Advice on which pump for eazy pod

[s2ook]

HI,

We're in the process of ordering the equipment for a new pond.

The pond will be around 10000 litres (2200 gals) in size and will be gravity fed to an EAzy Pod filter.

The pond is to be heated by the (house) boiler and will return to the pond via a veggie filter.

We've been looking at pumps and are considering the following:

Sequence 8000
Oase Optimax 10000
Hozelock Aquaforce 8000

The head will be less than half a metre.

I'm looking for some advice on which pump would be most suitable for this setup taking into account running costs and flow etc.

cheers

[Gazza]

Hi,

Just a note it may be an idea to post on what your looking at building and throw a few ideas out and see what people come back with as it may help and its a lot easier to do it once

One thing i will say is i am not sure i would use a pod for a pond that size as i personally think it may well struggle and not to sure about running a veg filter either

[steven perkins]

hi there ,
Gazza is right about the easy pod ,,
if your looking to keep koi its going to be to small
dont get me wrong they are great filters , ,but the easy is defo to small ,, they do larger ones that may suit ,
or you could link the easy pod to another filter and run both ,,

good luck ,,
post some pictures if you can

were here to help and be helped

cheers

perky

[GERRY5]

HI THERE, OASE 10000
easy 200\300 or build your own easys
forget the veggie filter , to do any good they would have to be 3 times the volume of the pond ,cleaned on a regular ,basis and are a nice nesting place to grow nasties in ...

[Louie]

I use an Easy Pod on my quite heavily stocked 11,000 litre pond. It is gravity fed and then pumped through an Elecro PB85 bead filter. I use a Sequence 13,000 that probably produces a turnover of around 9500lph after negotiating the UV and heater. If I had the room I would probably opt for the Easy 200\300, but that isn't an option.
With this combination of mechanical and biological filters I'm able to feed pretty much any amount without having to worry about ammonia or nitrite spikes. I also use a Badu Top 8 pump (13000lph) on the skimmer which passes through a multi vortex on the return. This gives a healthy hourly turnover and since I installed it all I've had no problems whatsoever!

OK...... I lied

I still get poxy blanket weed every spring. But Cloverleaf Answer sorts that out!

I think it's all a question of how much room you have and how much time you want to spend maintaining the filters.

Louie

[s2ook]

Would using the eazy pod as a mechanical filter and then a DIY biological fluid K1 filter with 50 litres of media suffice or do I need jap mat and brushes etc.?

I would quite like to retain the veggie filter as an additional feature to run the waterfall and to provide some additional filtration and remove nitrates.

[Gazza]

Hi,

Yes the Eazy Pod and then another form of biologically filtration would be good and will work if big enough and if you run it after the pod you will not need brushes as it will remove all the waste before it gets to the bio side of the filtration as long as its cleaned and maintained. I would not run a veggie filter personally as good filtration and maintenance should keep your water spot on. If you do want a water fall and are going to use another pump you could have the Eazy pod on one leg of filtration and then something else on the water fall giving you the extra filtration you need.

Are you going to have a bottom drain and do you have any design ideas yet or even pictures of where it is going to go as we may be able to help you

[s2ook]

I'll be using a spindrifter.

I have a few ideas for what i'd like to build. I'll be using liner but haven't decided between firestone and butyl yet. The pond will not be uniform though so i'm erring towards the butyl. The pond will be walled around 75 cm high and I'd also like to have a window fitted. The pond will be around 3.5m by 1.8m by 1.6m in total (maybe even a bit smaller). I'll be heating the pond with a 60 000btu heat exchanger from the house boiler.

I'll post some pictures of the pond site but we're not going to start the project until around April as we already have a pond with fish in (albeit far too small) and we'll be moving to the new pond to allow a soil pipe for an understairs toilet to be fitted. I don't really want to risk disturbing the fish at this time of year as it's likely the build will take at least 2 weeks to complete...

[Gazza]

Hi,

Sounds good and if your looking at a shaped pond you may want to look at fiberglass as it saves on all the folds in the pond which can be a pain not just to look at but for holding waste and sometimes its not as expensive as you think. If your having the waste pipe done you may even be able to pipe into this somewhere ready for the new pond and then you can send the waste directly away down the drain

[s2ook]

A few questions about the skimmer:

In terms of the skimmer am I best running this through a separate filter? What flow rate would be recommended for a 10 000 litre pond? Would something like a pressurised filter be adequate for this (Bioforce 12000)?

[Louie]

I don't think I'll be alone in saying that a pressurised filter wouldn't be good enough for a 10,000 litre pond with koi in. I used to use one when I only had goldfish, several years ago, and I'm certain that it wouldn't come close to coping with the amount of waste produced by koi. You'd only end up having to replace it when you started getting problems.
Louie

[Gazza]

Hi,

It will depend what filtration you use to what size pump you use as they all require different flow rates so it will depend what you put on there.

[Brek]

Some great points raised, and help posted here, Duncan mentioned the one draw back with the pod, it only really has a mechanical stage (which acts as bio as well) two issues result from this, one, the outer media will be gunked up with waste (which is why you clean it regularly) reducing its effectiveness, but also there will be 'water tracking' as the K1 process relies on air to provide chaotic movement within the bio section of the filter so you create efficient contact with the bio film of the media, which means the pod is and ideal candidate for use on a 'proper' bottom drain, but it then needs to be pumped through a bio stage if you have more than say 5kg of fish, as during summer when you would be feeding 2% of body weight per day minimum, you would be at the filters limit. A fluid k1 filter section will then need to be added to process the weight of fish you have x the amount you feed. If you are talking about a pressure filter on the skimmer to add to whatever is on the BD they work quite well in this role, I used a laguna 5000 filter on my skimmer, with it being foam it trapped the surface debris effectively.