Every now and then, we like to highlight some products that have surpassed our expectations in terms of price, quality and guarantee. This week, it’ll be the ASAP Filter from Aquael.
Now when you think about most Aquarium equipment, be that heaters, tanks, filters, pumps, you may be instinctively drawn to a few brands and products that you are familiar with. If you haven’t heard of Aquael, it’s a name you should really familiarise yourself with.
They happen to be one of the few products we stock that isn’t built in China, Aquael are in fact Polish. They offer a variety of products you’d usually expect but have the knack of tweaking the ancient formula of fishkeeping ever so slightly that it becomes a different prestige of product.
Here, for example, is their ASAP Filter. Like a usual internal filter it has both a pump segment and a filter media element, but that’s sort of where the similarities end.
The pump is an attached separate unit and the media is housed is a sealed filter bowl with a flow hole on top. In usual filters you’d find that the pump draws water immediately into the media and is usually at the top of the power filter.
Here it’s at the bottom, but as it’s orientation is infinitely changeable you can’t really call it the bottom either. This is why the filter has a minimum water level of 5mm, as long as the pump unit is covered, it won’t burn out. It’s for this reason that it is actually perfect for semi-aquatic environments and terrariums as well as full aquariums.
In terms of maintenance, this thing is a dream compared to other power filters.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZZF4ogmcl0&w=560&h=315]Usually, you’re in the situation of taking the entire unit out, perhaps even unplugging it from the wall just to give it a clean. Here you just unscrew the filter bowl from the pump and take out the sponge (leaving the pump still in the aquarium). The sponge provided with the product is quickly colonised by your beneficial bacteria for biological filtration as well as mechanical. When cleaning, you can either rinse out the sponge in some Aquarium water you have taken out or you can install a different sponge entirely. Aquael actually provide sponges impregnated with various elements to improve water quality such as carbon and phosphate remover (to limit algae growth). To add to that, they even provide spare filter bowls (with media) so you could effectively keep one clean and swap when the other one gets messy!
The sponge is quickly populated by beneficial bacteria, so water passing through the filter undergoes biological as well as mechanical filtration. Thanks to that, it stays clear and safe for the inhabitants of the aquarium. The filter requires two basic types of maintenance procedures. One consists in removing the filter bowl and replacing it with a new one (we offer standard cartridges as well as cartridges with activated carbon or phosphate absorber to prevent the growth of algae). The other involves the rinsing of filtration sponge in water drained from the tank. This operation can be performed without the need to remove the entire filter from the aquarium tank, which is very convenient and significantly reduces maintenance time.
The sponge is quickly populated by beneficial bacteria, so water passing through the filter undergoes biological as well as mechanical filtration. Thanks to that, it stays clear and safe for the inhabitants of the aquarium. The filter requires two basic types of maintenance procedures. One consists in removing the filter bowl and replacing it with a new one (we offer standard cartridges as well as cartridges with activated carbon or phosphate absorber to prevent the growth of algae). The other involves the rinsing of filtration sponge in water drained from the tank. This operation can be performed without the need to remove the entire filter from the aquarium tank, which is very convenient and significantly reduces maintenance time.