OASE Indoor Aquatics Biomaster Thermo 600

Using the 600 on a 40G breeder tank for over a year. Basically, I have this canister feed a 25 watt UV & a MacroAlgae reactor that has Cheato algae in it. I use the pre filter sponges & the 1st thin brown sponge. The rest of the trays have 5lbs of biohome branded biomedia. That leaves a tray for any other media of your choosing. I clean the easy accessible pre filter every couple weeks. After a year, I replaced the brown sponge & rinse the biomedia with tank water, that's it. I have never had a nitrate issue. You can't hear it running, the flow rate is around 300gph, perfect for the UV & Algae Reactor, & maintenance is easy. If you let the prefilter go too long without rinsing, the flow is diminished. Stay on top of rinsing the prefilter. The prefilter is simple to clean, unplug the filter, unlock the plumbing lines, the unlock the prefilter tube and remove. You don't even have to take the top off the top of the canister to service.

Just set this unit up. It was very straight forward. Heating the tube in hot water and clamping the hand nuts down made water tight seals out of the gate. With no water added, the priming button was easy to push. Two pumps and I could hear the water gravity feed into the canister. A couple additional pushes cleared some additional air out. It's very quiet. The foam filter driven by air and is far louder with the bubbling action. It seems to provide good flow across the 48" length of my 90 gallon. The levers and latches are easy to use. It's all plastic, so it probably could be broken with abuse but it seems study enough. I have not fitted the Oase heater yet, but that will make the whole setup very unobtrusive. I have not had to clean it yet, but washing all the media and foams on the new unit makes it appear that will be easy enough. I'm hopeful that regular weekly pre-filter cleaning will make for greatly extended full canister cleanings. The pre-filter is very easy to access. I do have the unit in a catch tray in my stand for what I expect to be a little water burbs and incidental drips on removal of the pre-filter..

i have a 350 thermal on our 36 gallon and a 600 thermal on our 75 gallon. The prefilter feature is great and i love the heater in the filter. Both filters are with sponges in bottom tray and biohome in the rest of the trays. The flow on the 36 gallon with 350 thermal is excellent the 75 gallon with biomaster thermal 600 i wish had a little more flow. Both filters are going through a uv sterilizer on the out line. Heater seems to work perfectly on both units. i had an issue getting the rubber feet to stay on the 600 but other than that and wishing for more flow on the 75 gallon. i am happy with both units. Tip if your impeller is rattling you most likely have water in the head take some water out of the canister and restart it. Both units are very, almost dead quiet make the units perfect for a bedroom. I recommend replacing the 60ppi pre filter sponges with the 40ppi replacements seems to help a little with flow. Over all the biomasters are good filters.

Got this to replace a leaking penn plax cascade, all media I added to the filter was cycled and had a precycled backup filter on the tank to help everything adjust to the new filter. The tank is 55 gallon shell dweller tank, so tiny fish in a large tank, not overstocked at all. Filter was working great up until a few days ago. Checked everything, hoses, basket the filter itself. Nothing was blocked and everything was flowing nicely. Turned the system back on and realized the 350 GPH it was supposed to be flowing at was down to a mere trickle. We are talking about maybe 10 gallons an hour, at the very least a 4th if not less then the advertised speed. As I had taken everything apart to check I reaffirmed nothing was clogged. It put everything together and contacted Oase hoping they could help me and a slow filter was probably doing some good. Well no, apparently letting it run created a dead spot somewhere in the filter itself. Opened it again and it was reeking of raw sewage. Guess what ammonia spike.... I tore the thing off my tank and am now in tirage mode. Fish are stressed but hopefully, the worse is over. This filter is an overpriced POS. I'd rather trust my fish to a sun sun now instead of this.After trying to contact their customer support, I got the run around for two days. They don't know anything about fish keeping and kept having to go back to talk to the 'one guy that knows stuff' I talked to them on and off and only after 2 days of talking with them did they actually send me the form to get a replacement. I told them I needed a replacement since the beginning of the conversation. But nope! They offered a replacement to be shipped by mail that would take 7-8 business days. Leaving my tank without filtration for 10 whole days. Yeah thanks Oase. Guess you don't know how filters work, kind of need them to keep the tank running.