Bottom Feeder Cartridge: Dirt Gone in Minutes!

Manual vacuuming is one of those “just part of the job” tasks that quietly eats your day, especially when you’re chasing fine dust that keeps slipping through a vac bag. I’m revisiting a tool that’s been getting a lot of attention from pool service pros: the Bottom Feeder and Shrimp Cleaner cartridge filter adapter. After about three months of real use, I walk through what’s actually different this time, why the older cartridge-style attempts never became daily drivers, and what the new threaded halo design changes in the field.

We get into the real-world problem with vacuum bags and micron ratings: fine bags can clog fast, lose flow, and tear more easily, while standard bags let a lot of fine dirt pass right back into the pool. The cartridge assembly flips that script by capturing dirt down to roughly 10 to 20 microns while keeping strong water flow through the pleats. I also cover practical limits like how much dirt it can hold, what happens with leaf debris, and how to clean it quickly between stops so it stays efficient on a route.

Deciding between the Bottom Feeder and the Shrimp Cleaner, I share how the cartridge behaves on both, a simple battery positioning hack, and the option to expand filter area with the extension kit. I’ll also point you to where to buy the cartridge assembly and replacement cartridges. 

• why new pool products get skepticism and how the older cartridge adapter fell short
• why vacuum bags struggle with fine dirt, low-micron wear, clogging, and suction drop-off
• how the threaded halo lets us switch between bag and cartridge in about 10 seconds
• how the cartridge performs on the Shrimp Cleaner versus the Bottom Feeder
• battery positioning hack to prevent interference with the cartridge
• realistic capacity for dirt and leaves plus when to switch back to a bag
• fast rinse-out cleaning method and the value of carrying spare cartridges
• compatible replacement cartridge models and the extension kit to expand filter area
• how the dirt stays inside the cartridge and why flow stays strong
• buying options an

