The Planted Tank Forum banner

My Review: SunSun "Outside Filter" HW-302

260K views 762 replies 253 participants last post by  Remmy 
#1 ·
Many of us have seen these filters popping up on Ebay and other aquatic sites, but few people have taken the plunge(and admitted it) on this and other forums. When searching for reviews of the SunSun filter/product line, usually all you find is other forum members asking for reviews and a little speculation about the quality of said products. The thought is simple--you get what you pay for....

Or do you? Having looked around for a good canister filter to replace my obnoxiously loud AC300, I pondered many options. I tossed around the idea about Eheims, Fluvals, and the like. I have used Eheims and the Magnum series in the past, and while happy with both, I was never impressed, especially when it came to cost.

About the subject tank:

This tank is only sorta planted/sorta riparium/most about the fish(a midas and pictus cat). It is a standard 75g, 4 foot with inert white sand, a boatload of snails, driftwood, small rock pile, a koralia 1 for circulation, and a pretty rambunctious Midas Cichlid.

This tank was initially filtered by an Marineland biowheel and an AC300. They became so noisy you could hear them inside my bedroom with noisemaker running... Being in the livingroom, next to our 10 month old sons wall, this just wasn't acceptable to us(my wife informed me that it was to be fixed... or it would find itself fixed in a pile next to the dumpster...).

I set out exploring my options. I know Eheims are great filters. The trouble is the sticker shock involved. They are great, but they are not THAT great. Fluvals are good too, but I just wasn't impressed with the price point. The Marineland C Series is nice, but again, the price is still not all that impressive. I'm sure all of you think I'm crazy at this point. You are all willing to spend this money on these filters, but I just wasnt--not after seeing that there ARE other options out there.

This brought me to the Ebay Special SunSun filters. I looked through every auction, over, and over. I read feedback, checked out the few reviews out there, and was uneasy at first. Not because of poor reviews, cause there really aren't any--but because there just aren't many reviews at all. I decided it was worth the risk and you can all thank me for it!

I went with buying from someone domestic on Ebay. The item shipped from N. Cali and arrived in 4 business days via UPS Ground. It was packed well, in a nice think shipping box, inside was a standard package with really, really piss poor English. The grammar makes zero sense. It is essentially a big box of Engrish Fail. Bad grammar aside, the box is also the closest thing to directions you get with it... SO look close! This brings me to the negative things first:

  1. Directions are non-existent
  2. The intake and spray bar are a little flimsy, but solid enough. I have no intention of using them as a hammer.
  3. One of the filter baskets is a little too snug, but with some manipulation it came out fine.
  4. Did I mention no directions!
  5. The surface extractor seems to be useless if you run water up to the top. If you used this with a rimless tank it would be fine. It is too short for my water level.

It took me a bit to figure out how to hook up hoses, but once I did it was a no brainer. The Quick disconnect for the hoses works as a shut off just like on the JBJ Reaction series and the Marineland C Series. Flip it and you can pull the hoses off, take the lid off, and head to the sink to do maintenance. The three baskets plus prefilter tray are more than spacious. I have a prefilter, carbon, ac 110 bio media bag, another filter floss, a basket of beads as bio media, then a basket with filter wool.



Now lets go over the positive sides:

  1. Primer works great and quick.
  2. Baskets have plenty of room
  3. On/Off quick release is super handy. One lever shuts off and disconnects both inlet and outlet.
  4. This filter is silent. Dead silent. I even leaned it up to my stand, put it on blocks, did everything I could to make it make noise. It doesn't make a sound. My wife thought something was broken when she came back from work because it was so silent.
  5. The Filter housing itself is strong--feels identical to that of the marineland or jbj.
  6. The latching system is idiot proof
  7. The flow is great
  8. THE PRICE!!!!


After one week of using this filter I am sold. At a mere 55 dollars shipped, this filter blows the competition out of the water. There are also several models with higher flow than the one I list here, but this does the job for me. In combination with my Koralia 1 in my 75 G tank, it more than does the job. Some might say I need more flow, but it IS doing the job. Please ask if you have questions, and I will continue to post my experiences.


