Winter Pond Temps

[callingcolleen1]

I used to have three 100 gallon stock tanks all conecting flows and levels. The water would pump from the Bottom tank to top tank, and gravity would force the water from the bottom drain which was connecting flexible tubing, and free flow and drop into second tank, which would free flow and from the bottom tube in the second tank, and tube would go from bottom drain to top of bottom tank. The flow has to be just right, not too much or it would overflow and not too little or it would over fill top tank. Been there, done that, and you have to adjust flow intake or output tube should be larger...

 

[MitchM]

(I'll post this reply here as well as my build thread....)

I lost contact with my temperature sensor about a week ago, so I decided to go digging for it this morning.
There is about 10 inches of snow, on top of about 8 inches of slush and water, on top of the ice that I was walking on.
The temperature sensor/transmitter was buried in the slush and ice,and the transmitter isn't strong enough to transmit through water.
Thank goodness it was in that Tupperware container, because it was still dry and not damaged.



Once I dug it out and put it on top of the slush I was receiving the signal fine again.
Bottom temperature is 40.1F and the surface is 27.6F

Both pond breathers are still going strong.
Now that I exposed that slush that you can see, it should freeze up hard. It will be interesting to see if the snow that I removed will lower the pond temperature significantly.

 

[waynefrcan]

Muck, why are you using a settling tank?

OK I found a problem that came up with my new winter circulation arrangement. If you go back a few posts you'll see the pictures of my pond in the summer and now that it's frozen over. This winter I decided to flow the pond water through my bottom drain, into the settling tank, and back to the pond, with all the plumbing located under the ice. If you look at the water levels in the previous pictures they seem pretty close to the same, but I guess with the ice on the pond there is something else going on, and I can see that it may end up being a more serious problem as more ice and snow settle on the pond. The problem is one of water levels. Normally the water level in my pond is maintained by an overflow at one end of my pond which is simply the lowest edge of my liner drains into a sort of dry creek bed area that runs into a rock drain pit. The problem is that with the ice on the pond this overflow drain no longer works! The result is that the water level in my settling tank in my pump room is overflowing.

You can see the normal pond water level mark on the tank, and you can see that the current water level is sitting right at the top of the tank, and there is evidence that it is overflowing. Now I can remove some of the water to bring the level down, but it looks like this may be an ongoing thing that I will have to check regularly unless I can figure something out. The good thing is that there really isn't a lot that that overflowing water can hurt as the floor and walls are concrete and there is a hole in the floor below the settling tank, in fact the tank is cone shaped and extends into this hole where there is just soil and rock that the water can drain away into. However I would rather figure something out so the water doesn't flow over the side of the tank as there are a few other issues with having excess water in that room, one of which is it creates extra humidity in the room which condenses on the metal door and freezes when it is very cold out. If this gets bad enough it could freeze the door shut so I couldn't open it.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

Muck, why are you using a settling tank?

The idea of a settling tank is that the "muck" settles to the bottom of the tank before it goes through the rest of the system. Then you periodically drain the water and the muck out of the tank through a bottom drain to remove it completely.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

(I'll post this reply here as well as my build thread....)

I lost contact with my temperature sensor about a week ago, so I decided to go digging for it this morning.
There is about 10 inches of snow, on top of about 8 inches of slush and water, on top of the ice that I was walking on.
The temperature sensor/transmitter was buried in the slush and ice,and the transmitter isn't strong enough to transmit through water.
Thank goodness it was in that Tupperware container, because it was still dry and not damaged.

It will be interesting to see if the snow that I removed will lower the pond temperature significantly.

What sort of wireless set up are you using? Does it have a wired probe?
I was using a wireless system in my last pond, but the cold seemed to effect the battery performance and I kept losing signal. It had a lithium battery, and I think lithium batteries are effected by the cold more then alkaline batteries.

 

[waynefrcan]

The idea of a settling tank is that the "muck" settles to the bottom of the tank before it goes through the rest of the system. Then you periodically drain the water and the muck out of the tank through a bottom drain to remove it completely.

IS it really needed for a small pond? That tank looks bigger then your entire setup :biggrin:

 

[waynefrcan]

Mitch has the item shown in this topic post #161.

What sort of wireless set up are you using? Does it have a wired probe?
I was using a wireless system in my last pond, but the cold seemed to effect the battery performance and I kept losing signal. It had a lithium battery, and I think lithium batteries are effected by the cold more then alkaline batteries.

 

[MitchM]

Right, like Wayne said, post 161 I have a link to it.
I am using alkaline batteries.

