Thoughts, ideas, tips and tricks?

[tragikmuse]

Hello all! Long time reader and have had a 1500 gallon pond for 6 years. Killed all my fish the second year i had it due to chlorine (i swear the declor i used was bad ) and now 3 years later, my newer babies are doing well though i am having my first ever problem with green water. Since i am moving in a month or 2, i tried to get away without cleaning the pond (no bottom drain) and doing my usual plant stock, its not going so well .

Anyways, new house, new pond!

For my first pond, being basically broke at the time, i went with a billboard sign for a liner (which after 5 years hasn't leaked but the edges have turned white due to the sun though at the bottom, you can still see the "Heineken" logo). Its been 40 dollars well spent imo I spent 100 bucks on a canister filter, 150 on a 2500 gph pump. 20 on some hose and about 20 bucks to seed the bacteria in teh pond. I foudn a lady on craigslist who was turning her pond into a pondless waterfall and conned a buddy into goign over there and digging out all her plants. 1500 gallons for 350 and 6 years running aside from pump and filter pad replacements is not bad but i want bigger and better *wiggles eyebrows*

Drawing from my experience and research, I have elected to go with a 16x12x3-4ft deep sloping to the bottom drain, approxmately 5500 gallons. My hope is that having a bottm drain will prevent me from having to drain and pressure wash/shopvac my pond every spring and more importantly, improve the water for my fishies. Besides, those lil guys are fast who really wants to play "catch the koi" unless they have to?

I have drawn out a rough plan of what i would like to do, i'm just not sure what the most functional AND inexpensive way to do it is. Or even if the way i have laid it out is viable.

~ old carpet as underlayment (recycling since we are putting in hardwood floors)
~ epdm liner
~ bottom drain (probably aerated to create current at night) through liner (if anyone knows tips or tricks to make this easier and prevent leaks etc, please post!)
~ bog/waterfall made out of a free hottub thats fed through the bottom drain since its already plumbed (recycling, yes!)
~ skimmer crafted from a ultility sink with baskets and pump
~ 55 gallon barels crafted into settling chamber, mechanical and bio filters, build a small deck with hatch access on top where i can put a bistro set or some planters
~ i'm a huge fan of plants so i want plenty of those as well, both in the bog and in the pond

* i am known to overstock a bit - i like to buy them small and cull them each spring ( by cull i mean give the ones that didn't do what i hoped to a friend or new ponder)

more specifically, i need advice on
~plumbing (what size pipe, kind of adhesives etc)
~how to build the settling chambers and filtration,
~where to put my main pump and if it should be internal or external (i know it shoudl be after the settling chamber so as not to grind up debris and make it basically unfilterable)
~ what size pumps for main and for skimmer as i know pipe sizes and rise and run all play a part and i assume pulling vs pushing does as well (brands help too! I have had the devil of a time finding a good pump)
~ what kinds of plants to have to make sure they are filtering and will do well here (NC zone 8-7 depending on the map) so i haven't got to overwinter them in them house

Anyhow, there it is... I welcome any ideas etc that you all can share! These guys will appreciate it

 

[Dave 54]

Have you thought about using a dechlorination unit over the liquid unit they last for thousands of gallons and all you do is connect one onto the ebnd of your hose pipe and slowly trickle your water thruogh it back into the pond .
One a year I'd agvise you to change the fines and charcoal caartridges and its as simple as that , most koi dealerships carry them :-

http://www.vyair.com/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=68

They come in different sizes dependant of size of your pond and are well worth it however being in the US you'd have to research chloromines in your water supply and do the filters take it out before buying one .
That takes care of your dechlorination problem
Next looking at your ponds plans I cant fault it and is a carbon copy of our own setup aprt from the waterfall make sure you have a 4" bottom drain leading to your filter unit with a valve just prior to it , use your first filter as a vortex the next two as filters propper and the last as your bio filter k1 bioballs etc .
Make sure you plump all your filters together from their valves at the bottom running away to drain so that you can purge your filters every now and again .
We also use zeolite to help renove ammonia from our water and lithaqua for ph place a large bag of zeolite in your filters after your vortex and the lithaqua in the filter after , for these two filters your going to need Jap matting or their equivulent .
Are you putting a bubbler on the pond end of the bottom drain ?
We use two airtec 40e' one to supply the bottom drain bubbler and the other all the filters apart from the vortex .
Make sure your pump is man enough for the job and get a good UV-C ours is 36 watts
Hope this helps you ?

