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Ponds & Aquatic Plants

BD pull from Skimmer or from filter

16 years ago

I amd reworking a pond to about 1500 gallons. I am not clear on best way to run BD back out of pond. The easy way would be pump it into the skimmer and use the external pump to pull it to a pretrap then upflo to 100g stock tank then back to the water fall.

I have a Atlantic Skimmer / BioFalls PS4000 & BF1250 FLT 25

Option 2 would be run two pumps one for BD to Stock tank filter and back into pond. And run skimmer off another pump and to the waterfall.

I would like to stay with one pump if at all possible. My exteranal pump I have now is a Sequence 1/2hp 1350/1650 rpm

My pond is 5x10 3 to 4 ft deep.

Any thoughts on plumbing would be appeciated..

Thannks

Scott

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Comments (4)

lsst
16 years ago
Your BD will not work as well if connected to the skimmer as the water draw into the BD is divided with the water draw into the skimmer.

The best way would be option two.
gordonsweb
Original Author
16 years ago
Option 3 - Is what I dug into today was a 3 inch pipe from BD to a TEE at the filter also ran the skimmer 2 inch pipe to the Tee at the filter. Going to try to put some valves on each so I can adjust the flow to the pump up through the 100 gallon stock tank and downflow to the waterfall..

Hope this works out.

What a day of digging it has been..

Thanks
Scott
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tcpd28
16 years ago
My BD goes into my skimmer and it seems to work fine so far.
lsst
16 years ago
The BD will work from the skimmer but my point is it will only draw about 1 quarter of the pull.

For example, if you have a skimmer with a 2" bd connected to it and a 4000 gph pump, The BD will only draw about 1000 and the Skimmer 3000 gph. This information was listed in my skimmer info regarding adding the BD you could buy for it.

I have one connected to my skimmer. Also, I have 2 4" BD's that have their own filtration circuits. The ones on their own circuit pull much more than the one on the skimmer. The one on the skimmer is good more for circulation than debris.

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