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Transcript

Welcome And Product Follow-Up

Why The Old Adapter Flopped

The Micron Challenge With Bags

Threaded Halo Quick Change System

Shrimp Cleaner Fit Plus Battery Hack

Capacity, Cleaning, And Expansion Options

How It Filters Without Power Loss

Buying Paths And Final Setup Tips

More Podcasts And Coaching Invite

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Hey, welcome to the Pool Vay Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm going to follow up on a product that I featured here in January, and that is the Bottom Feeder and Shrimp Cartridge Filter Adapter. And this is something that has revolutionized the vacuum system market, in particular if you own the bottom feeder or shrimp cleaner. And I'll go over some details of it and of course how it is after about three months of usage here. Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the Pool Guy Coaching Program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support from me. I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at swimmingpoollearning.com. So whenever a new product comes out, there's always skepticism about the reality of it, if it actually works, and is it really effective? And of course, with anything, if there was a predecessor to it that kind of didn't work as well as it should have, then something new is always assumed to be just as bad as the predecessor product. So the bottom feeder did have a cartridge assembly prior to this one that came out you know several years ago, and I actually reviewed it. There were a few issues with this particular cartridge adapter. The original one, it was a larger cartridge filter, I believe it was 80 square feet, if I remember correctly, and it kind of just you kind of just push it onto the the throat or top of the bottom of heater, and you just it just stayed there in place basically with a strap that you would put on it. So it wasn't extremely effective, and so it soured a lot of people that tried it. I thought it was effective enough if you needed to use it to get dirt off the bottom, but it wasn't an everyday tool to get dirt out of a pool, and so it wasn't that popular, and it kind of just kind of disappeared on the market. They didn't promote it. I didn't really promote it because it wasn't that effective. But this new one actually is highly effective, and the feedback from people using it has been incredibly positive. You know, the fact that you can actually have a vacuum system now with a cartridge on top that can actually pick up dirt down to 10 or 20 microns, which is kind of like the holy grail, the vacuum system, because we know that the bags, even the small micron bags like the Riptide 60 micron, they actually have a 25 micron as well that fills up with air pretty quickly. They have a low micron hammerhead bag, and then of course, if you're a power vac user like myself in the old days, you had that yellow 60 micron bag that PowerVac had. I have a funny story. I was cleaning this a water feature with it, it was a brand new build, and they had put like a little pond water feature, and so I had my my power vac and I had this brand new yellow 60 micron bag to get some of that silt and dirt out of there. So I'm just using it and you know going back and forth in there, and then I feel like something snagged it or I hit the bottom feeder on something, or the power vac, I should say. This is prior to the bottom feeder, and the it actually tore the bag, you know, the whole length of the bag was torn about 10 inches up, making it totally useless. Brand new bag wasted, because it is a much fragile, fragile, fragile, and much much easier material to tear because of the little microns. And so when it starts filling up with the air and the dirt coats it, if you rub it against anything sharp, it'll definitely tear open like nothing. And they don't last very long either because the smaller micron bags tend to wear out faster because of the material being much finer than say you know a 100 micron bag or 200 micron bag. And so the bottom heater does have a 57 micron bag as well, which is pretty good for most situations, but any dirt that's gonna be you know smaller than 57 microns will go right through the bag, which is a lot of the dirt basically, or finer dirt will pass right through these vacuum system bags. So having the ability to have a cartridge on top that will filter dirt out of the pool is something that everyone's been wanting for their vacuum system. Because why would you ever want to manual vacuum a pool again? If you have a vacuum system, it's so convenient to drop it in there and then use that to get all the debris out and dirt down to a certain micron. But now if you can get dirt as well as leaf as well as leaf debris out of the pool, which is one vacuum system, I think this is what makes this so amazing because with the fact that you can use the bag as well and then switch it to a cartridge, and I'll go over that in a second how fast it is to do this. But just the fact that you can use the bag when you need to, and then have the cartridge available that is actually very effective when you need it, makes this a very versatile and it makes it an all-in-one type device for most pool pros in your in depending on your area and your situation. If you're in an area where you have a lot of dirt in the pools, as well as some leaf debris, this would be perfect for you. Now, if you're in an area where you just get tons of leaf debris and you're not really concerned about the dirt, of course, you could just go with the bottom feeder with the bag, or you can go with a larger vacuum system like the hammerhead or riptide. No problem there because there are certain situations where the full-size vacuum system is a necessity in those areas. But I would argue that about 90% of the areas that have