Dave

 

[addy1]

To our group! I am a simple ponder, i.e. a bog does all my filtering.

The ones here that use bottom drains etc will help you out with the build. What you are planning looks great.

 

[Big Lou]

Welcome!

 

[Mucky_Waters]

Sounds like you have been doing your research. The logical placement of the pump would be between # 5 and # 6. About the pump itself, I would suggest you go with a quality external pump because they will generally give you the best efficiency (gph/head to watts). I'd recommend the Sequence line of pumps.
Also, with a 5000 gal pond you'll want to be pumping close to 5000 gph, at that rate you wont get much settling in a 50 gal barrel. I have a 110 gal cone shaped tank I use for a vortex settling tank, and pump about 3500 gph through it and still only get marginal settling in the bottom. I use a screen on the outlet drain located near the top of the tank and end up getting the majority of debris trapped in that screen rather then settling in the bottom. For settling tanks to work efficiently they need to be quite large and the flow needs to be fairly slow. If you can splurge on a sieve in your system you'd be much happier with the results.

 

[j.w]

tragikmuse

 

[tragikmuse]

Thank you all for the warm welcome =)

@Dave 54 ~ ty for the info on dechlorinator units, i will have to look into that. Also, what is zeolite? It sounds vaguely familar but for some reason i can't place it. any suggestions on how to incorporate this element into the current design?

As far as a UV filter, i am hoping that with the inclusion of plants, i wont' need one. I have not been impressed with them as a general rule either in my pond or other people's and it seems an unnessassary expense IF i have all the elements in the design right (ie they provide adequate filtration, i have enough plants and the right kind to compete for the nutrients algae woudl otherwise eat, and i have a decent amount of shade so as not to encourage the algae blooms we all dread)

@Mucky_Waters ~ i figured the "settling chamber" was small given i want to use a barrel. What i was going to do is feed the bd into it nearer the bottom and then have a screen before the pipe to the next barrel and under that flow havea few layers of tiny woven screen that woudl catch anything the initial screen didn't. I set it up that way because i wanted to be able to open up the SC and shop vac it out all the larger things and then just rinse the screens in the next tank. It woudl look something like this.

Now, get ready for multiple part questions!

Would this work or would the flow be too much and end up breaking the larger debris into tiny stuffs that woud be a nightmare?

And if it did,would the other filters + the planted bog-esque area not assist in neutralizing that issue as well?

Assuming that it woudl break it up to small debris AND the other filters/plants couldn't handle it, woudl it be viable to keep the system as is and go with a bit smaller pump for that area and a bit larger pump in the skimmer?

If so, what size recommendations?

Assuming that also isn't a viable option, could i turn barels 2-3 into a sort of joint settlign chamber? I can add more barrels if needed. If i needed to add a barrel or 2 to stil corporate another mechanical or biofilter, thats easily done. it woudl be something like this without the added barrels.

Barring all of that, can i build a sieve? if so does anyone have any good links to help me along that path?

