small pond pump

[shad3rd]

Hi,

I have a small pond (250 gals). However, I have a 2100 gph pump. Is there an advantage or disadvantage to having a pump that size in a small pond. Will this be a problem for plants? This is a new pond so I don't have anything in it. I just filled it. :biggrin: The waterfall out of the bio-falls looks great. I knew I would not have a large pond but thought that more gph might mean better water quality.

Thanks,

Rich

 

[randythawkins]

As far as the pond itself there might be an issue with water moving too fast through a bio filter...not sure about that :dunno: . It would be a problem if you have a UV light. As far as cost goes...in general larger pumps cost more to run compared to smaller ones. So you are spending more per month on electricity than what you really *need* to. Is that a problem? The answer to that one is up to you. My guess is that probably not.

 

[Shdwdrgn]

Certain types of plants (like water lilies) do not like heavy current, while others (like irises) could care less. As Randy mentioned, you want to keep the flow through a biofilter somewhat slow, but you could still feed the rest of the flow to a waterfall or some other type of feature. Once you get fish, they do like a certain amount of flow, but not too much or they have to swim constantly and will get tired from the effort.

I used to have a 3000gph pump on my 250-gallon pond, however the plumbing was only 3/4" pipe which greatly restricted the flow. This was a horrible setup, but it's what came with the pond, and I didn't know better at the time. With my current setup, I put a T-pipe in the plumbing at the top of my filter barrels, so half the water gets pushed through the filter, and the other half of the water just drop out at the top of the barrel and flows over the falls. A simple split like this might work well for you too.