into the media, which essentially encourages that gunk in place.  Water flows through all of the cuts in the basket for bypass and that in turn pushes the large chunks of debris from your filter through a large cutout in the basket and often back into your tank!  When you turn off the filter, plants settle and you see a lot of debris released into the water.  When you lift up the filter basket to clean the filter, a lot of those large chunks of plant debris and food are left inside of the filter basin and not removed.  When you are done cleaning the media, you turn on the filter, you will see a lot of gunk get shot back into the water column.  Much moreso, I would argue, than any other filter on the market for some pretty obvious reasons.   One of the biggest methods to fix that issue is simply put that you add a big chunk of mechanical media to block that debris from going through the large cutouts in that basket.   So what does that lead to.......

Either you have clogged biological media with a lot of mulm and slime all over it or you have this:

Below is the photo where you can clearly see food from "a while ago" that went right into the filter, didn't make it to the sponge, and is in the basin of the filter box.

After I removed the filter from the tank, this is the junk that was in the bottom of the filter.  It was something along the size of a billiard ball of rotten plants, food, and gunk that made it's way into the tank when I poured the water back into the tank.  It looks green in the picture, but it is certainly brown sludge covered moss.  The bright green moss is just the "fresh stuff".  The vibrabites food you can see is from 3-4 days ago.  That food sinks pretty easily.  This wasn't from the food itself getting mechanically removed from the bottom of the tank.... this is simply what the skimmer does. 

If you feed the tank at all with the filter on, the food goes right into the skimmer and right into that chamber.  If you have some floating particles after feeding, frozen food floating in the water column, etc. all of that food makes its way into the filter box and sit there.  That food simply rots away and there is no way for the fish (or shrimp) to get at the food.  I watch them often trying to get their arms into the skimmer or grates to try to graze on that rotting food, but they cannot.

I think this is a major reason where you can associate this cycle of rotting debris that is very difficult to keep clean.... even when diligently trying to do so.... with some pretty persistent algae issues.   The adage that a picture says a thousand words, well, this one has a story attached to it, but I think we can finally close the book on this filter.

I will end by saying thank you to everyone along the way who helped.  A big thanks to @TeeJay for taking the time to try this out on his own filter!  Thank you to everyone who checked out the thread and followed along.  It means a lot when we can dive into something this bland of a topic and have meaningful conversations that impact the lives of our fish and plants in the tank.

[TeeJay]

On 6/15/2023 at 8:47 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

A bit of foreshadowing, I believe this may be one of the final posts on this project. 🙂

Ultimately, I opted to remove the unmodified tidal 75 from my aquarium.  There are a few reasons for this and a portion of the reason here is my own personal setup on this tank.  To be clear and fully disclose my reasoning here, I am leaving the modified filter on the tank for a very specific reason!

My main concern here is that I am losing a good portion of biological filtration on this tank.  There isn't a ton of plants in this tank either, which makes things a bit risky from a water parameters standpoint.  One of my biggest frustrations, and one commented by everyone, is that the skimmer is literally a plant eating monster.  I wake up daily to leaves, food, plants, and I've woken up to the darn thing swallowing fish.  That one aspect of the filter absolutely needs to be modified by the company involved for me to feel comfortable recommending this filter in any capacity.  Which means, I can no longer recommend this filter to anyone if they do not fully intend to modify the filter in the method presented in this thread.

There are some wonderful reasons to purchase the filter, but the negatives far outweigh the cons.

As a single example, I want to fully demonstrate the cyclical issue I am having and the main reason I am removing this filter.  Attached below you will see a net full of plant debris, food, mulm, and what amounts to organics rotting away in my aquarium.  While it is very normal to have some amount of gunk that gets inside of your filter, the goal of the filter is to mechanically filter this out, easily let the user clean that filter media, and the proceed to remove it from the system.  I think everyone knows by now how detailed I can be when it comes to cleaning my tanks.  I siphon the gravel, I clean the tanks often, and I finish that with regular water change.  I am not afraid to pull apart the filter if I see things get a bit dirty.  I've checked pumps week to week and I've gone through great detail (see above post) as to what you'd expect to see while running this filter. 

