Expanding pond.

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Tobs
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Expanding pond.

Post by Tobs »

At the minute I have a 500 litre preformed pond set inside some sleepers with a pressurised canister filter. I'm going to do away with the preformed dig out to approx 2mtrx2mtr and 1mtr deep should give me near on 4000 litres. So will have to update the filter system. Any info on what filters will be best for a koi pond I've got 3 shops around me they are all saying different, ones saying just up the pressurised another says kockney koi black box with 25w uv and the others saying 3 stage multi chamber. Any info f on people would be great Iam fairly limited on space but either way can squeeze either in somewhere? Also liners again ones saying pvc will do the job others are saying steer clear and use epdm rubber. I know it's all down to money at the end of of the day there all trying to sell me what they stock etc so any advice would be great. Thanks.
Airlite
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Re: Expanding pond.

Post by Airlite »

Hi Tobs, I'm pretty new to this so have limited experience compared to everyone else. Like you I upgraded my poxy, preformed, water container (mine was barely more than that) to something more like a decent pond about a year ago. I'd been wanting to do it for years but never had the time or confidence to attempt it until finally my mrs agreed we needed to do some other work on the house and I lumped in the garden (and pond) with that work. To cut a long story short, I've only got a small back yard (approx 8mx7m) with a garage tagged on at the back. We had a pond built that (I think) looks great for the space we have without going over the top which effectively takes up about a 1/4 of the yard in total. It's half submerged, half raised as I wanted to future/kid proof it as best I could but it's about the same 1m depth as you're planning to go, perhaps a tad deeper in the middle at around 1.2m. We used EPDM to line it. I insisted on having a bottom drain as I got sick of forever hauling the pump out of the old pond to prevent it blocking - I'd highly recommend the bottom drain approach if your budget will allow, you won't regret it and you'll save money in the long run. If I had to do it again I'd buy one that you can push air through too like a Spindrifter but you pay for the privilege of doing that - looks great though.

Now, regarding your original question about what filter; As you know, the choice can be bewildering but it's important you really look into it carefully and choose the one that suits your circumstances best. Budget is not necessarily the best guide here as you can end up paying many more times your original outlay trying to sort out problems if your filtration is not up to the job. Again as you know, keeping koi healthy is reliant on your ability to keep the quality of water they live in as high as possible. That doesn't mean you have to spend £££££'s on the latest gadget to do the job - although you can! Many people build their own filters and you can get great results by doing that (check out DIY koi filters on Google or You Tube if you haven't already).

I'm currently running a gravity fed (via a 4" bottom drain) Kockney-Koi style, 2-chamber filter which I picked up for next to nothing. It lives in the garage which is convenient for this, it's got brushes in the first chamber to filter the big crud and Japanese matting topped with fine particle matting in the second. That filter is augmented by a small "veggie filter" which is an extra bit on my pond - effectively a pump fed stream that is planted with baskets of marginal plants through which the water flows before returning to the main pond via an aesthetically pleasing (even if I do say so myself) water fall. That adds a tiny amount of air but more importantly helps the flow of water around the pond to keep the water gently circulating. The combination works well for me currently as far as the nitrogen cycle is concerned but I'd like to add some nice quality fish to my mutt collection in future and I'm not sure that I could do that safely with my current set-up. So I'm looking to increase my filtration capacity by using slightly different method to most but one which is well supported on this particular forum and that is anoxic filtration. I'm at an early stage and my progress is slow but the theory is sound, the cost is as cheap as it gets - particularly if you incorporate it into a built at the outset (which I wish I'd done) - and if you're clever you can hide the filter in plain site and it'll look great! It's worth investigating at the very least and could save you a fortune but I appreciate it's not for everyone. Look up "anoxic filter" on this forum and also check out http://www.mankysanke.co.uk/html/anoxic_filtration.html. Manky Sanke is a moderator and contributor on this forum and I've found his advice excellent at every stage of my (admittedly slow progress).

Sorry for rambling on, it's probably confused the issue rather than helped you solve it but I hope you enjoy the process and end up with a great looking and healthy pond for you and your fish. Let us know how you get on. Cheers, M :)
Dave Collins
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Re: Expanding pond.

Post by Dave Collins »

Hi Tobs,

As Mike says, Anoxic filtration is the way to go. Some sort of pre-filter to remove the large crud and then Anoxic baskets planted with lily's.
ginboomerang
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Re: Expanding pond.

Post by ginboomerang »

If time, space and money allows, go for a larger pond, you'll be digging out again in a couple of years if you don't do it now. Bottom drain a must along with a skimmer. Moving bed bio filtration which can be DIY and any number of mechanical filtration methods, brushes after a settlement chamber for cheap and easy DIY through to a drum/belt filter.
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