As i said i'm not exactly sure how to set up the filters so i welcome suggestions and appreciate people's willingness to discuss and provide insight. (especially when it comes to building)

 

[Mucky_Waters]

I've seen a few home built pond sieves on youtube, but they don't give detailed on how to build them. The biggest benefit with sieves is that the sieve screen is self cleaning, meaning that as the water passes through the sieve it washes the debris down and out of the way, either into a catch basin or to the bottom of the screen, and they catch both the heavy stuff that might sink in a settling tank, and stuff that is more buoyant and wouldn't sink in a settling tank.
One con I see with sieves is that any small fish that might get sucked through your bottom drain would probably end up dead going through a sieve, and since I regularly end up with small fish going through my bottom drain and ending up in my settling tank, I would have had a lot of little dead fish by now if I had a sieve.
The one thing you have to keep in mind with inline barrel filters is the draw down from one barrel to the next. In your last diagram the final outlet would likely be too high on the barrel and if your pump was located after that outlet it would suck air and lose it's siphon once in a while, if not continuously. In my barrel filter system the draw down increases dramatically as the top screen in my settling tank starts collecting debris, and even though my final outlet in the 3rd tank is located near the bottom of the tank it still sucks air when that screen gets clogged up. The result is that my pump loses it's siphon and stops pumping. When that happens the water level in all the tanks start to naturally equalize to the height of the pond water level (gravity feed) and once the water level exceeds the height of the pump the pump regains it's siphon and starts pumping again. This action, of the pump losing it's siphon and stopping and the water leveling and the pump starts pumping again, will continue until I clean the screen and then it will start flowing normally again.
Other than your outlet levels on your barrels I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with your filter ideas, and it's always fun to try experiment, just take into account draw down in the tanks when you put your filter system together.

 

[shakaho]

For your settling tank, look at radial flow filters. They are much more effective than the swirl type. Here's a video, and there are a lot of variations on the same page.

 

[Dave 54]

Thank you all for the warm welcome =)

@Dave 54 ~ ty for the info on dechlorinator units, i will have to look into that. Also, what is zeolite? It sounds vaguely familar but for some reason i can't place it. any suggestions on how to incorporate this element into the current design?

As far as a UV filter, i am hoping that with the inclusion of plants, i wont' need one. I have not been impressed with them as a general rule either in my pond or other people's and it seems an unnessassary expense IF i have all the elements in the design right (ie they provide adequate filtration, i have enough plants and the right kind to compete for the nutrients algae woudl otherwise eat, and i have a decent amount of shade so as not to encourage the algae blooms we all dread)

@Mucky_Waters ~ i figured the "settling chamber" was small given i want to use a barrel. What i was going to do is feed the bd into it nearer the bottom and then have a screen before the pipe to the next barrel and under that flow havea few layers of tiny woven screen that woudl catch anything the initial screen didn't. I set it up that way because i wanted to be able to open up the SC and shop vac it out all the larger things and then just rinse the screens in the next tank. It woudl look something like this.

Now, get ready for multiple part questions!

Would this work or would the flow be too much and end up breaking the larger debris into tiny stuffs that woud be a nightmare?

And if it did,would the other filters + the planted bog-esque area not assist in neutralizing that issue as well?

Assuming that it woudl break it up to small debris AND the other filters/plants couldn't handle it, woudl it be viable to keep the system as is and go with a bit smaller pump for that area and a bit larger pump in the skimmer?

If so, what size recommendations?

Assuming that also isn't a viable option, could i turn barels 2-3 into a sort of joint settlign chamber? I can add more barrels if needed. If i needed to add a barrel or 2 to stil corporate another mechanical or biofilter, thats easily done. it woudl be something like this without the added barrels.

Barring all of that, can i build a sieve? if so does anyone have any good links to help me along that path?

As i said i'm not exactly sure how to set up the filters so i welcome suggestions and appreciate people's willingness to discuss and provide insight. (especially when it comes to building)

In answer to your question about zeolite it leaches ammomia out of the ponds water have two sacks one in place the other soaked in salt to release the ammonia and recharge it.
Have you thought about stablizing your Ph and Kh with a product called lithaqua which is calcified seaweed.
We also use brushes in one of our filters have you thought about adding those to your filtration ?

Dave