It has been well documented that you will see plants in the skimmer, around the pump, near or on the impeller, inside of the filter basin, and on the bottom of the sponges.  That large debris on the bottom of the sponge blocks flow into the media, which essentially encourages that gunk in place.  Water flows through all of the cuts in the basket for bypass and that in turn pushes the large chunks of debris from your filter through a large cutout in the basket and often back into your tank!  When you turn off the filter, plants settle and you see a lot of debris released into the water.  When you lift up the filter basket to clean the filter, a lot of those large chunks of plant debris and food are left inside of the filter basin and not removed.  When you are done cleaning the media, you turn on the filter, you will see a lot of gunk get shot back into the water column.  Much moreso, I would argue, than any other filter on the market for some pretty obvious reasons.   One of the biggest methods to fix that issue is simply put that you add a big chunk of mechanical media to block that debris from going through the large cutouts in that basket.   So what does that lead to.......

Either you have clogged biological media with a lot of mulm and slime all over it or you have this:

Below is the photo where you can clearly see food from "a while ago" that went right into the filter, didn't make it to the sponge, and is in the basin of the filter box.

After I removed the filter from the tank, this is the junk that was in the bottom of the filter.  It was something along the size of a billiard ball of rotten plants, food, and gunk that made it's way into the tank when I poured the water back into the tank.  It looks green in the picture, but it is certainly brown sludge covered moss.  The bright green moss is just the "fresh stuff".  The vibrabites food you can see is from 3-4 days ago.  That food sinks pretty easily.  This wasn't from the food itself getting mechanically removed from the bottom of the tank.... this is simply what the skimmer does. 

If you feed the tank at all with the filter on, the food goes right into the skimmer and right into that chamber.  If you have some floating particles after feeding, frozen food floating in the water column, etc. all of that food makes its way into the filter box and sit there.  That food simply rots away and there is no way for the fish (or shrimp) to get at the food.  I watch them often trying to get their arms into the skimmer or grates to try to graze on that rotting food, but they cannot.

I think this is a major reason where you can associate this cycle of rotting debris that is very difficult to keep clean.... even when diligently trying to do so.... with some pretty persistent algae issues.   The adage that a picture says a thousand words, well, this one has a story attached to it, but I think we can finally close the book on this filter.

I will end by saying thank you to everyone along the way who helped.  A big thanks to @TeeJay for taking the time to try this out on his own filter!  Thank you to everyone who checked out the thread and followed along.  It means a lot when we can dive into something this bland of a topic and have meaningful conversations that impact the lives of our fish and plants in the tank.

Thankyou my friend for taking the time to go through this like of filters with a fine tooth comb and doing the best possible to make it better. The mods on the 55 are very easy to do and don't take long to make it shrimp fry and pretty much plant safe. I really hope in the future they will fix these issues but we know how big companies do on that front. 

[nabokovfan87]

On 6/16/2023 at 4:04 AM, TeeJay said:

I really hope in the future they will fix these issues but we know how big companies do on that front. 

Agreed!  I could literally "FIX" the marineland just by changing what comes in the box and modifying one thing.  😂 it's amazing how little engineering effort would solve so many problems!  (for the penguin pro, it's all down to modifying the pump attachment method / intake tube.

I am very happy, relieved, and content with the statement above about how you said it's working well for you, even with shrimp!  What a massive accomplishment to get that Tidal to actually be viable for such a thing.


 

[nabokovfan87]

Well....  I posted this in the wrong thread initially.  My apologies!  It's been one of those weeks where there's a lot going on.

  

I'll start by expressing that it's been a very enjoyable, enlightening, and interesting experience working on the filtration in my tank in this way.  Ultimately it has lead me to learn a lot more about circulation, flow, and how particles move around in the tank. 

With that being said, I have officially removed and retired my modded Tidal 75.  There's a few key reasons for this and I feel like it's worth sharing with everyone for the sake of full disclosure.