For the money, I really don't think there is any competition. This filter seriously rocks my socks off. I have used the "great" filters out there and can't find a logical reason yet to spend the extra money. The quality seems solid enough that I am not concerned about product life, despite having owned it for a short while.
:proud::proud::proud::proud::proud:
 
See less See more
1
#571 ·
I have a sunsun 302 and my impellar shaft snapped a couple months ago. I've been using a steel shaft I made while "kool goods" contacted the manufacturer for me. They mysteriously lost the shaft I mailed them back and now it's gotten really loud. I think I found an actual factory replacement! Does this look right to you?

http://www.truaqua.com/cf300-ri.html
 
#576 ·
I have a sunsun 302 and my impellar shaft snapped a couple months ago. I've been using a steel shaft I made while "kool goods" contacted the manufacturer for me. They mysteriously lost the shaft I mailed them back and now it's gotten really loud. I think I found an actual factory replacement! Does this look right to you?

http://www.truaqua.com/cf300-ri.html
are you ordering the thing? if so can u let me know how long the shaft is, im looking for a new shaft for my odyssea water pump which broke in half.

the shaft on my odyssea was about 5inch ...


ty
 
#573 ·
I have had the 303A for a month now and am happy with it. I was sure I read somewhere the input/output clamp assembly acted as a shut off. Last week was the first time I cleaned it and the hoses acted as siphons and water leaked everywhere. Any tips on minimizing water lose with out pulling the hoses out of the tank?

Thanks in advance.
 
#575 ·
I bought the 375 gph version and will be using it on my 75 gallon once I set that up in a few weeks. I decided to put it on my 29 for the time being(the 75 is going to replace the 29) and get some bacteria established in it. It has turned my 29 gallon into a raging river. I assume that with the size of the 75 gallon it wont be as strong. Correct? Or should I add something to it to slow down the flow?
 
#579 ·
I have the same filter. I'm having the opposite problem where I'm not getting much flow strength. I put AquaClear filter foam into the intake to act as a pre-filter and it slowed down even more. Perhaps, you should stuff more media into the baskets to slow it down?
 
#583 ·
Hi! So I just got the HW-302 today and super eager to set it up. Have been looking for a step by step guide because I've never had a canister filter before and I can be pretty dense at my finest. Any links or videos out there? I've looked on a few forums and found reviews, but no dummy instructions I could find. Also, what would be the ideal basket layering? My guess would be
Basket 1: All the included floss stacked
Basket 2: water softener and finer floss?
Basket 3: biomedia

I would really appreciate some help with this :) Thanks!
 
#584 ·
@Krystal, I was in the same situation. Honestly, I just kept the pipes in the "group" they were sealed in plastic in and just began to fit things together until it looked right compared to the pictures. I actually did remove the surface skimmer because the intake doesn't fit in my tank with it on, so there is some "customization" possible. As for filter media:
Bottom Basket: 3 filter floss pads
Middle Basket: Ceramic rings and a couple bio balls
Top Basket: Bioballs, an Aquaclear HOB sponge (from old filter), and 2 stacked rena filter floss with a fine topping.
 
#585 ·
I got my the other day been running on my 40B for 4 days now.
When I first got it, it was wet inside I guess they test run it before they shipped it out.
The o-ring and inside on the side was oily. Filter didn't come with any carbon or bio ball.
It did came with 3 white floss pad.

So far so good this filter is like a ninja I can't hear a thing sometime I wonder if this filter is working/on or not. Lol I must say the flow suck at 200+ gph this thing is weak.
If I was to guess the flow rate on this filter I would say about 145+.

This filter will be nice if there a carry handle so you can pick it up.

Here my media set up.
Bottom: ton of floss
Middle: floss, bio ball
Top: bio ball, biomax.

The skimmer on this thing doesn't work for me since the water line is high.
 
#586 ·
The reason for your low flow is the way you set up your media.

Normally if you are using high density filter floss, which is very restrictive in regards to water flow rate, you want to keep it overall very thin. The denser the material then the "thinner" you need to use for those pads.

Also there is a bit of a problem with filter floss. Usually it is very dense and will filter out everything. The problem is that large particle will clog it faster than smaller particle. If you have a LARGE space to use filter floss, such as a modified circumference bucket filter like a fluval fx5 or the odyssea 500 then you can use the dense floss as the first line of filtration.

If you are using a canister, then placing that dense floss first will make it clog to quickly as there isn't enough surface area for that floss. Which is why in canisters most users will place the dense floss last.

