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Ponds & Aquatic Plants

What kind of bio filter/bottom drain do I get?

16 years ago

Hi Everyone

I am building a 8x5 waterfall pond that will be 4' deep. I have the skimmer, the waterfall pump, the liner, the pre liner and stuff that I got with my kit. I need the bio filter and bottom drain. Any suggestions?? Any help will be VERY MUCH appreciated!! Thanks!

P.S. this is my first "man made" pond. The one I have now is a 90 gallon preformed pond.

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Comments (8)

hnladue
16 years ago
Build your own biofilter. Looks up plans for a Skippy Filter and follow that. You can have that run the waterfall. Also have that fed from the bottom drain and you'll have a nice system.
surfhead
16 years ago
If the pond has square sides and a flat bottom you will have apx 1200 gallons. what size/type of pump did you get? You will want to circulate 1200 gph as a minimum, 2000 gph would be better.

I am glad you decided to go with the bottom drain. You will not regret this decision. A good easy to install bottom drain that won't break the bank is the Tetra 3" bottom drain. A more expensive and more effective alternative is a 4" aerated bottom drain. Its a bit more involved to install as you also need to run an air line and buy an air pump, but man they are really great to have. Put it in the deepest part of the pond, preferably in the center.

It's best to have the BD flow via gravity to a settling chamber. The settling chamber should have enough gallons to be equal to 10% of the pump flow. (2000 gph pump needs a 200 gallon SC) You can get away with a smaller SC if you include a DIY microscreen. Also, include a drain valve at the bottom of the SC. This will make draining all the muck a piece of cake. Then after the SC the pump pulls the water and sends it to the bio filter. This can be any number of things. A bead filter is a popular and easy to maintain choice. Personally I like empty 55 gallon barrels stuffed with strapping material and rigged as a down flow trickle tower. The pump sends the water to the top and sprays water over the media, it flows down and out the bottom, back to the pond. Super cheap, easy to build and tons of surface area. The only problem is they are ugly and difficult to hide.

Just remember, have mechanical filtration first, then bio filter. A bio filter should never double as a mechanical filter, even if the manufacturer says you can. I like the SC as primary mechanical filtration. Its just easier to maintain. You can use other things like sponges and brushes, but they require more work to clean and rinse. with an SC you just open the valve and you are done.
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I have two bottom drains which I added at the end of my build. The pond was already dug and the retaining wall built. The pond does slope but not enough towards the drains. This causes some muck to not make it to the drains. They are not as effective as if I had planned to have them at the very beginning stages of my build. My pond is more of a watergarden with goldfish than a Koi pond so I have more muck from plants, etc. With my situation, I bought a Oase Pond vac 3 . My pond is 4.5 feet at the bottom drains. At this depth, I put on full waders and climb into the pond to clean the very bottom. I only have to climb in once a year though. I can not reach the bottom of the pond with the pond vac from the sides of my pond as it is too wide. If you are able to reach the bottom drains with a broom to swirl the debris towards the drain, than a pondvac should be able to work for you. I am happy with the Oase Pond Vac 3. I use my pond vac about once a month just to get leaves and debris that are trapped in the plants. It was a big splurge for me but it has more than paid for itself.
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Once tannin is present, it doesn't go away by itself. It must be either diluted by water changes or removed by the absorption quality of Activated Carbon. Maybe there are other ways to do it but I doubt they would be very practical. Tannic acid can play havoc with PH levels too and it can have a nasty smell like dead swamp or rotten organic material since that is what makes it. I recently bought a half gallon container for $12.00 at Pet World. Garden centers sometimes carry it at low cost for African Violets. I have found it for various prices at many stores. A half gallon will last a year or more in my pond which is under very large red oak trees. I place a cup or two in a perforated planter and put another perforated planter on top of it to hold the carbon inside. It goes in the top of the Skippy with either some rocks or a potted plant inside to hold it in place. A muslin bag works too. I get the largest size chunks of carbon I can find because it is the surface that collects the molecules that make the stain and odor. When it seems to lose its effectiveness, I lightly crush the chunks and it starts working again because I have exposed fresh surface area. I can do that 2 or 3 times if I don't mash it too much the first time. Powder works fast but doesn't last long. The difference in clarity is amazing. The bottom and the fish colors seem to pop out at you.
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Not really enough info to know...but in general the bubbles are caused by very small particles which act like soap. Scooping out the foam removes some of the particles because some of the particles are in the foam, they form the foam. But just like soap removing the foam only reduces the material. Whether the stuff effects fish and how long it lasts depends on what the stuff is, which can't be known. The assumption has to be it was from something in the filter. I often rant against these types of filters and these kinds of sellers for many reasons. In this case the seller wants the cash and tells you to wait out the foam. And he may be right. The foam will likely go away at some point. Maybe it out gases into the air, maybe it reacts with stuff in the water, maybe it breaks down into other elements in the water. Who knows? Sure doesn't sound like the seller knows or cares what the stuff is. He's gambling your fish won't be killed, which is a pretty good bet. The question I have for these type of sellers is...How can you sell such a piece of crap? What right do you have to gamble with my fish? It's a bio filter. It's suppose to reduce waste, not add it. Is that what you paid for? I don't like being scammed and would return the filter and vow never to return to that seller. The second thing is a bio filter has nothing to do with making water clear. Bio filters convert ammonia and nitrite, that's it. A UV filter clears green water. So maybe this filter has a UV too? That would fit clearing green water in 3-5 days. But that requires a proper flow thru the UV and 1600 GPH sounds way too fast for a 250 gal pond. But that depends on different things. You don't say how many koi you have or whether you're testing ammonia...but just as a heads up...green water algae consumes ammonia directly meaning it acts as a bio filter. A very good bio filter. If you have a UV this algae may soon be dead, actually probably already are dead (takes a few days for them to decompose and then water clears). If all this is the case you may see a jump in ammonia in the next few days depending on number of fish and amount of food fed. You want want to consider testing ammonia. My standard rant... I don't know what kind of bio filter this is but I'm betting static submerged media (pads, balls, whatever stuff that's under water and doesn't move)? These filters are very poor bio filters. I consider them worthless. That's just my opinion of course but I can tell you this, there isn't a single serious koi owner, koi breeder or fish farmer in the world using this type of bio filter. At least not for the last 15 years or so. That's because much better bio filters were developed in the last 15 years. Trickle Towers, Moving Bed, Bakki Shower filters have been tested (years ago) and found to be at least 30 times better at removing ammonia than static submerged media. These static submerged media filters are very cheap to make and are only sold to newbies. And I think that makes sellers of these very dishonest. But that's just me.
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Thanks for your response Pashta. I don't think there's a wrinkle in the skirt...but I guess I'm going to have to pull all the rocks down once again and rebuild....but I'm not sure if part of the problem might not be the length of the spillway (distance from lip to box)...but since I didn't have the problem back when I built it originally, I don't think so...although I did change the rock. 2. I do have a bottom drain, but it isn't losing water there as when I bypass the filter and just use the external filter my husband put in without asking me this spring, and run a hose for the return skipping the waterfall, there is no problem. There is enough damp soil around the whole biofilter, that I can't tell where there is water coming out. I do know that it isn't any of the piping as that's what we checked first...it has to be in the skirt/weir/waterfall area.... Considering I'm on my second year of chemo for stage IV cancer (I was stage IV 15 years ago and didn't have any evidence of the disease until 2010) this is maddening as my hands no longer work well for this kind of work. A stone mason I am not!
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tcpd28
Original Author
16 years ago
OMG Surf...I'm a little overwhelmed by your information. My kit came with:.