pool service can get away with just having the bottom feeder or the new shrimp cleaner as the primary vacuum system, and there's really no need for the full-size vacuum system with the cart, and especially with this cartridge now, and I'm gonna just touch on how easy it is to go between bag and cartridge. There's a patent pending on this thing because it is pretty unique in the industry. The halo that's on the bottom feeder of shrimp is the little black part that the bags go on to. They call it the halo. So the bags kind of you can if you're using the vac bag that comes with it, you just kind of clip it on there using an off another bag like the Clearpool products bag, the bungee cord goes over it, that's what holds the bag on. But with the new threaded halo, the actual cartridge assembly has a threaded part on the bottom. So the threaded halo is the male part with the threads on it. The cartridge assembly has a female threaded part on the bottom, and you simply thread in the cartridge. In about 10 seconds, you can go between the cartridge assembly and a bag, making this a very versatile cleaner. There's no need to take off a clumsy adapter, unclip it, and then put the bag on. You just simply unscrew the cartridge and then put the bag on top, or take the bag off and screw on the cartridge, and it's that easy to go from one to the other seamlessly. Currently, the cartridge adapter is only available on the bottom feeder and shrimp cleaner. And surprisingly, it works really great on the shrimp. Now the shrimp is kind of like the bottom feeder, and it has the sides cut off and it's a little smaller, has a five-inch throat versus the six-inch sort of the bottom feeder, so it's much smaller and compact, even has a smaller battery, so it is a much smaller compact vacuum. And with the cartridge on top, it actually works really well. In fact, I think it works just as good as the bottom feeder, if not better, because of the smaller throat, it really pulls that dirt in really you know in an accelerated fashion. And the nice thing about this cartridge is that it's actually a 50 square foot cartridge that's not too bulky and too cumbersome, and actually it's really well balanced on the back of the bottom feeder and shrimp. Now, there is a battery hack that you can do, and I show that in the video where I filmed the extension kit, which I'll cover a little bit as well here, and that is to take the battery off of the portability kit that comes with it is a small little piece of pool pole. Just take the battery, turn it upside down, take a clamp that they would give the bottom feeder will give you, and then clamp the battery about 18 inches above where the cartridge sits. And that way, when you're in an area where the battery may hit the cartridge, it's not gonna hit it because you move the battery up 18 inches on the back of it. Hard to describe here on the podcast, but basically you're just turning the battery upside down and moving it up 18 inches, so that's not gonna hit the cartridge. To me, it's not a big deal running it with the battery on the back of it, it's not super inconvenient, and there's only a certain point where you may hit it with the battery on the back. This cartridge, again, is a 15 square foot cartridge, and so you're gonna have the ability in my testing to pick up about one or two pounds of dirt, which is a significant amount of dirt. Now, it's not an infinite capacity, so a lot of people are gonna use this and they're gonna clean a pool that has you know five or six pounds of dirt or did algae or DE in there. And just note that just like a cartridge filter that can get overloaded, this can also get overloaded. So you want to just be logical about it. And one or two pounds of dirt is actually a lot of dirt, by the way. It can also pick up leaf debris. I would say a handful of leaf debris is the capacity. This is not made to pick up, you know, a pool that's full of leaves. You want to use the bag for that. But if you have a handful of leaves, you know, a handful is a pretty good amount of leaves, this will be fine, it's not gonna cause any problems with it. Just be aware that when you take it out of the pool, the leaves are gonna just fall right back down the throat onto the ground. So just put it somewhere where you know it's gonna you can clean up the leaf debris quickly and easily. Now to clean the filter is very simple. You just again unscrew it from the threaded fitting, turn it upside down, and you can use a high power nozzle to hose the inside of it off. You don't even have to take the lid off to clean it. You can take the lid off to get a give it a thorough cleaning, but after every use you should get the hose and stick it in there and hose off as much dirt as possible so it's ready for the next pool. I did mention that I show this battery hack in this the extension video. Now there are some pool pros that were saying that there was a lot of pools with you know three or four pounds of dirt. They had to maybe take the cleaner out, clean off the cartridge, put it back in to get the rest of the pool. Some pool pros actually carry spare cartridges, and I can give you which cartridge it is too, so that if you do have one, you can find a replacement cartridge. It does work on other cartridges besides the unicell cartridge that comes with it. I should back up and say that it comes shipped with a unicell 50 square foot cartridge filter. That's the unicell C9405 50 square foot filter. There's also off-brand ones you can buy on Amazon. Plico actually makes one. The PAP54, that's the Unicell C905, or the Filber FC0684, and this is also what there's also a bunch of other ones you can use this on if you wanted to have two cartridges and you can switch them out with the heavy debris pools. But the extension kit actually will expand the cartridge and make it a 100 square foot cartridge