I don't like lithium batteries. I have them in lots of my rechargeable tools. I find them to be expensive and short lived.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

"Is it really needed?" is a loaded question. There are people who have ponds with no filter system at all, and there are even people who have ponds that don't even have pumps, because they don't feel those things are "really needed".
IS it really needed for a small pond? That tank looks bigger then your entire setup :biggrin:
My last pond had some basic pre-filters in the pond, and a pressure filter after the pump. Because the prefilters caught a lot of the crud at the bottom of the pond they constantly needed cleaning, and it was a chore that I didn't enjoy at all. It meant shutting off my pump, fishing around at the bottom of my pond and dredging up those pre-filters, taking them apart and hosing the filter media out in my specific cleaning area. Then putting them back together again and hooking them up at the bottom of the pond and turning the pumps on again.
Now compare that to opening the drain valve at the bottom of my settling tank, allowing some water and the much to drain into a 5 gal bucket, shutting off the valve, and emptying the bucket into the garden area. Done!
Not only is the settling tank system far simpler, but because of the bottom drain in the pond, the pond bottom stays far cleaner. Even after removing the pre-filters in the old pond there was always a lot of gunk left in the bottom of the pond that could only be removed manually.
So no, I can't say a settling tank is really needed, not anymore then any other filter. But if you ask, is it useful? or is superior to not having one? Then I can wholeheartedly say YES.
As for the size, it is actually small for the GPH that flows through it. Settling tanks need a certain amount of volume to allow the water to slow sufficiently to allow the debris to settle out. If you don't have sufficient volume in the tank the water flows through too fast and the debris and particulates stay suspended in the moving water and don't settle out. The term they use for that is "dwell time". There are charts out there predicting the amount of water you can pump through a specifically sized tank and have enough "dwell time" to achieve proper settling out of the particulates in a given tank. As I say my tank is on the small size for the amount of water that flows through it, according to those charts.

You also allude to the fact that the tank might be overkill for my sized pond. I again refer back to my last pond, which was only about 1,000 gallons. Despite it's small size I felt the filter system was a pain in the ass to clean and maintain. My new pond is more than twice the size and far simpler to clean keep clean. So if I have over sized, or over designed my filter system, it is not without benefits. :cheerful:

 

[Mucky_Waters]

IS it really needed for a small pond? That tank looks bigger then your entire setup :biggrin:

"Is it really needed?" is a loaded question. There are people who have ponds with no filter system at all, and there are even people who have ponds that don't even have pumps, because they don't feel those things are "really needed".
My last pond had some basic pre-filters in the pond, and a pressure filter after the pump. Because the prefilters caught a lot of the crud at the bottom of the pond they constantly needed cleaning, and it was a chore that I didn't enjoy at all. It meant shutting off my pump, fishing around at the bottom of my pond and dredging up those pre-filters, taking them apart and hosing the filter media out in my specific cleaning area. Then putting them back together again and hooking them up at the bottom of the pond and turning the pumps on again.
Now compare that to opening the drain valve at the bottom of my settling tank, allowing some water and the much to drain into a 5 gal bucket, shutting off the valve, and emptying the bucket into the garden area. Done!
Not only is the settling tank system far simpler, but because of the bottom drain in the pond, the pond bottom stays far cleaner. Even after removing the pre-filters in the old pond there was always a lot of gunk left in the bottom of the pond that could only be removed manually.
So no, I can't say a settling tank is really needed, not anymore then any other filter. But if you ask is it useful? or is superior to not having one, then I can wholeheartedly say YES.
As for the size, it is actually small for the GPH that flows through it. Settling tanks need a certain amount of volume to allow the water to slow sufficiently to allow the debris to settle out. If you don't have sufficient volume in the tank the water flows through too fast and the debris and particulates stay suspended in the moving water and don't settle out. The term they use for that is "dwell time". There are charts out there predicting the amount of water you can pump through a specifically sized tank and have enough "dwell time" to achieve proper settling out of the particulates in a given tank. As I say my tank is on the small size for the amount of water that flows through it, according to those charts.

You also allude to the fact that the tank might be overkill for my sized pond. I again refer back to my last pond, which was only about 1,000 gallons. Despite it's small size I felt the filter system was a pain in the ass to clean and maintain. My new pond is more than twice the size and far simpler to clean keep clean. So if I have over sized, or over designed my filter system, it is not without benefits. :cheerful:

 

[waynefrcan]

YEs the more filtration the better, but wow what a tank. Isn't there a better way of adding filtration without building a whole new home for one?

 

[Mucky_Waters]

YEs the more filtration the better, but wow what a tank. Isn't there a better way of adding filtration without building a whole new home for one?

Some would argue, and I would agree, that a sieve filter like the Cetus Sieve does a much better job of filtering out debris, and takes up a lot smaller foot print, size wise. However, they are considerably more pricey, and not as friendly to small fish that happen to get sucked into it.

 

[waynefrcan]

Lol Muck, I'm just playen with ya. Anyone that cares enough to add more filtration is tops in my book.

 

[addy1]

My pretend skippy I put before the shubbie tank collects a lot of muck. It gets unfiltered water from the big pond pumped into it. I do drain it once in a while over the summer, nice brown water comes out..

 

[haver79]

Addy, why do you call it your "pretend skippy"???