Recommendations needed on filter type.

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I have upgraded from a 125gal pond tub to a 1700gal (liner). Pond will be stocked with about 6 to 10 goldfish, no Koi planned at this time.

I live in Pennsylvania and my pond gets sun all day.Just after a week of having the pond filled with water and no fish it's getting green.

In my old pond I ran the fountain filter combo box that you get at Lowe's. Not so good lol

On my new pond I know I need allot more filtration and a uv sterilizer. As far as the filter part I have been looking at pressurized,submersible, gravity and diy's. Just not sure what's the best to put my money into. Based on my setup of my pond, gravity filter would be harder to place . The pressurized or submersible would fit better.


underneath my waterfall I have room that I can dig out and partially bury a pressurized filter.

As far as pressurized I like the
TetraPond Bio-Active Pressure Filters BP1500 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001QIPL36/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_bU8dub08AG13M

Submersible. ( something like these below and running maybe two)
TetraPond SF1 Submersible Flat Box Filter https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0024EFYU6/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_5v9dub1G4N74S

Danner 02211 PM1000 12-Inch by 12-Inch Mechanical Pond Filter https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0002564VC/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_gz9dub11XAY2Q


Any suggestions or input
 
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A pond that size I'd make a couple of barrel filters up and run them with an inline pump ours is an Oase 3000 you'll also need a UV-C , whilst in the planning stage you could fit a bottom drain which would give you an ease of cleaning .
Personally I dont like submersible filters nor pressurized filters as you cant see whats going on but oher folk on this site will all have different takes on this so its up to you .
Koi if you are planning to stock your pond with them produce copious amounts of waste and barrel filters are just perfect for this .
I'd make sure your pond is around 4.5ft - 5ft deep especially if you have hard winters 4.5ft being your minimum .

Dave
 
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Pond is already dug and filled with water .Its around 1.5ft deep. No koi just pond goldfish I'm bring them in for the winter.

When I look up Oase 3000 it showes a pressurized filter.

what do you mean by a barrel filter?
 
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Aaron S

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If you have room, a bog filter will be nice. You can make it look just like another flowerbed. I lived near Reading PA for a few years and still have nightmares about the winters there. I'm thinking that at 1.5 feet your pond is not deep enough and will freeze solid there.
Careful about just starting out with 6-7 goldfish. I started out with 7 "feeder" fish and this past summer they turned my pond into the love nest and now I have over 50! It isn't an issue for me because I have room in my pond. For some people and some ponds goldfish can quickly over populate a pond.
WELCOME to the forum by the way.
 

sissy

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Take a tote or small stock tank and make it a filter ,put liner around it so if it leaks it leaks right back into the pond /But if you are set on pressurized it will have to be insulated around it well ,it can freeze and crack and get a bigger 1 than you need with a uv and flush it often and you could even add to that by getting a pump with a prefilter like jw and colleen have
 

sissy

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check out ebay and if you are set on getting 1 go for one that does at least a 3000 gallon pond .Last flat filter they are way to heavy to lift out of the pond
 
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Look out, long answer below... You've kept a pond before, so I apologize if you know most of this already.

As others have mentioned, the pond is a bit shallow and may heat up more than you'd like in the summer and freeze solid in the winter. But if you take the goldfish inside and don't have things like hardy water lilies that will die if they freeze, maybe it won't be a huge issue for you.

If you wind up with Koi or otherwise dramatically increase the biological load of your pond, you would certainly benefit from a bottom drain and the more advanced types of filters (trickle towers, moving bed, etc.) If not you have a lot bigger range of choices that will probably work for you and really the main thing is to find how how to balance your pond - and your expectations for water clarity.

Regardless of filtration, in your case one of the biggest things is that your pond is new and hasn't cycled yet. Eventually, the liner, any rocks in or touching the water and even the surface of pots and any plants you add can provide a surface for beneficial bacteria to grow which will help at some level. And then any plants can use the remaining nutrients. For example, I have some container water gardens that have never turned green but were started with plants in containers that came from the main pond. They aren't crystal clear, but I can see the bottom. Also, when you add filtration it won't have cycled either so it may not show the immediate benefit you might expect. Just stuff to keep in mind.

If you add the UV, it will kill the algae, but some would suggest that can even slow down the cycling. I have crystal clear water and have never used UV. I'd like to believe that if you get the balance right and keep your number of fish low enough you might not need the UV, especially once some string algae or other types show up that some have suggested will actually inhibit the algae that makes your water green. But I don't have full day sun like you do so I don't know if UV would always be essential for you or not.

