Just curious! I'm thinking I should do this very soon. I had a 600gph pump running through a filter on my 500g pond. The pump stopped working, leading to a new pump, remodel, rebuilding the pond, relandscaping, and now my water is extremely dirty. Both from the revamping, and the recent thunderstorms we had last week.

I was able to get my original 600gph pump working again. Not sure how, I think it was clogged(won't my husband be thrilled that he just dropped a load of money on a new pump when I didn't need it?). So I reworked my electrical units to allow for 3 plugs, so I'm now running the 2700gph pump to work the waterfall without a filter - and the 600gph doing nothing but pulling water through the old filter unit, and making an odd little gurgle in the middle of the pond. The pond is nearly 1000g. Is the 600gph enough to move the water through the filter efficiently?

The filter is an old five gallon water cooler jug with 1/2 inch holes drilled all through it. It is padded with a layer of quilt batting, then filled with lava rocks for biological filtration. I'm sure the bacteria is long gone, having sat out of water for 2 weeks; it then has a 1.5" foam intake filter that runs into the pump itself. I did change out the batting at the start of Spring, but it's looking quite black. I've got it running that way now, just to see if it would work. Currently, my water is FILTHY! About as dirty as you can imagine, with diluted clay and looks like chocolate milk. I wonder if I'll need to change this batting again to catch the debris for it to do any good right now. I'd rather let it catch the dirt for now, and then change it to keep the water clear.

Any suggestions?

When your water isn't as dirty as mine, how often do you change your solid filter media?