Hello, I am a new member here and thought I would introduce myself and show you my pond setup.
I'm from the south coast of the UK (about 10 miles north of Portsmouth) and we inherited this pond when we moved into our current house in 2015.
This is the pond as of today. It is around 6000l being 2m wide x 3m long and just over 1m deep with various sizes of goldfish present (at least I think they are all goldfish). Originally the filtration system consisted of a Hozelock Aquaforce 6000 pump --> Blagdon UVC Pro 21600 --> FishMate Pressurised Bio Filter --> Hozelock Bioforce Revolution 9000 Pressurised filter --> back to pond.
I have never been particularly happy with the filtration system and never managed to get the water clear even after thoroughly cleaning the filters etc. Also the fish were constantly gulping at the surface trying to get oxygen.
So the first thing I did was to add the stainless steel waterfall and feed the output of the filters to this to aerate the water. This worked well but the water was still murky and at the height of the season I was cleaning both pressurised filters daily just to try and keep on top of it but the water was still not what I would call clear.
Then over the following 5 or 6 years I made small changes just trying to improved the water clarity but without making much progress until a few weeks ago when something happened and all of a sudden the water was just dark brown and you couldn't see the fish even an inch below the surface. It was almost as though someone had gone in with a whick and churned up all the silt from the bottom and I just could not clear it. I tried changing half the water without much difference and adding extra filtration just to try and get it back to what it was like before even though that wasn't great.
Then I got to the point that I'd had enough and decided that the pressurised filtration system just wasn't up to the job and decided to make myself a gravity fed filtration system. So I got myself a 210l water butt from Wilkinsons (the cheapest I could find) and made the filter with lava rock, mechanical filtration foam sheets and 40mm stand pipe with outlet back to the pond.
Well to say I was amazed is an understatement, within 3 days the water was crystal clear and for the first time ever I could actually see the bottom of the pond and see the fish swimming around at the bottom. In this picture you can see the water butt filter I made at the back.
So I am so pleased I've done this because now I am getting the water quality I have always wanted to achieve but never could. I still have to make some modifications to the filter to improve it so it is still a work in progress but It is off to a great start.
I would like to hear any comments or suggestions you may have for improvements etc.
Russell
I'm from the south coast of the UK (about 10 miles north of Portsmouth) and we inherited this pond when we moved into our current house in 2015.
This is the pond as of today. It is around 6000l being 2m wide x 3m long and just over 1m deep with various sizes of goldfish present (at least I think they are all goldfish). Originally the filtration system consisted of a Hozelock Aquaforce 6000 pump --> Blagdon UVC Pro 21600 --> FishMate Pressurised Bio Filter --> Hozelock Bioforce Revolution 9000 Pressurised filter --> back to pond.
I have never been particularly happy with the filtration system and never managed to get the water clear even after thoroughly cleaning the filters etc. Also the fish were constantly gulping at the surface trying to get oxygen.
So the first thing I did was to add the stainless steel waterfall and feed the output of the filters to this to aerate the water. This worked well but the water was still murky and at the height of the season I was cleaning both pressurised filters daily just to try and keep on top of it but the water was still not what I would call clear.
Then over the following 5 or 6 years I made small changes just trying to improved the water clarity but without making much progress until a few weeks ago when something happened and all of a sudden the water was just dark brown and you couldn't see the fish even an inch below the surface. It was almost as though someone had gone in with a whick and churned up all the silt from the bottom and I just could not clear it. I tried changing half the water without much difference and adding extra filtration just to try and get it back to what it was like before even though that wasn't great.
Then I got to the point that I'd had enough and decided that the pressurised filtration system just wasn't up to the job and decided to make myself a gravity fed filtration system. So I got myself a 210l water butt from Wilkinsons (the cheapest I could find) and made the filter with lava rock, mechanical filtration foam sheets and 40mm stand pipe with outlet back to the pond.
Well to say I was amazed is an understatement, within 3 days the water was crystal clear and for the first time ever I could actually see the bottom of the pond and see the fish swimming around at the bottom. In this picture you can see the water butt filter I made at the back.
So I am so pleased I've done this because now I am getting the water quality I have always wanted to achieve but never could. I still have to make some modifications to the filter to improve it so it is still a work in progress but It is off to a great start.
I would like to hear any comments or suggestions you may have for improvements etc.
Russell
