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- Jun 20, 2022
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The pond has been a work in progress since i made my Intro thread here a couple of months ago. I've added fish, plants, and most significantly, a 100 gallon stock tank upflow gravel bog!
The new bog is a 100 gallon rubbermaid stock tank with an undergravel manifold being fed by the pond's pump and flowing out via gravity to the top of pond's waterfall. I used 1 1/2" pvc to create the 2 legged manifold, with cleanout pipes on the end of each leg. I used a uniseal to seal the 2" outlet pipe, which uses a wye and some elbows to set the water level and provide redundancy should the main drain get clogged. There is a bout 6" of larger stone at the bottom to provide some void spaces for the water to disperse from the manifold, with 12"+ of 3/8 gravel on top of that. The water level is set to just below the top of the average gravel level In the pics you can see the wild plants we "stole" from the river last time we went kayaking. Not even sure what they are, but they were growing in what seemed a similar habitat (a few inches of water, mixed sun/shade.) I've since added a few cuttings of some terrestrial plants to see how they do. Finally, I added the reed fence to hide the bucket, which made a huge improvement, especially until the plantings can really take off and give some natural camo.
In the main pond, I've added water hyacinth (bought), a water lily (stolen), some unknown native underwater plants (stolen). We've also got 2 shubunkin and 3 comet goldfish, all seeming to be settled and happy.
The current filtration, designed by someone with aquarium experience, but no pond experience (and no knowledge of bogs) will be modified (simplified) soon, once I am sure the bog is fully established. It consists of 2 7 gallon buckets (tall 5 gal buckets) in the main pond. One serves as the skimmer and a gravity filter with mechanical and biological filtration, and the other as the pump vault. Since I don't think I need as much filtration with the bog, I will remove one of the buckets and just use one bucket as a skimmer, pre-filter and pump vault. This should open a lot of space in the main pond for the fish, and better views of the water fall (the left bucket blocks the view of the bottom waterfall from the in-house viewing spots). I'll be replacing the hobby level flex hose with rigid pvc as part of that project.
Thanks for looking! Any questions or suggestions, fire away!
The new bog is a 100 gallon rubbermaid stock tank with an undergravel manifold being fed by the pond's pump and flowing out via gravity to the top of pond's waterfall. I used 1 1/2" pvc to create the 2 legged manifold, with cleanout pipes on the end of each leg. I used a uniseal to seal the 2" outlet pipe, which uses a wye and some elbows to set the water level and provide redundancy should the main drain get clogged. There is a bout 6" of larger stone at the bottom to provide some void spaces for the water to disperse from the manifold, with 12"+ of 3/8 gravel on top of that. The water level is set to just below the top of the average gravel level In the pics you can see the wild plants we "stole" from the river last time we went kayaking. Not even sure what they are, but they were growing in what seemed a similar habitat (a few inches of water, mixed sun/shade.) I've since added a few cuttings of some terrestrial plants to see how they do. Finally, I added the reed fence to hide the bucket, which made a huge improvement, especially until the plantings can really take off and give some natural camo.
In the main pond, I've added water hyacinth (bought), a water lily (stolen), some unknown native underwater plants (stolen). We've also got 2 shubunkin and 3 comet goldfish, all seeming to be settled and happy.
The current filtration, designed by someone with aquarium experience, but no pond experience (and no knowledge of bogs) will be modified (simplified) soon, once I am sure the bog is fully established. It consists of 2 7 gallon buckets (tall 5 gal buckets) in the main pond. One serves as the skimmer and a gravity filter with mechanical and biological filtration, and the other as the pump vault. Since I don't think I need as much filtration with the bog, I will remove one of the buckets and just use one bucket as a skimmer, pre-filter and pump vault. This should open a lot of space in the main pond for the fish, and better views of the water fall (the left bucket blocks the view of the bottom waterfall from the in-house viewing spots). I'll be replacing the hobby level flex hose with rigid pvc as part of that project.
Thanks for looking! Any questions or suggestions, fire away!
