School pond desparate for help

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The school I work at has a small pond with goldfish. Roughly 6' x 5', half the pond is 2' deep and half 1' deep. It has a very small pump that is not working well with no filtration. The school has little or no money for the pond because of huge budget cuts. The principle would like to keep the pond but I told him we need a new system to the kids can actually see the fish and not just green water. I was thinking of the Lifegard all-in-one filter system. We need something cheap or free and easy to maintain.

Any thoughts?
 

fishin4cars

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How about a school project for the kids to see who can build the best filter design for the pond. Plenty of good info here and elsewhere on the internet. You might be surprised at what a intrested student might come up with.
 
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Don't think there is enough time really. Only 5 weeks of school left and it is an elementary school. 5th graders maybe a few 4th graders might be able to research enough information to come up with something. The school is high poverty and many students don't have computers at home.

They would still need a better pump.
 
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What size container would we need to make a biofilter for the pond? Our pond, besides about 25 goldfish, has 2 bullfrogs and 4-5 crayfish. It is in a courtyard that is home to two box turtles, a few lizards and a lot of nesting birds. It's a great place. I have a group of kids composting and recycling, maybe I could get them to make a biofilter. When they figure out what they need I could send out a school wide email asking for donated parts.
 
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There is no way around a pump. But the one you have might be okay if you clean it out. If not, a pump with such low volume you should be able to find really cheap. Just make sure to get a real pond pump, not a submersible cellar pump.

How big it should be? Meh, if my math isnt off, the volume of your pond is about 1200 liter. Almost any pond pump will handle that per hour (if you dont have to pump it up much higher), which ought to be more than enough. In fact Id be surprised your current pump doesnt do that.

Question is, where will you pump to? You need 2 things; the water needs to be aerated, by creating a fountain or water fall or something, it doesnt need to be fancy just as long as the water "splashes" and has a chance to interact with air. And it needs to run through some filter media. YOu can do that cheaply, like pumping to the bottom of a rainwater barrel and filling it with old plastic stuff. I used PVC plumbing pipes that I cut in to rings. Works great. Acts as both rough mechanical filter making parts sink, and biological filter as they provide a fair amount of surface for bacteria to grow on. Roughening the surface first is even better.

Then put a pipe at the top where the water flows out and falls in to the pond, and you have a waterfall. If you can create a plant filter, thats even better, but thats less likely to happen in a few weeks I assume.
 

stroppy

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maybe you could ask local pond shops if they could donate a pump to the school ...just a thought ! shame im in the UK i have a couple of pumps i dont use ..but would cost me too much to ship them over to you ...sorry i cant be more help ;(
 
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Part of the problem is the pond pump sit in the pond and clogs very quickly. I clean it almost everyday now and with summer coming I can't drop by the school very often.

I guess I need a filter box for the pump as well.
 

addy1

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One thing you could do for the summer, just to cut down on the cleaning, get a milk crate, or something similar, get a bunch of the pot scrubbers, the nylon ones, cheap at dollar stores, or even the washable ac filters at home depot. Fill the crate with that stuff with the pump in the center of all that stuff. It will help keep the debris from clogging up the pump as fast. How much junk is in the bottom of the pond? maybe if you can muck some of it out, or someone do, since it is shallow you could use a shop vac to suck the bottom junk out. That will help it last the summer also. Make enough movement to scare frogs etc away so you don't suck them up.
I, when learning about ponds, used a snow shovel i.e. plastic to muck out a pond, know more now and don't let them get as yucky lol.
 
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I just got to school and looked at the pump. It is a Pacific Hydrostar 258 PGH fountain pump.

Addy, I was just thinking of some kind of container to put the pump in to filter debris. I meet with my composting/environmental kids tomorrow. We could go over what is needed and if we can get everything by next Thursday, we could put it all together. That would give it about 3 weeks to work before school was out.

The pond needs to be totally cleaned out.
 

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If you do a clean out don't scrub the algae off the pond walls, that is a good thing. Getting the junk out of the bottom would be a great thing!

Make sure you treat your water with dechlor if you have chlorine in your water, since a school, I am sure you do. Put your fish in a rubbermaid container, garbage can with lg black trash bag with pond water with an air stone while you work on it, or just stick pump in to keep the water moving.
 
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Addy's suggestion is excellent. Not only will it help prevent clogging at the same time it would act as a small bio filter. Since its a fountain pump, I think this one:
http://www.harborfreight.com/258-gp...ferralID=f52a711e-70be-11e0-9770-001b2166becc

Make it work like one. That will give you the aeration you need, in combination with the putscrubbers and if possible, some cleaning first, I think you should be good to go.
 

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Yep think so, will cut down on needs to visit over the summer too
Does it have auto water fill? the other thing to think of is evaporation.
 
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No auto water fill but the pond does not lose that much water to evaporation because it is in the sun for only half the day, it that. Because of budget cuts the school is closed for the month of July but I can ask to be let in to check on the pond and courtyard once or twice.

If the kids can get the project done the cleaning of the pond should only take a couple hours. The hardest part will be not to get pinched by the crayfish while I bucket out the pond. lol I will work on making a floating plant basket for water hyacinths.
 

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