First, the mod was done a filter that was cleaned as best as possible, but it was not a new filter out of the box.  The pump was new, some parts were previously modified, but for all major... critical... uses here in this experiment, the parts were in working order and they were working as expected when new.  Because they were used there was one thing that seriously had some age on it.  The basket itself.  In the initial post on this version 2.0 of the testing I opted to cut out the middle rib of the base of the basket.  In the end, that wasn't the best choice.  I think having at least one central support for the sponge works extremely well to support the weight of the sponge when it's loaded with water and gunk.  It keeps things in place.   The other issue with the basket is the handles to remove it were damaged.  One was completely broken off and the other was partially snapped off.  That's lead to some damage on the mod longer term, which we'll dive into.



as it stands, the overall "purpose" of the mod was to remove the skimmer.  This means that the most important thing here is about how well that works and how well that part of the filter is to mod.  There's a few ways to achieve this, but I think for the most part the skimmer being filled with silicone works pretty well.





It could always look better and it could always be done with a more permanent material, but this one works and I would expect it to work pretty well long term.  I would also say that having some extra silicone on hand isn't a bad idea.  It is necessary if you are going to go down that route.  I have had a few times where you put your hand in just the wrong place and then you end up with a section of silicone being torn off or falling into the tank.  Last time this happened all I had on hand was superglue and about half of the mods I had completed ended up falling apart. 

I ended up having to take some precautions, but the basket in the filter did end up being a bit stuck into the HOB housing.

 

Other sections of the filter did have the pieces of silicone separate off the housing during normal maintenance sections.



The goal through all of this and the underlying concern was about how the pump held up, performed over the longevity of the mod.  If I was to run this long term or even permanently I would have paused everything, taken it apart properly, replaced the basket, and started over.  Scuff the surface or even use something like fine mesh over large areas (think patching drywall) so that the material has some structure to it and can support itself when being moved around.

This is at around 1 month of use with the pump on a pretty high quality prefilter (a decent medium porosity sponge) and you can see there is some stuff in the pump due to the small gap by the heater clip, but generally speaking this is very normal.  Make sure you clean your impellers and pumps!



I hope this helps someone down the road if they run into issues with their Tidal.  Ultimately, it's a wonderful pump, but I really do feel like the experience and understanding of the filter while being modded is a valuable one for me personally.  I realize now how much I was dealing with the issues of the filter as opposed to simply being able to perform my maintenance.  Even algae issues, I think something like the bypass and poor mechanical filtration side of things plays a role.  Time will tell.

Thanks for following along and talking through all of the thoughts and decisions here.  It really helped and more than anything it was fun. 🙂

[jo1414]

I just realized I didn't see this final post! First off, thank you for doing all this work and documenting the journey it was very enlightening and I've learned a lot not just about modding, but what I needed to know about flow and filtration. So, before I go through with all the mods and not just adding the coarse sponge to spots... In a 40GB, what filter would you recommend? I'm getting ready to start a clean on my filter. I either want to do the full mod (the filter is 3 months old) or put a different HOB on. I'm not sure I'm skilled enough to move on to canister yet.

 

[nabokovfan87]

On 2/7/2024 at 9:03 PM, jo1414 said:

I either want to do the full mod (the filter is 3 months old) or put a different HOB on. I'm not sure I'm skilled enough to move on to canister yet.

A 307 or 407 makes it pretty easy and they are designed with the spraybar kit for that tank.  That's where I would start.  Sales on the website, etc. make it easier for you, but I would recommend things like swapping tubing out.  There's directions on youtube and it's a very easy mod to accomplish.  I swapped mine with 16/22 tubing and it was a pain because of the inlet pipes I selected, but it worked well.

so let's say we have a hob... anything with a center brace, I tend to either mount on end which messes with what lids you can use and that would be something in the range of a tidal 75 or equivalent from another manufacturer.  I cannot say what one works best, but if I go out and buy a hob today, right now, I'll get the marineland pro ones just because of the prefilter sponge (x2) and how it makes things extremely easy.  Immensely easy.  The shape inside is rectangular, the flow is bottom to top.  It makes life easy by comparison.