So here is what is currently working for me that might possibly work for you although you'd need to scale it up. It is a pretty simple and quite inexpensive. I have a 350-400 or so gallon pond (maybe 450 if you include the bog). My filtration starts with the TetraPond SF1 you mentioned. I have it attached to a 600gph Tetra Pond pump. The pump pulls water through the SF1 (which I added some rocks to beneath the filter pads that came with it) then is pumped into a small bog where it runs through the pea gravel then back into the main pond over a small waterfall. The SF1 is basically a mechanical pre-filter to keep larger particulate from getting into the bog, but the pads and few stones also provide some surface area for bio filtration as well. In the bog the water goes through the pea gravel, through the roots of my bog plants in the pea gravel (a couple graceful cattails, some pennywort, pickerel rush, a couple iris) and then into an area at the front of the bog where the pea gravel is lower (about 4 inches below the water) and I keep a few water hyacinth floating there. How effective is any particular plant and how much do the roots do vs. just the surface area of the pea gravel the water flows over or the floating water hyacinth? I could guess, but really don't know. All I know is that the balance of all of it works. By the way, I have 4 goldfish (almost 5 inches long now) and about 20 Rosy reds. In terms of maintenance, I've only cleaned the SF1 out once the entire year and just rinsed the pads in a bucket of pond water, since using my tap water would kill the bacteria in the filter pads. Personally, I only clean filters if I see restricted water flow or have another reason to think they really need attention. In this case, I had a lot of suspended clay when I first started the pond and rain washed runoff over a low edge so I knew there was a lot of clay built up in the filter. Otherwise I might not have cleaned it out all season. I've had aquariums with filters I cleaned only every 6 months and the water was clear and the fish lived happily for years.

If you wanted to consider a bog area, I think running through 2 of the SF1 filters would be a good start and they are very inexpensive. Then, if you are willing to give up some of the open water space, you could use some stones to build up a small wall sectioning off part of your pond with the black spray foam to fill voids at the lower area, and create a bog area with pea gravel behind the wall. Either leave some of the openings in the stone wall open to allow water to flow through or leave a section lower to let the water tumble over it. Or maybe there is an area you could create behind your waterfall with a small liner? If you choose hardy plants for the bog they should survive freezing just fine.

If you just want to go with the simplest thing and try to get away without a bog or external filter, you might try running 4 of the SF1 filters for a while and see how that goes. If you wind up with more murkiness than you'd like, you could add some quilt batting to a couple of these to help pull out the smaller particles, but you'd need to clean those more often. There are certainly more powerful filtering options out there e, but using the SF1 filters would let you keep it all in the pond and not be something you're trying to hide outside the pond. I put one of my lily pots on top of the filter so it helps raise the plant up and hides the filter at the same time, so with your shallower pond if you add plants that like being closer to the top you could do this as well, but just make sure not to block too much of the inflow.

What you decide on for filtration is really about achieving a balance in your pond and depends a lot on your needs/expectations. Do you need/expect crystal clear pond or do you just want it relatively clear so you can enjoy the fish and not be grossed out by looking at your pond? Plants really have to be part of your equation when choosing filtration since without any plants you will need more filtration. You may already have it in the plan, but adding a few water lilies or other plants that give you partial surface coverage will definitely help in both cutting down how much light hits the water (and grows the algae) as well as helping to keep your relatively shallow pond from over heating. This is probably even more of an issue for you next summer. Due to the depth of your pond you could either try to over winter the lilies in a cool basement or even just grow them as annuals if you don't want the fuss. If you choose tropical water lilies you can get them to set tubers in the fall and store those pretty easily to restart in the Spring.

Floating plants like water hyacinth and water lettuce will help dramatically as well by using up nutrients that otherwise just feed your algae. As an example of what they can accomplish, I have a neighbor with a 1000+ gallon pond with 3 water lilies and 20+ larger goldfish - possibly a lot more little ones that are still dark and hard to see. All she has ever run was a pump with a simple sponge pre-filter running which had very little effect besides just moving the water around. It was very hard to see her fish due to algae and particulates in the water and and then the pump died and by late summer her pond was even greener and you couldn't see more than an inch below the surface. I gave her some water hyacinth, they multiplied (at least a dozen big ones in there now) and now you can see at least a foot down into the water and the water only has a slightly green tint. With no mechanical filtration the little particles in the water making it less than crystal clear will always be there. The plants were the only addition. The fish are easy to see and her lilies are blooming so for her this is clean enough and frankly looks like many natural small ponds. Most people would tell you that you can't have goldfish pond without a filter, but she is clearly a filter atheist. She's been admiring my bog filter and will probably add one next year, but only because she wants to grow all the plants. The added filtration isn't that important to her, although maybe she will see the light when she can see the bottom of her pond.

