Simply Koi and More Koi

Hello everybody, hope everyone is well?
I have a few questions regarding a Quarantine pond I am planning on building and would appreciate any advice.
Plans are for it to be built in a shed. Dimensions will be 5ft X 3.5ft X 6ft deep = 656gls. 3ft in ground 3ft above ground using 4 inch concrtete blocks on edge, insulated and glassed. I plan on using Bakki Shower home made version until money allows for proper one,starting off with 20kgs of BHM. I wish to have spindrifter airated bottom drain with external pump feeding shower. I want to have a UV (Just in case) and will be heating with profi 1kw heater, for time being until gas boiler is fitted when main pond is built.I want also to have overflow for topping up.
So here goes. What size pipe work do you recommend for bottom drain?
What size pump for turning over at least 2,000gls an hour over shower? Bearing in mind the head height of pond wall and I guess the height of plastic boxes with the BHM and eventually the height of proper shower trays?!?!
So basically how do I best incorporate all my needs with least amount of pipework all over the show?
Phew!
I don't think any of that came out how I had intended for it to make sense? LOL.
But if your able to throw some light on my plight I will be eternally grateful

Kind regards

Colin

Hi Colin,
Welcome to the forum.

Regarding your many questions on your planned tank, first off, I would say to go for a 4 inch bottom drain, as with the showers you will be needing as much flow as you can have.

What I would suggest you might find very helpfull, is to have a look in the 14 pages of the `members pond` section. There are quite a lot of `Gazza` posts about how he built and upgraded his quarrantine tank,in HIS shed. Bob Hart has built a similar one, and between their posts, I think you will find most of the answers you are looking for.

Hope this helps


Chris (another one)

Hi Chris,
Thank you for the welcome
And thanks for the advice.

Colin

Hi Chris,

Sounds like a plan, but for me personally i would be thinking about the chilling in the shower!

for me a Q/t should be no more than say 500 galls, you have control in that amount of water (i know its only 156 gall les but ).

I run both shower & multi bay systems indoors & find it harder to keep a stable temp on the tank fitted with a shower, but i do find it easier on the one with a multi bay, of course they are both insultated & have poly carb covers on, but i'm constantley fiddling with the temp stat on the showered system.

Yes you do get good filtration with shower, but you can also achive good filtration with multi bays or similar if space allow's

just food for thought!!

If you're going to heat the pond are you going to insulate it? Since insulating mine it's made a huge difference to the temperature stability and overall temperature too. And, unless you want to heat (and insulate) the whole shed, you'll need to enclose the shower. Personally mine's in a greenhouse so I insulate the whole greenhouse so the shower doesn't effect the temperature much.

As to the pump you will need to calculate the static head from the water's surface to the top height of your spray bar, not the height from the pump itself. The amount and size of pipe will determine the frictional head, but I would have thought that'd be pretty negligible if you use 2" pipe from the pump. You might have a problem using 4" pipe from the bottom drain as solids may collect in the pipe unless you have some way of purging the pipe every so often like you can with a traditional bottom drain. If you're pulling straight from the bottom drain to the pump you might want to use 3" or even 2" pipe so that that can't happen. The other option might be to have a 4" bottom drain feeding into a static K1 filter or vortex to allow you to flush it as you would a pond. That would also allow you to remove fines if you wanted to and allow you to fit an overflow in this chamber easily and keep it our of the pond, but it would be a lot more stuff in your shed!

If you want an external pump I would have either an Ecomax 12/16000 or a Sequence 12000. IMHO they should have enough poke for your needs.

Thank you for your advice so far everybody. Certainly given me food for thought.

Colin