You know that a filter is in a completely different league when it moves away from describing itself in gallons per hour, to power consumption in kilowatts and filtering capacity in kilograms of biomass. This is precisely the kind of filter we’re featuring today, designed and engineered by Marine Aquarium Technology Life Support Systems.
MAT LSS, as it is better known, is a company based in Athens Greece that specializes in creating this kind of commercial, all in one filter systems. In fact, commercial grade may not be applicable anymore, as the design and sheer power of MAT LSS filters is more in line with industrial grade.
Interestingly, MAT LSS has designed a few filters which borrow from industrial style skid machines, assembling all the components needed for a particular purpose onto a single movable platform. It’s only recently at InterZoo 2016 that MAT LSS showed off a complete skid filter which is small enough to be shared with the readers of Reef Builders.
Obviously this machine is not intended for the average home aquarium, but it would rock out on some extra large aquarium installations, and especially fish stores and other commercial applications requiring some heavy duty seawater filtration technology. Speaking of which, MAT LSS’s smallest skid filter might be just slightly larger than a pallet, but it packs all the high performance and heavy duty features you’d want in a hot rod saltwater aquarium filter.
First of all the entire MAT LSS Skid Filter is made of heavy duty polypropylene, durable enough to kick with steel toed boots, and probably might be able to stop a low caliber bullet. Out of this ‘sump’, multiple devices are built right in including a very thoroughly aerated biofilter, a pressurized canister for any kind of chemical media, and a nice big fat protein skimmer neatly rounding out one of the corners. All the plumbing is durable schedule 80 PVC, including the pipes, a multitude of valves, as well as a couple of included volumetric flowmeters.
Two Abyzz A100 pumps are the engines of the MAT LSS mini skid filter, with one pump powering the protein skimmer, and another one pumping water through the built-in U.V. sterilizer, canister filter, and the biological filter. Despite using two of these high powered Abyzz A100 pumps to power the actual filter, you’ll actually have to choose and install a separate pump to actually deliver water to your display aquarium or aquariums.
This kind of hardcore commercial grade aquarium filter doesn’t come cheap, but it’s also not quite as expensive as you’d think. The MAT LSS Mini Skid Filter will set you back a cool $6000, but you’ll be comfortably be supporting up to 10 kilograms of live fish, or somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 to 2000 gallons depending on stocking.
You could easily spend upwards of $6,000 on a Royal Exclusiv Dreambox sump before adding any kind of protein skimming, media filters or return pumps so if you’re in the market for a true marine aquarium machine, the new Mini Skid Filter from MAT LSS is built for the task. [MAT LSS]
