RESUN EF-2800U 740GPH Canister filter Review and Test.

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo

taksan

Piranha
MFK Member
Nov 18, 2005
683
155
76
About a week ago a new Resun EF-2800U Canister filter arrived and in the tradition of testing some of these new Chinese brand filters I thought I'd give it a go and see how it went.

First up the specs from Resun.

Feature:



  • [*]11W UV Sterilizer ( Destroys harmful bacteria & Algae )
    [*]Easy to clean;
    [*]Quite operations;
    [*]Modern design with high flow rate;
    [*]Self priming & quick start;
    [*]Mechanical, biological and chemical filtration;
    [*]Powerful flow rate with ceramic shaft ideal for saltwater or fresh water;
    [*]Purifies the water by using a bottom-to-top, 5 Stage filtration process -creates the best water environment for both fresh and marine tank;
    [*]Adjustable flow rate;
    [*]Adjustable directions for inlet and outlet;
    [*]Heavy duty, durable and reliable.
Included free of the following efficient filter medias:

  • Bio balls
  • Ceramic cylinders
  • Carbonized sponge
  • Filter sponge
  • Cover for filter basket
  • Quality Fittings ( Taps, hoses & spray bar inc )
Technical Specifications:



  • [*] Built in 11 watt UV Sterilizer ( Destroys harmful bacteria & Algae)
    [*]Separate on / off switch for UV light

    [*]Rated power: 60W
    [*]Voltage: 220-240V
    [*]Output: 740gph (Largest canister filter on market, Compare Others)
    [*]Diameter of inlet: 22mm
    [*]Diameter of inlet: 19mm
    [*]Comes with all hose and connectors
    [*]Rating: Continuous
    [*]Size: 30X30X48cm
As you can see this is one HUGE filter its bigger then a FX5, bigger then a Eheim 2080 and even bigger then the old enormous Eheim 2260 bucket filters. Its rated at 740gph output and while no canister gets its true rated output in actual use from the size of the hoses (it says 22mm inlet and 19mm outlet but its actually 25mm hose on the inlet from my measure) this one might just stand a chance of getting close.
One unusual thing was that it say it has a 11w UV but the UV globe in mine was a Phillips 18w so they might have upgraded it without updating the specs. One of the things that sets this filter apart is that it actually comes with a full user manual written in real English (not Changlish as so many are) its easy to follow and give you the information you need.
Unique amongst top motor canisters this filter has a downward flow which means that unlike all other top motor canisters the water does not go down to the bottom and then flow up through the media to the output but rather flows down through the media and then is captured at the bottom by a pipe attached to the impeller (more on that later) and then flowing past the UV it exits.
Resun have provided a diagram of the filter and its flow operation which I'll make my first pic.
EF-2800U_1.jpg



A version is available without the 11w (or 18w...who knows what you might get) UV but i've never actually seen it offered for sale. The EF-2800U tested here retails for about $185 which is about right for a canister of that size without a "name" brand. Speaking of Brand Resun themselves are pretty big in the Asian market and have been around for years and while not the size of SunSun or Jebo they have a wide range of products and seem to be well placed in the market.

Now to the filter itself .. it comes in a large box with a carrying handle and various diagrams printed on it.
web.jpg


web.jpg


When you take the filter out at first you are a bit shocked by its sheer bulk this thing is HUGE and it would have trouble fitting under a few cabinets.

web.jpg


web.jpg


web.jpg


web.jpg


As you can see from the pics this is one big filter nearly 28 inches to the top of the taps when they are fitted and over a foot square. The Canister body alone not including the motor is 17 inches high. One thing it certainly is .... BIG !

Undoing the motor head is accomplished by taking off the 4 latched at each corner and then a unusual method of twisting two discs at each side which releases the vacuum inside and allows you to lift of the motor head taking care of the UV globe as you do.

web.jpg


Once you have opened the motor you are confronted with a large canister with 4 huge media baskets stacked together tightly with a covering screen that fits in the top basket into a o ring seal.

web.jpg


web.jpg


web.jpg


web.jpg


Media and accessories included is 4 packets of ceramic rings, about 100 bioballs, two fine pads, one course pad and one carbon pad. Hoses and inlet/outlet fittings as well as the taps for the top of the canister.

web.jpg


web.jpg


web.jpg


web.jpg


When I first saw this filter I couldn't understand how a top motor filter could possibly be top to bottom flow but Resun have come up with a simple but clever little pipe that funnels the exiting water flowing up the center tube past the UV to the impeller. Its simple and fits tightly.

