So I've been making some changes to the pond. I'd hoped, this spring, to finish the upper pond, bog garden, and waterfall. However, I'm enormously pregnant (due in 8 days woot!), so that hasn't exactly happened lol. I'm resigned that it's a project for late fall, or next spring.
In the interim, I decided to rearrange my pump and box filter. In the past, I've had the box filter hooked up to the pump's intake, but the hosing keeps crimping shut as the pump is rated much higher in gallonage than the filter. So, I switched it. Put the cage on the pump, dropped it down to the shelf just above the bottom (about 4 1/2 feet depth), and hooked the box filter to the output and set it on the upper shelf on the opposite side of the pond (2 feet deep there). Idea being that a)hose won't crimp shut and b)pump will clear the sludge off the pond bottom, keeping things cleaner.
What I didn't anticipate is how much less surface agitation you get from flow dispersed through a box filter, versus flow blasting out of the pump's output nozzle. Also, how having the pump pull the crud off the bottom and shove it into the filter means having to clean the filter WAY more often (at least the pump is doing its job).
With the heatwave we're experiencing, I thought I'd better up the surface agitation for aeration purposes. I had a brand new in the box Laguna pump for waterfall/fountain (900gph) kicking around (bought it last year for the indoor turtle pond that I will eventually build for my turtle) and decided to see how a fountain looks in the pond.
It looks okay. It's in a corner, because there's no way to put it in the center since my pond is six feet deep in the middle lol. Hubby really likes the way it looks. What I really like is how much it improves circulation!!!!
Also very happy with a cheapy purchase I got yesterday - the little laguna pond vacuum that you hook up to your garden hose. I'd been really hesitant about buying it, as I wasn't sure it would have enough suction at 6 feet deep. Worry for nothing! It does a bang up job and was about a million times easier than using my big old 50 ft aquarium python, which is what I've done in the past (low suction and clogs every 2 minutes or so). I'd actually really recommend it to anyone with a small to medium sized pond. For reference, my own pond is about 1400G, 8 x 8 x 6, with very steep sides, so just a small bottom to vacuum (about 18" diameter at the bottom).
All the mucking about over the past couple of weeks has really stirred up a ton of very fine silt that the filters missed, so I threw some of that floculant clumping stuff in there today. Hoping it works to make the crud suspended in the water clump enough for the pump and/or my net to get it out....
How's everyone else's pond doing?
In the interim, I decided to rearrange my pump and box filter. In the past, I've had the box filter hooked up to the pump's intake, but the hosing keeps crimping shut as the pump is rated much higher in gallonage than the filter. So, I switched it. Put the cage on the pump, dropped it down to the shelf just above the bottom (about 4 1/2 feet depth), and hooked the box filter to the output and set it on the upper shelf on the opposite side of the pond (2 feet deep there). Idea being that a)hose won't crimp shut and b)pump will clear the sludge off the pond bottom, keeping things cleaner.
What I didn't anticipate is how much less surface agitation you get from flow dispersed through a box filter, versus flow blasting out of the pump's output nozzle. Also, how having the pump pull the crud off the bottom and shove it into the filter means having to clean the filter WAY more often (at least the pump is doing its job).
With the heatwave we're experiencing, I thought I'd better up the surface agitation for aeration purposes. I had a brand new in the box Laguna pump for waterfall/fountain (900gph) kicking around (bought it last year for the indoor turtle pond that I will eventually build for my turtle) and decided to see how a fountain looks in the pond.
It looks okay. It's in a corner, because there's no way to put it in the center since my pond is six feet deep in the middle lol. Hubby really likes the way it looks. What I really like is how much it improves circulation!!!!
Also very happy with a cheapy purchase I got yesterday - the little laguna pond vacuum that you hook up to your garden hose. I'd been really hesitant about buying it, as I wasn't sure it would have enough suction at 6 feet deep. Worry for nothing! It does a bang up job and was about a million times easier than using my big old 50 ft aquarium python, which is what I've done in the past (low suction and clogs every 2 minutes or so). I'd actually really recommend it to anyone with a small to medium sized pond. For reference, my own pond is about 1400G, 8 x 8 x 6, with very steep sides, so just a small bottom to vacuum (about 18" diameter at the bottom).
All the mucking about over the past couple of weeks has really stirred up a ton of very fine silt that the filters missed, so I threw some of that floculant clumping stuff in there today. Hoping it works to make the crud suspended in the water clump enough for the pump and/or my net to get it out....
How's everyone else's pond doing?