INSTALLATION KIT INCLUDES ALL FITTINGS TO CONNECT PUMP SKIMMER AND WATERFALL
PVC FLEX HOSE
15'X15' POND LINER. THE POND LINER IS 45 MIL EPDM LINER WITH A 25 YEAR WARRANTY
BOTH WATERFALL FILTER AND SKIMMER HAVE A 15 YEAR NO CRACK WARRANTY
WATERFALL FILTER DIMENSIONS ARE 23" WIDTH, 22" LENGTH, 22" DEPTH AND 18" LIP
NURSERY PRO 2500 GPH WATERFALL PUMP 2.4 AMPS

I'm going to do a kidney shaped pond measuring 8x5. The deepest part will be 4' deep which will be in the middle part of the pond. Both the left/right sides will be 2' deep. That's my plan, but I am totally open to suggestions from people who obviously have experience with this.

I know that I need to get some preliner which I already did. Surf, I was planning on buying the Tetra 3" BD.

Surf, You have to remember this is my 1st time and I have read books, I've combed the internet for info and I believe that I have an idea, but I'm so lost right now I'm honestly thinking of scrapping this idea!
surfhead
16 years ago
sorry, didn't mean to dump all that info on you. sometimes I just start typing and don't know when to stop.

ok, you are good so far, keep everything as it is, you just need to add second line for the bottom drain. Dig your trench under the liner and install the bottom drain. Run that drain via a 3" pipe to a seperate settling chamber. This can be a fancy vortex chamber or simply another smaller pond off to the side. A quick easy way to go would be to dig a hole and bury a 55 gallon barrel so the top of the barrel is a couple inches higher then the water line. The 3" bottom drain line enters through the side of the barrel and you get a small 600 gph pump to remove the water from the top of the barrel and send it on to the bio filter. For now just run this water right to the bio filter you already have. Then in the future if this is not enough bio filtration you can easily hook up a second filter. The 55 gallon barrels are usually free from any car wash, just clean it out really, really well. You can put a drain with a valve on the bottom of the barrel with a line running to a lower part of the yard, preferably into a garden of some sort or out to the gutter. By putting a valve at the bottom you can easily drain all that muck away. If the drain line is too much work you can buy a sump pump that can handle solids and lower that into the SC to drain out the muck.

now the 600-700gph pump is a bare minimum for the bottom drain to function. But on a pond your size it should be enough.
tcpd28
Original Author
16 years ago
Surf Thanks so much for the help. Is there some sort of diagram that you can send me that will help me? my email is tcpd28@msn.com. Thank you so so much for helping me!
tcpd28
Original Author
16 years ago
Still looking for help with this =)
surfhead
16 years ago
sorry, I don't have a diagram to send you. But there are several good resources. Try the pond construction section of koishack.com. Another good place is www. koi phen .com. (remove the spaces, they are blocked here, not sure why.) Try their construction section as well. I believe both sites have a sticky at the top with past projects and DIY instruction with tons of pics. You can follow step by step the design of some really amazing ponds.
tcpd28
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks so much Surf!

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