Typical setup for a canister filter is a thick piece of low density mechanical filtration. Usually a very porous and coarse sponge to fill the entire first tray.This allows that sponge to collect the bigger particulates first without clogging. The smaller particulates in the water will be later caught by the denser floss. After the coarse sponge, one then places the bio filtration media. This is to allow the bio filtration to eat up as much of the ammonia and nitrites as possible. During initial setups, many users will place chemical filtration next in line after the bio filtration. This is because there may not be enough bacteria built up on the bio filtration to completely eat all the ammonia and nitrites. So a chemical filtration method, such as using zeolite, is needed for a bit. Once enough bacteria has formed, then the chemical filtration can be swapped out for more bio media if desired.

Final filtration for a canister filter is typically the super dense filter floss. Only a very thin layer of such material so as not to overly restrict the flow rate. Nor by this point should there much particulates needed to be filtered out except for the very small particles.

Eventually over time the filter materials will clog up. The coarse sponge filters are easy to clean. Just squeeze out and knock off all the gunk. The dense filter floss can be re-used after cleaning, but is typically more of a hassle than it is worth. Easier to just toss the dense floss and replace it new. The amount of bacteria lost over doing this, as some will also grow on the dense floss, should be negligible.

So for a bottom up canister like the sunsun you want to stack your media like this:

Dense Filter Floss
Chemical (optional or more bio)
Bio Media
Coarse Sponge





This gives you the optimal filtration for these styles of filters without overly restricting flow rates. Give that a try.
 
#593 ·
Not really. Those flow numbers listed are always the theoretical max output of the pump pushing water by itself. If there is any restrictions, such as media in the way, then the pump is going to go slower, thus less flow. Usually, the true flow rate on a filter is usually half or less of the stated flow rate. Rule of thumb I was told and use is to take whatever flow rate is listed and use 40%-50% of that number. So a canister filter with a 370gph flow rate is going to have an actual flow rate of 148-185 gph usually when filled with media. (more restrictive media will have less flow)

Typically, you want to turn your tank at a minimum of 3 times per hour. So you take 180 gallon tank and you'll want to be moving 540 gallons per hour at a minimum. Some advocate more. I have a friend who swears by 10 times the turn rate. You really don't need THAT much flow in my opinion.

So if you are using the 303/403/CF-400 models of the sunsun/aquatop filters then you are going to need 3 of them. If you are using the 304/404/CF-500 models then you are going to need 2 of them for a tank that size.
 
#598 ·
My filter was running quite but that soon changed. It's making a rattling or humming sound. I took the filter apart thinking that something was stuck in there but found nothing.
 
#599 ·
A quick update: the SunSun is running well. I got a two more of them (303) one for a second aquarium (50Gal) I started up and one for a low end cichlid tank that has been running for a couple of years...the filters are great!!!

on my 180g I added a supplementary filter which is an atman bio tube (http://photobucket.com/images/atman overhanged bio filter/) with 8 canisters that are filled with ceramic rings, bio balls and filter material...same principle as the sun sun but cannisters are packed in a horizontal tube that hangs over the tank...fed by a 2000lph water pump...

I guess with both filters things are moving well. I have good water parameter readings.

thumbs up for the SunSun
 
#601 ·
I have a 120 gal tank for my 2 Red Eared slider turtles who I love to death.
Just bought a 120 gallon tank and fixing it up for them as they have lived 5 years in a 30-40 gal. tank and I feel so sorry for them. I have read this whole forum on the Sunsun filter. It looks just like the one on this link http://www.truaqua.com/aquatop-canister-filter-cf-500uv.html Has anyone bought this one yet looks just like it at a fraction of the cost, mind you I don't know what the shipping will be and if I overpay and order from them I hear the customer service is great and you can order all extra filler for the filter from them. More expensive than [Ebay Link Removed]

Please let me know if anybody has this set up on this large of a tank, and for turtles. Thanks. Greatly appreciated. Would be going for the 4 or 5 stage filter from aquatop which I am sure I can fine on [Ebay Link Removed]

Thank you again,
Vanryker:D
 
#608 ·
I also have one of these filters. I purchased mine from a site online for under sixty shipped. It was listed as the CF-300 I have it installed on my 46 gallon tank and it works great have not touched it but once to rinse it out durning a bacterial bloom. I just wish that it had come with more media.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top