My Review: Odyssea CFS 500 Filter

UPDATE:
I'm going to scrap my Odyssea for a FX5. I will still stand by recommending SunSun filters day and night. But I'm done with this pos.
Three days ago after cleaning, no apparent leaks. Left and came home to about 8 gallons of water in my carpet. Took hours of trouble shooting to fix. In process I snapped off one of the intake ports. It is superglued in place, sitting in a 10 gallon tub. Waiting for my fx5 to come in and then I will be done with this thing.

I love the price, but at this point it isn't worth the risk. A filter shouldn't be this much work and I don't care anymore. I've not been impressed iwth water clarity, anyways. It lasted a year, so that is great. But it was almost to the day a year later that it failed in several ways. Having to drain my tank down, move my stand, use the rug doctor to dry up carpet, run fans and dehumidifier for 12 hours and then move it all back is not my idea of fun.

I won't even give this filter to someone for free at this point. It is going to be trashed.
Original.

I am almost infamous for my review of the SunSun HW-302. I think SunSun owes me some serious bank for the number of filters sold because I took the plunge on their filter. It was a huge "risk" some would say, but I have loved every second of it.

Because I am setting up a turtle tank that I wanted a filter for, I started looking for new filter options. I was never impressed with the options that 40 bucks got me, so I considered a new option... buy a new filter for the 75g tank and put the sunsun on my turtle tank(lol... the 302 will be filtering about 7 gallons....). I have seen the Odyssea CFS 500 on ebay a few times and I was very tempted. It is very FX5ish in design, but not necessarily function.

So... I took the plunge. I sucked it up and bought the Odyssea CFS 500, 500gph filter from Topdawdsellers on ebay. 58.95 shipped via UPS to my door(took 4 business days to get here). It arrived in the retail box, though no damage was done to it.


I opened it up and saw this...


Unpacked to find this:

Those hoses are HUGE. They are 1 inch in diameter...

Here it is setup under my stand


This is the output:

Also big...

The media includes a bonded blue pad, a fine white foam pad, and a coarse black sponge. I added ceramic rings in the bottom. It works from top to center... Not top to bottom. The intake is in the middle with the pump on the bottom and a strainer up to the middle. It seems to have a TON of flow. Tests from others say 480 gph, which is amazing WITH media.

It is dead silent. Self priming--put water in and go. This is my first day So I will report back!