And this is the next strange thing I´ve been trying to understand. Recent years I bought some floaters but feels it´s just a waste of money. After 2-3 weeks they start getting yellow and then dies. It happened for 3 seasons now. I bought them just because my pond is in full sun almost all day and understand that I need some shading. And this is actually a problem for all my plants besides the lilies, they get yellow after a couple of weeks and die. I did test the water with this multi-stick but can´t identify the problem...
I have 10 gold fishes and I´m surprised how much dirt it is in the pond. It builds up again after just 12 hours since vacuum cleaning..
I rarely put new water in the pond since the values seems fine and I dont want to ruin the only little "balance" I have.
Haha! This is the first year they "increase the heard" and I have about 15 small ones. It´s always foamy in the morning but gone by noon.
So I need a pre-filter to get rid of the fine particles? Can you recommend anything?
if your plants are yellowing and dying, there's a water issue. I'd look toward your water being too extreme re pH, but that's just a guess. The water lettuce in my pond does well in either full sun or part shade, but does look more green in the shade. I'd get a liquid test kit and test all your parameters, including; ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, pH, KH, and GH. Too, are you putting salt in your pond? If so, salt kills plants, so...
I'd look hard for that source of debris if you're getting significant accumulation after only 12 hours and vacuuming. There's an issue somewhere. I don't vac, never have, but with all my fish, for sure I'm getting fines. Now, from pondside, not a problem and it's only at certain times of the day (sun angle) that you can see them. I can see to the bottom (40+inches) easily. But I also have an underwater cam and through this, I USED to be able to see 20' away. Not so much anymore as the fines make it more like 8-10'.
You should not have to put in new water unless you're topping up. Btw, I'd check your source water, just to see if there's something getting in that way (pH, phosphates, etc).
The foam typically represents DOCs in the water, with fish spawning adding to the lot. It should be brief periods of time but whenever I begin to see it, I stop feeding for a week or so; just don't want the fish to NOT eat the eggs. I got enough fish already and culling/rehoming isn't anything I want to do!
My prefilter is based on an aquarium concept called a 'sock filter'. You can google but it works like this; I feed the water from the pond into a 'sock' that is a mesh of certain micron-size. As it clogs up, I then rinse and put back. Now, typically you use this sock concept in a aux filter/aquarium mounted below your main aquarium. The water flows through the sock then a pump pushes it back to your tank. In adapting this concept to a pond, I got a 55 gallon drum and mounted an input bulkhead at the top with 2 of the same size outlets, about 12" or so off the bottom. The water is fed into the interior, which consists of a mesh sock (rough size is less than the diam of the drum, and it sits inside a plastic chicken wire cylinder (for support of the sock). When this sock gets filled, it will over flow and yet the water will still be inside the drum, where it falls to the side and STILL out of the output ports. So there's no worry about me not getting to the filter in time. I used this idea because compared to the Matala type pads, I get a much much larger filtering surface. I think I calculated 1884 sq in of filtering ability. So the sock is roughly 20" diameter by 30" high. You can't purchase this, you have to make it yourself, but it's easy to sew a 'bag', imo. I put a wire at the top of the sock to maintain it's opening an it sits on the plastic chicken wire cylinder. I've experimented and 300 microns will take out the fines (400 does better but you need to rinse it more often) and 200 is my usual choice, with 100 micron in case I don't get that much fines. You can order this nylon mesh online (ebay). I'll attach a pic to illustrate what I just described. On my pond, I have two of these. Oh, forgot to say; the outlet port (be it one or two) has to total TWICE what the input is. For me, it was easier to just get two 1-1/2" bulkheads instead of (1) 3" bulkhead, but the function is the same. You need to do this as you don't want the water coming in to overwhelm the water going out; that's where you lose water.
Too, I have my drums ON my bog so any leaks will still return to the pond. My outlet ports are routed to FEED my bog via gravity.