filter. It has a 500 mm rod, and then you just double stack the cartridges on top of each other. And surprisingly, it's not super unbalanced because of the way that it screws on to the threaded halo, the cartridge actually stays on there firmly and it doesn't really move around a lot. So even with a 100 square foot cartridge filter with the extension kit, the cleaner is really really mobile in the pool, and it doesn't really cause mobility issues at all in my testing. So you can easily expand the cartridge again from a 50 square foot capacity to a hundred square foot capacity. Now, the way it's designed, and I've had questions about this also, you know, the dirt actually goes inside the cartridge and not outside the cartridge, because of course if it went outside the cartridge, it'd go right back into the pool. It is actually reversed from a cartridge filter. A normal cartridge filter, the clean water goes down the center core and out the cartridges, the grid, the pleats on the cartridge, I should say, and all the dirt stays on the outside of the cartridge in a contained cartridge filter. That's how it works. But since there is no actual filter top on top of this thing, the dirt actually goes inside the cartridge. The top keeps the dirt from coming out of it, and so all the dirt is contained inside of the cartridge itself, and it's a self-contained unit where the clean water passes through. Ironically, I feel like you don't see a lot of power drop-off when you're using the cartridge assembly or the cartridge filter on top of it, because the fact that the bags, when the bags start to get filled up with smaller particles and some dirt, let's say you're using a you know 75 micron bag or a 90 micron bag, basically that dirt will actually coat the bag and prevent some of the water from going back through the bag, causing the cleaner or the vacuum system to lose some power. And in some extreme cases, if you don't empty the bag out, you'll actually see the vacuum system floating up and water coming out the bottom of it because water can't penetrate the bag at that point because there's so much stuff coating it, and it starts filling up with air as well. But since you're using a 50 square foot cartridge filter on top, the actual flow is pretty amazing. So the clean water can flow through the pleats really easily. The dirt leaves get trapped inside the core of the cartridge, and you don't really see any drop-off again in power as you're picking up the dirt. So by the time you finish backing up one pound of dirt from the bottom of the pool, there's like zero drop-off in power, and there's no water coming out the bottom of the cleaner because of the extra flow that the cartridge creates, allowing the clean water to pass through again, dropping all the dirt down to 10 to 20 microns inside the cartridge itself. So if you go to the bottom feeder site, just go to the bottomfeeder.com, click on the shop button, and there's a couple ways to actually buy the cartridge assembly. You can buy it as a complete unit with the bottom feeder and shrimp. So you can see that in the shop area, the shrimp and bottom feeder with the cartridge assembly with the cleaner. If you don't have a bottom feeder, you can buy all that together as one complete unit. Or you can buy the cartridge assembly if you already have a bottom feeder or shrimp. You can buy the cartridge assembly separately. You also have the extension kit for sale there, and you also have an extra cartridge for sale on their site now. So you can buy the unicell cartridge directly from the bottom feeder. You can buy the bottom feeder assembly kit with the bottom feeder or shrimp, or buy it separately if you have a bottom feeder or shrimp already. And I would say that again, for most people, this would be the only vacuum system you're gonna need going forward because not only will it pick up leaf debris, but now you can vacuum out dirt down to 10 to 20 microns, which means that essentially you'll never gonna need to use your manual vacuum and hose again in a pool. You don't even need to carry it on your truck. A lot of people that get this cartridge filter assembly leave their pool hose and vacuum head at home. Well, the vacuum head might come in handy if you have suction style cleaners and you want to use the cleaner hose as the vacuum or pool. But as far as cleaning carrying the cleaner hose or the pool hose with you, you don't need the 50-foot pool hose any longer. You have this cartridge adapter that will get the dirt out of the pool, get the dirt out of the spa. And it doesn't really matter if you use the bottom feeder or a shrimp. I think both cleaners with the cartridge on top work really effectively. Now, if you're using the bottom feeder, one last note, you want to keep that thrust ring in the throat so that you're creating a little bit tighter area for the propeller and the area where the dirt gets sucked up, it'll create more suction that way. But the shrimp, there's no need for that because it has a five-inch throat, and the propeller is actually right there at the edge of the opening. And again, it works really effectively for both cleaners. And if you're looking for a tool to get dirt out of a pool and make your life easier, and you're in the market for a vacuum system, I definitely would look into getting the shrimp or bottom feeder with the cartridge filter assembly on top of it. And it's something that's going to save you time, energy, and ultimately pay for itself with the time saving out there on your route. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those on my website. Click on the podcast icon. There'll be over 1800 podcasts you're listening to there. And if you're interested in the coaching program that I offer, you can learn more at poolguycoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have you rest of your week? God bless.