Filter Clogs every 3 days

[Michael]

I have a 300 gal pond with a mechanical filter and submersible pump running a small fountain. I have 2 comets and 3 shubunkins (about 6-7 inches long), a water lilly, water hyacinth and a canna. The pond is shaded by birches, getting only about 4-5 hours of sun a day. This year, and at the end of last year, I have had to clean the filters every 3 days. I recently did a complete clean of the pond, all water out, brush down the liner, rinse off all the plants and refill. That only extended my filter cleaning time to about 1 week. I run the filter because when I built the pond 20 years ago, I was under the impression that it was required. At the time, I ran a Beckett biofilter box. That required cleaning about once a month. Now I have just a mechanical filter (the change was approximately concurrent with the clean out problem).

Will going back to the bio filter restore my longer gap between cleaning the filters? Is there a better filtration system. For aesthetics, I prefer to have the filter and pump submersed in the pond rather than out of the pond and in the garden.

I would appreciate any thoughts.

 

[dieselplower]

I can picture this filter well. Its too small.

 

[Michael]

What size do I need? This one is 12"x12" with two filter media. The previous one was a Beckett biofilter box, about 7"x12" and 7" deep with two filter media. It seemed to work just fine. I had planned to go back to that one but thought I would ask here first.

 

[sissy]

I know Jw on here for a filter just uses a bucket with filter stuff in it .I put my pumps in a bucket during the summer filled with lava rock that i soaked in peroxide for a month .The little fine roots and stuff always clogged my pumps ,I used to do it this way and then stopped and now have gone back to it .Seems to keep pump from getting clogged for at least 2 months

 

[dieselplower]

Can you tell what is clogging the filter? Is the filter material more fine than the previous one? I would never scrub the liner. It rods you of a lot of the beneficial bacteria that you want to perform biological filtering. Your fish are getting bigger so they are producing more waste. Normally I recommend that a filter be 10% the size of the pond so about a 30 gallon container filled with filtration materials. I don't like submerged filters. Containing the things I want to filter out of the water inside of a container in the water makes no ense.