Hope some of that helps.
 

sissy

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no bottom drain and no uv and no fancy filters and rebuilt my pond this year and just use stock tank and a tote filter for the finer stuff .I have koi also around 2 ft long .Look at colleen nothing fancy there and she lives in Canada .The grasses really help clean up fish waste .I have no bog just grow plants in my filters .I have zebra grass and fountain grass and now have miscanthus grass.You just have to find what works for you .If one thing does not work then try another thing .Thing is keep it in your budget
 

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j.w

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All I have in my 2500 gal pond is a big pre-filter attached w/tubing to my submersible pump and then flowing over my falls. Works great and easy to clean. I like to keep it simple and cheap. No bottom drain, uv or skimmers. I just have goldies tho, no big huge koi.
 
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thanks of the input everybody. a very wide variety of options to consider. I want to keep everything outside of the pond at a minimum.

I'm thinking if I run a few submersibles and a UV that should keep the water clean. My 6 goldfish I've had for years and they have yet to multiply lol.in the winter I do take my fish out and I do take the filter out, but with this pond I may just let the filter in for water movement.

pillow batting I do you use in my aquariums so I have a bunch of that laying around.

if I do go the submersible route are there any other type of filters that may not necessarily be name brand that works just as good? And good on the budget


I just got done putting my edging and river rock around. I'll post a picture our my
 
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When I looked around it seemed like the Tetra was the cheapest and came with filter material already in it. They are sturdy and small enough that they aren't too much of a challenge to pull up. I have enough tubing between mine and the pump that I can just reach over and fish it out to clean it.

I actually thought about making something similar but after a trip to home depot realized it wouldn't really save that much. I was going to make mine out of a little rubbermaid tub or similar storage container with a top that snapped in place. If you put rocks on the bottom to hold up the media and keep open areas to allow the water to flow through, then place the filter media over the rocks and snap on the top (that you've punched holes in to let water flow through - super simple to that point and only real challenge would be adding the hose connector. If you make your own you can of course choose the size, but for me it was fine for my use and I thought going much bigger would be tough to deal with for maintenance.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.
 

sissy

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I had a harbor freight pump 2150 gph 175 watts of power and had it for over 4 years and it had a built in prefilter but something chewed the wire on it and even after I patched with a heat seal it was using more energy than it should .So figure to shop around .It was 79 dollars and 20 percent off .But you can look on ebay and just look at head height and wattage because some can use 500 watts or more .Just need to do your research and some come with built in uv's .Some come with pressurized and a pump kit and they have u.v's .I did a lot of research and between oase and laguna they were really energy savers .But laguna was cheaper with a 4 year warranty
 

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Pond is already dug and filled with water .Its around 1.5ft deep. No koi just pond goldfish I'm bring them in for the winter.

When I look up Oase 3000 it showes a pressurized filter.

what do you mean by a barrel filter?

AquaScape makes a line of pressurized filters that incorporate a UV light source. They're not cheap, but they're easy to install, clean and remove for freezing temps. The smaller of the trio is the AquaScape UltraKleen 2000, which is designed for ponds of 2000 gallons and under. They run about $300 and incorporate bio-balls and a vortex water motion. UV lamp will last about a year on the 24hr cycle, two years on the 6hr cycle. Replacement bulbs are about $25.

The major cause of the algae is the full-sun exposure, as it's a new pond with zero filtration and hence zero bacterial growth, the algae have no competition for the nutrients in the water. Ideally, pond surface should be approximately 60-70% covered with lily pads to decrease the suns penetration and decrease photosynthesis of the algae. The water can be treated with an algae clarifier for immediate results. I use D-Solv products for this and haven't had any problems with them.

I'm curious as to why you built your pond so shallow. Average depth is generally 2.5' - 4.5'.

Try adding barley pellets in a nylon mesh bag, this will serve to "tea stain" the water until such time that lilies can take hold and filter the suns rays.

The filters that are talked about here often are Skippy's, look them up. They're relatively easy and cheap to build and combine mechanical filtration (mats) with biological filtration (bacteria growing on the mats). They're fun to build and everyone puts their own spin on them. I use two of them in my pond, one for each of the pumps that feed the falls.
 
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due to my basic need of a pond, liner size availability at my local store and being on well water to fill it, it's the perfect size and depth for me
 

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