Homemade pond filters: a pond bio filter is essential for clean healthy fish ponds
The Nitrogen cycle operates within a pond filters. For maximum
performance your pond filter needs oxygen, food source and biomedia
on which bacteria can reside. Pond filters come in all shapes and
sizes.
Choose your pond filter wisely. If
you keep fish a pond filter is essential.
The simplest of all pond filters is the “black box”
type. Building a pond filter of such a type requires a rectangular or other
shaped plastic box which contains some or all of the following. It is easy to
make home made pond filters once you have an appreciation of the following: Open cell foam used to mainly remove leaves, and
larger particles of whatever can get into the pond filter. It has a limited
amount of biological capacity Brushes as an alternative or adjunct to foam to
remove solids Plastic tubes, plastic balls or other plastic
shapes or other biomedia on which bacteria accumulate Inlet pipe, outlet pipe and overflow pipes back
into the pond perhaps. If you want to see how easy a diy pond filter is go to
your nearest stockist and take a look inside one of the pond filters you see
there. The simplest homemade pond filters contain almost
anything you can imagine from hair curlers to gravel.
Click here to learn about pond
filter media. Homemade pond filters are
easily constructed to save money. Such a box type pond filters comes in
different sizes to cater for different pond volumes. However a lot of this is to
do with parting you from your money. My book will show you how to dramatically
improve the biological capability of any box type pond filter. This will save
you a stack of money. Build a biofilter You can make a pond filter (diy
pond filter) by incorporating inside a suitable container a solids catching
device such as stiff bristle brushes and or flat foam. This would act as the
first stage. You can make a pond filter second stage using biomedia through
which water pours or flows (up or down the pond filter media). This pond filter
media must be kept wet using recirculated water at all times. That is how simple
it is to make a diy pond filter. You must always remember there
is a lot of salesmanship around pond filter selection. The prices of some larger
pond filters are quite ridiculous I think. Do try to understand as much as you
can about biofiltration and save yourself a lot of money. You might want to take a peek
inside commercial box pond filters and take home the ideas. Then create a diy
pond filter; diy pond filters can be just as effective as most commercial
box type not necessarily homemade pond filters. The box type pond filter
operates under gravity conditions and generally is placed at the highest point
in the water circuit. My book identifies other ways of placing pond filters to
save money and space - the cyprio bioforce filter introduced around 1998
introduced the concept of a small scale pressure filter to pond keeping. Since
then numerous other companies have introduced similar designs to the cyprio
bioforce filter. The above components play a
specific role in the operation of pond filters. Open cell foam – most pond filters have this in
them. It is designed to remove larger solid particles from the water before the
water enters the biological chamber (a fancy word for the place where the media
is located). The foam also becomes a holding place for bacteria within the
biofilter. Some designs spray the water onto the foam surface inside the
biofilter as a means to introduce more oxygen. It is a gimmick. Brushes (look like large bottle brushes) – these
tend to be found in larger box filters. They are designed to catch solids much
like the foam. In very large very well oxygenated filters brushes can make a
difference. For the rest they are a waste of money in my opinion. Plastic shapes acting as biomedia – the most
common are ridged plastic tubing and things that look like hair curlers. The
purpose is very simply to allow surface area to be provided onto which bacteria
can create their colonies so that the nitrogen cycle can take place efficiently.
These shapes generally have small surface area per unit of volume and they
provide little resistance to flow of water through the biofilter. Items like
flocor or bio balls or whatever name is used is generically referred to as
biomedia. Not all biomedia is the same. Connecting and overflow pipes are there for
obvious reasons. One
important criterion to bear in mind is that water flowing into a gravity
biofilter must be able to come out fast enough. You run the risk of pumping you
pond dry if you try to pump more water in than can come out of the outlet pipe.
Look for a biofilter with large outlet pipes, or even two outlets.
Sounds obvious but believe me ……… it has happened. Some people
refer to uv pond filters. You should note that the term uv pond filters or uv
filters for water gardens refers to items NOT designed to purify water but to
remove the pea soup appearance of pond water. uv filters for water gardens are
covered in a different web site - see the ultra violet links. Pond filters with
uv are however commonplace and can save a lot of hassle since it is normally
simpler to install combined pond filters with uv than the two seperate
components.
