My father in law has one of the small fish ponds like you can buy at Lowes/Home Depot/Walmart/etc. It has a small circulation pump running to a couple of fountains, but he is having a problem with the water turning green. He has 4 fingerling sized poi/koi(?) in the pond as well as 1 algae eater, but it still gets pretty murky. I have a pump from an above ground pool with a busted filter section. The filter was an approx. 16-18" ball shaped plastic container with about 10-12 lbs of sand. I am wondering if I would be able to pipe the pump into a home made filter, possibly a 3 or 5 gallon bucket partially filled with sand?
Any ideas? I enjoy reading this group and I know there is more than enough brain power here to make up for my lack of it on this little project.
Using a 5 gal bucket, how would you get the filtered water out? Drill holes in the bottom and cover with filtercloth? How would you backwash the crud out? May be easier to just buy a proper filter. The other idea would be to make a sand filter from large PVC pipe, say 12" or larger with caps on both ends and pipe radials inside to spray and collect the water. Sounds like an interesting project
As someone who has a small pond with 3 fish and I did a ton of research on doing a bigger pond that would require a backhoe to dig I can offer the following advice.
A mechanical filter alone will not keep the water clear of the green stuff. Pool filters especially are discouraged. You need a biological filter which harbors good bacteria that will eat the nutrients that the green algae lives on that the fish produce. Usually you need to buy some of the good bacteria to seed the filter with. There are a lot of web sites that deal with ponds and a newsgroup or two also.
I suggest that your father-in-law either do some research before buying/making or talk to someone who's been down this path before. Don't trust the people at the box stores to know what they are talking about. Trust me on this!
Check these out for more information:
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Buying a bio filter can be expensive. The size of the pond will determine what size (gallons per hour) pump you need and the size of bio filter. Make your own:
From what I've read excessive algae in a pond can be caused by an excess of nutrients in the pool usually as a result of too many fish, not enough plants, excessive fish feeding, runoff entering the pond, etc. Getting the pond in balance might be a more fruitful endeavor than attempting a large filter.
I will echo what both Lane and Jim have said. A filter won't get rid of the algae. Your FIL will need to address potential issues like over feeding, phosphates in the water (especially if he's using tap water), balancing the water chemistry with plants, etc...
He should find a newsgroup dedicated to freshwater fish and outdoor ponds and ask some questions.
If he has an alge problem, he needs to put in some koi or other alge eating fish.
Gunner
That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there. - George Orwell
btw..you might ask this question on misc.survivalism as there are a number of people who do fish farming or pond aquaculture
Gunner
That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there. - George Orwell
I've had a koi pond for years. Its 30' x 50 ' with about 50 each 14" long koi in it. I just built a biological filter like below, using 18 cubic yards of rack.
You need to make a biological filter. The pump for the fountain can push the water to the filter and then let the filter drain to the fountain if you'd like. You'll have to play with location and height of the biological filter to make this work (the fountain won't spurt if the water level is too low, the pump won't move water if the water level in the filter is too high)
The filter itself is easy to make. A picture or example of one to see would be worth a 1000 words here. I'd go much larger than a bucket, perhaps 2/3 of a 55 gallon barrel. You'll need a false bottom in the filter that is perforated for the water flow. Keep it maybe 3 " above the container bottom. Pipe the water from the pump to the bottom of the false bottom. If you can arrange it, the pump spurts water to a receptacle that then goes to the bottom of the filter - this entraps more oxygen which is needed for the filter to work. Also, put a drain valve on a large pipe at the bottom of the barrel for easy cleaning - you want to backflush for this. Then put a drain line from near the top of the container back to the pond.
The filter media is just 1/2 to 3/4" gravel. Lava rock or rock wool would work too. Anything with lots of surface area. Bacteria will colonize and eat the algae. The pump circulates water from the bottom of your display pond to the bottom of the filter. Water then flows from the top of the filter back to the top of the display pond.
My dad had one of those small ponds in his back yard in Fla. He made a filter for it out of a 5 gal mud bucket. The hoses were attached (with RTV) at opposite ends. For the media, he used a long piece of the netting made for keeping birds off of fruit bushes; it was rolled up somewhat tightly and stuffed into the bucket. Every so often, he would remove and unroll it, and hose it off. The bucket was stashed underwater, hidden by a rock ledge. Worked quite well for trapping algae and assorted sludge. The bigger problem was keeping his cats, and more so, seagulls, from eating the fish. A chicken wire cage on a PVC frame did the trick.
He didn't have a fountain; the return spilled out over a series of rocks for oxygenation. I don't know if there would be too much pressure drop in the filter for fountains.
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