AC Filter Mat – The Secret Weapon That Lets Your Water “Breathe”

Update time: 25-10-18 Views: 1

Every aquarist knows that crystal-clear water is the prerequisite for healthy fish and thriving plants. Yet uneaten food, fish waste and drifting leaves clog most filter pads in less than two weeks, and cleaning them becomes a nightmare. After 18 months of R&D and field tests at top koi farms in Japan, Germany and the Netherlands, AC has merged “natural eco-friendly” with “high-efficiency filtration” to create today’s hero product: AC Filter Mat.

1. What exactly is “Filter Mat”?

Filter Mat is not cotton, but a 3-D needle-punched pad made of 100% natural-grade polyester fibre. At 4 cm thick it contains more than 10 million micro-pores per 50 × 50 cm sheet. Water passes through effortlessly while >90% of suspended particles are trapped mechanically.

2. Why do Japanese koi farms swear by it?

- Zero glue, zero fluorescent agent

Conventional pads are hardened with formaldehyde resin or brighteners that leach toxins and cause gill-burn or popeye. AC uses heat-compression shaping—no glue, no fluorescence—so the pad will not discolour or shed even after a full year underwater.

- 4 cm: the golden thickness

Too thin = frequent clogging; too thick = flow restriction. Four centimetres gave the best balance in 200 flow/pressure tests, creating stable aerobic/anaerobic zones for nitrifiers without choking a 5 t h⁻¹ pump.

- Self-cleaning fibre texture

Hydrophilic micro-roughness boosts bio-film adhesion by 38%. When the bacterial film reaches 0.2 mm, outer layers shear off naturally, tripling the service interval. A 2-m koi pond that needed weekly rinsing now runs for a month.

- One pad, many uses

Available in 50 × 50 cm sheets or 200 × 100 cm rolls, it can be cut to any shape for trickle towers, sump compartments, moving-bed filters or even small canister filters. UV-stable black fibres stay intact after 3 years in outdoor ponds.

3. Real case: from “brown soup” to “air-water”

Aquascaper A-Jun (Zhongshan, CN) kept 30 rummy-nose tetras in a 120 cm planted tank. With three layers of common white pad + bio-rings he still battled yellow water and washed pads twice a week. After switching to two layers of AC Filter Mat on top of AC Bio-Balls, TDS dropped from 180 to 95 in 3 days; NO₂⁻-N fell from 0.8 mg L⁻¹ to 0.02 mg L⁻¹ in 7 days; clarity improved from 15 cm to 60 cm depth—true “air-water”. Cleaning? “Ten-second rinse once a month,” he says.