The taps are a single tap variety (I'm worried about how much water will escape during maintenance) and the filter has a sturdy carrying handle that makes it easy to move around.

web.jpg


web.jpg


web.jpg



That's it for now ... tomorrow I'll get into the nitty gritty of set up and operation and answer some questions such as what's that plastic siphon pump for and does it leak when you undo the taps.

For now I'll conclude that the Resun looks well made and everything fits together correctly.
 
OK now for the actual tests so I filled the baskets up with media and attached the head unit. Then I connected the hoses and taps and finally the inlet and let bits and placed them in a 10 gallon test tank.Looking at the instructions for priming Resun gives now we find out what the little plastic siphon pump is for. Unlike most modern filters this filter has no self priming and requires the user to place the siphon pump into the outlet hose and pump it until water starts to flow into the canister and water comes out of the outlet of the siphon. Well I did that like this.....

web.jpg


Well suffice to say it didn't work, the siphon couldn't even get the air out of the first slight bend in the inlet hose and while water flowed into the canister eventually it never filled up and couldn't be forced too. This siphon is useless !!!!!
So it was back to the old school Eheim bucket method of priming and I sucked on the outlet until I heard the water flowing into the canister then ... nothing ! no water could make it out of the outlet.... AIR POCKET !
I couldn't budge it no matter what I did and when I tried to turn on the pump to see if the motor could budge it all I got was the horrible whining noise of the impeller cavitation in dry air !!! Not good !!!
So it was back to the drawing board I disconnected the filter and totally emptied the canister of water then reconnected it and manually primed it again by sucking on the hose. This time the canister filled up quickly and the air was pushed out but when I turned on the pump ...cavitation again ! WTF was going on here? I could hear air/water sloshing about as the pump tried to work so thinking very old school I placed the outlet below canister level into a spare bucket and the blockage was cleared and water filled the bucket in a few seconds expelling the air. I turned on the pump and woosh it worked !!! finally ....
I watched it push what seemed to me a enormous further amount of air out over the next 5 mins or so (noisily). For a filter that was completely primed manually this wasn't great and when I rocked the canister body back and forth a bit even more air came out. I don't think the filter sucks air but rather the bottom to top flow and top motor design seems to trap air pockets around the basket outlet pipe. This is the hardest filter to prime I've ever encountered and without the suck on the outlet and run into a lower level bucket method I doubt if I would have got it primed at all.
So no points for priming for this filter.

Once primed I checked the flow and it was huge. I measured it by filling a bucket in 60 secs and it did exactly 8.75 gallons. This equates to 525 gph flowrate when full of media and working at about 37 inches of head which is very impressive and is almost exactly the same as the FX5 (The Resun has double the biomedia capactiy of a FX5 BTW) I lifted the hose up to 48inches and the flow dropped but not by much it was doing 465gph at 48 inches of head. I lifted it further all the way up which was about 54 inches of head height and while I couldn't get a reading at that height (I couldn't get the bucket that high) the flow looked to be similar.
So flowrate on this filter is massive and that's a plus but with every plus there seem to be a couple of minuses with this filter and the noise factor was the biggest one.
After the priming issue was settled I was very surprised at how noisy the filter was in normal operation. It was so noisy my wife actually asked me if I had our pool filter pump on when she walked past. The issue seems to be the previousl mentioned pipe that links the outflow tube that runs down the baskets and the impeller pump. When the pump is on the impeller trasmits vibrations to this pipe. I checked all the connections and they were tight but still the noise issue was there. I can only conclude that without a noise reducing rubber gasket to plug into the hard plastic to hard plastic tight fitting can do nothing else to transmit the vibrations.
This filter in operation was the noisiest canister I've used even other Cheap Chinese filters like the SunSun HW series are practically silent but this buzzes like a bee. I would imagine it would be annoying to have this filter in a bedroom or similar. (Check the video)
The other issue I encountered that i was worried about was the taps, they are single taps only and I was concerned they might dump water on the floor when being disconnected to do maintenance on the filter. This they did but not as much as I feared. Certainly they dumped a lot more then the modern double tap style fittings on Eheim pros (or cheap SunSun's for that matter) but it was no more then a half a cupful. nothing a towel couldn't take care of in a few seconds.

