Help To Make Your Own Pond Filter & Care For Your Koi & Goldfish

How to make pond filter is a question often asked. pond filter are easy to construct when you understand the principles behind successful operation of a pond filter. Reason for needing pond filter ...

In a lake or natural pond you will find relatively few fish. A natural water system can only cope with a certain fish density in view of limited food sources and biological capacity. In a pond there are almost always too many fish and that is why pond filter are absolutely essential.

How to build home-made pond filter .....

To be able to build a pond filter you must know the pond volume. The volume of water together with the stocking density determine the physical size and more importantly the amount of biomedia required to create effective pond filter.

Take the following information as a rough guide to size the box of the pond filter you want to make or build (you can always add more but not less biomedia)

Pond filter - volume amount of biomedia needed per 250 gallons or 1,000 litres of pond water

• Plastic tubes 1 inch diameter and 1 inch high (hollow): 8-10 gallons (ladies hair curlers will do the same job here)

• Rough-surface plastic balls 1 inch diameter: 12-15 gallons

• Lava rock: 2 gallons

• Open cell foam: 5 gallons

• Alfagrog or Supra (USA name for same product) sintered ceramic: 1/2 to 1 gallon

Multiply the above by 4.5 to convert to litres

These quantities of biomedia in pond filter are sufficient to handle the chemical waste in normally stocked garden ponds. Biomedia is of course the surface upon which the bacteria responsible for keeping the pond water pure reside. Obviously the greater the surface area in pond filter then the more bacteria you can have and the better pond filter will perform.

Basic decision for your pond filter .... Which Way Will The water Flow?

Decide if pond water water is to flow UP through the pond filter or down. Upward flow through pond filter is preferred since solids would then tend to fall downwards and you would get more uniform water flow across the biomedia surfaces reducing the possibilities of starving some of the bacteria.

A container of rough dimensions 3ft * 3ft * 2ft will allow a pond filter to be made which will cater for all ponds up to 5,000 litres or 1,200 gallons so long as good biomedia is used. Smaller ponds can use a much smaller container.

Inlet and outlet pipes for pond filter ....

The outlet pipe diameter is very important because this type of biological pond filter operates under gravity conditions and if the outlet pipe is too small for the amount of water being pumped into the pond filter then the filter will overflow and your pond will empty - BEWARE.

For water flow rates up to about 100 gallons per hour a 1" pipe is OK. For higher flows through pond filter than this use 2" outlets. 2" will handle about 400 to 500 gallons per hour flow (2,000 litres/hour).

The inlet pipe should be around 1" diameter for flows up to 400 or 500 gallons per hour (up to about 2,000 litres per hour).

Cleaning Your pond filter ... Do Yourself a Big Favour

To make cleaning of the biomedia in pond filter quick and easy place the biomedia into a net bag (used for oranges, onions and the like) before placing it into the pond filter. In this way the whole biomedia quantity can be removed in seconds, washed in a bucket of PONDWATER (not tap water which contains chlorine) and replaced.

pond filter using down flow - WARNING ...

Flow can also be in a downward direction in which case an overflow pipe must be built into the design of pond filter to prevent the pond being pumped dry if the pond filter exit becomes blocked.

Choosing The Best Pond Filter Biomedia For Small To Medium Sized Ponds

It is important to understand surface area in terms of biomedia choice. You will save lots of money on your biofilter this way. The more bacteria you have in any pond filter the better your pond water quality will be. These bacteria transform toxic chemicals in the pond water secreted by the fish into plant fertilizer suitable for pond plants.

 Choosing the correct biomedia has a major impact upon your pond filter's performance and for me for most garden ponds using box type filters Alfagrog or Supra (USA name for same product) is by far the best biomedia to use.

Alfagrog or Supra (USA name for same product) in Pond Filters

The Alfagrog or Supra (USA name for same product) range of porous ceramic filter media is made under controlled conditions in Staffordshire, U.K.

Selected raw materials are rapidly sintered at high temperature to produce a foamed ceramic porous mass, which is crushed and sieved to a convenient particle size.

• High surface area

• Strong

• Inert

• Porous

Alfagrog or Supra (USA name for same product) pond filter media has a very high surface area making it an ideal material on which micro organisms can adhere and boost biological decomposition of pollutants. The wide range of sizes available enable the user to maximise the optimum media surface area with high water flow rates.

Alfagrog or Supra (USA name for same product) is called Supra in USA Alfagrog or Supra (USA name for same product) is called Supra in USA and can be bought here ... it is best all purpose media for small to medium ponds . Alfagrog or Supra (USA name for same product) looks a bit like cinders, it is lightweight, comes in different sizes and you can literally blow through it because it is so porous.

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"The Complete Pond Solver" by Tony Roocroft ...  2005 Edition. Essential reading for anybody who wants or has a garden pond. Get 12 Excel pond calculators free as well as "Water Lilies and Pond Aquatics" ebook also free