Barrel prefilter

[Ronfire]

I was thinking of building a prefilter with a 55 gallon barrel. 4" gravity feed from bottom drain with support screen on the bottom for feed out to the pump and layers of Malta pads coarse to fine from the top down. Add in an air cleaning system like the S&G filter with top and bottom cleaning drains. Could also send water to the bottom to back flush the pads.

Would appreciate any advice or has anyone used this setup and if it works.

Pond not built yet but will have skimmer maybe 5600gpm pump, 2-3000 gallon ponds hopefully with plants and some Koi

 

[mgmine]

The white (fine) malta pad will clog and the water will greatly slow down and may cause problems. I use the pad in the main filter and in the skimmer box. In the skimmer box it clogs so badly that it drops the water level down and unless monitored could starve the pump. I have an automatic water filler that thinks that the water level is low and turns on. What happens next is that the pond overflows because it really isn't low.