A few pics of the filter setup and running.....

web.jpg


web.jpg



And finally a video of the filter in operation showing the massive flow (and noise)

[YT]4BmBfbm8ZQg[/YT]

In conclusion I think the Resun is a strong powerful filter but with some serious flaws in its design. The flowrate, media capacity and inbuilt UV are all fantastic but it comes at the expense of difficult priming and noisy operation. The real problem with the Resun is the price. They are kicking around between $180-250 and at that price you could buy two totally silent easy to prime 530gph SunSun HW-304B's with built in UV's. The main reason someone would go with this cheaper brand is price and the Resun is quite simply overpriced for what it delivers.
I couldn't recommend it to anyone but the experienced (or deaf) aquarist but even then there are better options out there in the cheap chinese brands.

In conclusion ..... the Resun EF-2800U gets a 4.5/10
 
Great review, very informative. Being cheap and not made of money I run sun sun 304B's w/ uv on all my tanks and have had great success with them. Sure I would much rather buy American but they work and are cheap. I have one that's ran two years so far with no issues at all.
 
mustang93svt;4658362; said:
Great review, very informative. Being cheap and not made of money I run sun sun 304B's w/ uv on all my tanks and have had great success with them. Sure I would much rather buy American but they work and are cheap. I have one that's ran two years so far with no issues at all.


Yeah this Resun is quite a bit larger and more powerful then a HW-304 but buying 2 SunSun's represents better value then this Filter.
I've had no issues with any of my SunSun HW's (I wouldn't run them on a crical tank with expensive fish mind you).
 
Very true, I don't have any expensive fish. And I am currently adding wet/dry filters to all my tanks that could filter the tank themselves in the event my canister dies.
 
In my opinion this review is not really fair. The purpose of a filter is to provide filtration to your tank. How well it performs the filtration for your tank should become the main issues in determining scores not a mere physical or technical appearance.

Your review should be based more on how efficient this filter can do its job compared to other in similar size.

You based the review merely on how difficult it is to prime and the noise level. While i must agree they are important aspects of considerations but i dont think it is really crucial. The argument that i need to put up here is that this filter is designed for a huge tank that we dont normally put in a small room such as bedroom. I own a big tank of 1100 litre plus and i have a big cabinet for it in which this filter fits nicely inside. And when u close the cabinet door, you cant really hear it humming.

As this filter is intended for a huge tank, i must say thay the cabinet or stand for such tank is custom made and well planned by the tank owner. This filter is not for a pre made tank that u can buy outright from a shop.

Also this filter does not need alot of energy to run. 30 watt is considered quite low for its size.

If u compare apple to apple, u should compare this with fx5, eheim 2260 and jebo 880 because it is the closest product matching the spec of resun 2800 u. Dont compare it with a filter that only does a wee bit more than half of its flow rate. Also remember the much bigger size of bio media capacity.

U didnt even put the uv light as a potential advantage for consideration. True that this product comes with no uv option but i think thats actually a huge plus as no other brand in its size offering uv filtration included.

I think for my experience, this filter is a huge plus compared to the much more expensive fx5 and jebo 880 is reported to have so many problems. i happen to own both fx5 and t
Ef2800u. The only downside of this filter compared to fx5 is the priming process but once it is running, it kicks fx5 away to the moon. Providing the same amount and quality of biomedia of course. And fx5 cost almost double or even more expensive. True it looks cheap as all chinese brands do, but if we go all out fair, resun ef2800u is one bang for the buck. In my country the price does not even reach $150
 
Unfortunately the UV in the filter is practically useless. For the UV to be effective for pathogens you need a flow rate of around 10 GPH per watt of UV light so at 450+ GPH, you would need 45-55 watts of UV, there is not enough contact time with the UV for it to have any effect on anything other than green water.
Also I consider noise a very important factor as I have my 1000 litre tank in my dining room.
I would be very interested to see how it actually performs as a biological filter when using bio balls, I think with the supplied media it will fall well short of the eheim 2260 of the FX5.Perhaps someone will compare the two.
 
MonsterFishKeepers.com