Thanks. How much water are you pushing through it? I would have to send about 1500 gph to maintain the waterfall and am thinking that would be to high a flow rate for a bog to work. I really do not quite understand the relationship of water flow to bog performance. When I decreased the water flow to my current bog, the water cleared up. But that could have been due to other factors, like rainfall or cloudy days which both happened when the pond cleared up. Unfortunately it is back to green algae now but not as bad as it was. That is why I am exploring this bog in waterfall box idea.
How is this working out. Strongly considered turning my biofalls into another bog filter.
I'm wondering if you did that and how it turned out
I've always thought the bio-balls looked hard to clean so I never even try them, thanks for confirming my theory.
I'm pretty sure the bioballs are NEVER supposed to be mechanical filters, but rather, biofilters. The water should go through a mechanical system first (the pads). You shouldn't have to ever clean the balls.
This is exactly how mine is set up - the biofall box has two heavy black filters & the bag of bioballs sits on top of them. We take the entire thing apart & clean it once a year. The bags of bioballs do get pretty gross & gunky, but it's easy enough to just rinse them off with the hose. We do this in early winter (December) and then store everything until early Spring when we put it all back together. Since the biological action is way down when the water is cold, I don't worry about not having them in there. Plus, my entire pond is full of gravel & rocks which more or less makes the entire bottom surface a 'biological filter' and place for bacteria to colonize.