New pond filtration questions

[Jon K]

Hi All

I've had fish for years in a very large earthenware fish "pond" running an aquarium canister filter and separate eheim pump circulating water through a copper feature to aerate with great success. Unfortunately I'm in PA which means I've been lugging the thing to the basement every winter so the fish don't turn into popsifish.

Our neighbors moved and we were able to grab their preformed pond which will give the fish more room and most importantly stop the yearly moving of the fish.

Backstory done, here's my issue. The pond is about 100 gal or so and I want a waterfall/stream feeding into it and obviously have to get the filter sorted out. Any recommendation regarding this? I initially was thinking prefilter/pump/biofiltered waterfall but all the falls I see are 12" minimum width which by 100gal/inch would need a 1200 gal/hr pump. A full pond turnover every 5 minutes sounds like a whirlpool. All the pressurized filters I saw were rated for 1000gal ponds and up.

Does anyone have suggestions?

Thanks in advance

Jon

 

[Smaug]

I kept a 150 gallon preformed for years. I used a 500 gph submerged tetra pump and ran my water through a smaller external "pond" full of lava rock as filtration. The smaller pond set above the 150 and had a water fall affect but was only about 10 or 15 gallons. It's a good set up for maybe 3 or 4 comets but I had 4 or 5 koi and over half dozen comets. It was a struggle all the time to keep things healthy and I lost alot.

 

[sissy]

Hello and glad you enjoy your ponding adventure That preformed may be even hard to keep fish in all winter .They are usually only 18 inch's deep and really need to be over 2 feet deep .A liner pond is better .I had a preformed and the first winter with it here was a nightmare and then come spring it was unlevel because of ground thaw .I had to wait until the front porch was done to build a pond

 

[Jon K]

Yeah, I know a liner would be ideal and eventually hope to move to that but for the time being I'm going to have to try and make this work. It's a kidney shape and thankfully the deep part is basically 2ft so I'm hoping between that and a deicer I can make it work.

I'm not doing any koi - just sticking to goldfish and probably only a couple more than I have in the current "bowl"

 

[Smaug]

18 inches is fine. Mine was the same depth and I kept fish for almost 10 years that way. It never moved from frost heave either but I did mine right and had about 4 inches of sand all around it.

 

[Jon K]

How much of that upper pond was lava? Almost completely full? Aside from that was it just a prefilter for the pump and then hose up to the upper pond?

 

[Smaug]

The whole thing was mostly lava,it did have a few inches of water over it. The main pump was in the ponds and was piped to the little one. No prefilter is needed as they usually just get clogged on a daily basis and eventually wear the pump out.

 

[sissy]

put sand under mine also and it heaved all the time and I would never have put myself in that situation again .We don't get much snow or as much cold weather so have to give you credit if you could do it .I was so glad when the front porch was almost done and I started to dig for new pond .My preformed was in a raised bed .

 

[Jon K]

Do those in-pond filters also get clogged real fast? Pondmaster PM500 was just one I ran across. Since I'm new to actual ponds my head may be incorrectly stuck looking for some sort of mechanical/chemical in addition to the bio.

Set me straight!

 

[Jon K]

Now that I'm looking a bit more... thoughts on this:

Submerged pump 500-600 gph running to a pressurized filter feeding out to the waterfall/stream feature and possible going through a smaller bio pond like Smaug was talking about on it's trip back to the main pond?

 

[Smaug]

The pressure filter really isnt needed in a lightly stocked pond such as this.