The pipes to direct water underneath are incorporated into the baskets. The media in my SunSun is filthy when I clean it every 2 months so whatever bypass there is isn't so bad.
Sunsun media bypass
2
As my previous thread mentioned, my long running eheim 2217 just decided to go down for the big long sleep, and being holiday time and money super tight (actually contemplated taking the tank down entirely rather than replacing the filter), I needed something workable, fast, and as inexpensive as possible. Now the eheim is by no means "expensive" but I had plenty of complaints about its noise level and difficulty of maintenance on it. So I wasn't in a big hurry to buy the exact same thing
Being that the sunsuns are so cheap and lots of people seem happy "enough" with them I ordered one on Amazon prime yesterday. 304b model to be used on mg 75 gallon. It will also serve as flow for my cerges reactor. That was one complaint of the eheim. It was undersized to handle the head pressure and cerges reactor, and even when clean, the flow was barely a trickle coming out. Water basically fell vertically straight down out of the output at maybe a 1/2 cm diameter stream.
Based on videos I've seen of the sunsun, it's a bit larger and more powerful, though I'm aware the rated 525 gph is an overstatement, from videos it's more powerful than the eheim at baseline. I don't expect to get 10 years out of it, and this is certainly a going-to-have-to-just-but-twice situation and I'll get something better in a year or two.
Onto the question. It appears there is no actual plumbing to force the water incoming, down to the bottom of the filter. Like on an eheim pro2 and pro3 series, the baskets are connected with a tube which connects to the inlet on the filter tip which brings water straight to the bottom, and the pump pulls it back up through the baskets. The sunsun has no such connections. Just full baskets, stacked on top of each other. And the water is sucked right back up where it spits out.
Does this not basically create 99.9% total media bypass? Has anyone DIY'd a fix to connect the baskets to the pump head intake, like maybe some vinyl tubing or something? It'll do for now (really just want it for the co2 reactor purposes honestly, biofilration is more than covered by the plants themselves). But if I can mod it to actually get the water to pass through the media that would be terrific. Otherwise it just acts as a circulation pump just sitting on top of some media right?
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Visual representatives of what I mean. First picture is a crude mock up of the flow you get from an eheim pro2. The media baskets and pump are plumbed together to force water to the bottom as its incoming which draws it back up through the media
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Second is the sunsun. No channel for water to be forced down to the bottom. Just wide open right next to the pump intake. It seems logical that most the incoming water will just be drawn directly back into the pump intake, with very little circulation through the media, if any
![]()
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Being that the sunsuns are so cheap and lots of people seem happy "enough" with them I ordered one on Amazon prime yesterday. 304b model to be used on mg 75 gallon. It will also serve as flow for my cerges reactor. That was one complaint of the eheim. It was undersized to handle the head pressure and cerges reactor, and even when clean, the flow was barely a trickle coming out. Water basically fell vertically straight down out of the output at maybe a 1/2 cm diameter stream.
Based on videos I've seen of the sunsun, it's a bit larger and more powerful, though I'm aware the rated 525 gph is an overstatement, from videos it's more powerful than the eheim at baseline. I don't expect to get 10 years out of it, and this is certainly a going-to-have-to-just-but-twice situation and I'll get something better in a year or two.
Onto the question. It appears there is no actual plumbing to force the water incoming, down to the bottom of the filter. Like on an eheim pro2 and pro3 series, the baskets are connected with a tube which connects to the inlet on the filter tip which brings water straight to the bottom, and the pump pulls it back up through the baskets. The sunsun has no such connections. Just full baskets, stacked on top of each other. And the water is sucked right back up where it spits out.
Does this not basically create 99.9% total media bypass? Has anyone DIY'd a fix to connect the baskets to the pump head intake, like maybe some vinyl tubing or something? It'll do for now (really just want it for the co2 reactor purposes honestly, biofilration is more than covered by the plants themselves). But if I can mod it to actually get the water to pass through the media that would be terrific. Otherwise it just acts as a circulation pump just sitting on top of some media right?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Visual representatives of what I mean. First picture is a crude mock up of the flow you get from an eheim pro2. The media baskets and pump are plumbed together to force water to the bottom as its incoming which draws it back up through the media
Second is the sunsun. No channel for water to be forced down to the bottom. Just wide open right next to the pump intake. It seems logical that most the incoming water will just be drawn directly back into the pump intake, with very little circulation through the media, if any
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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