Happy New Year

First I'd like to say Happy New Year to all readers of my blog and website.

Next I thought I would add the following email I received from someone the other day about their pond planning:-

This filter stuff is getting confusing- I read Skippy's diy biofilter site. His claims are that his filter never needs cleaning, and that prefilter not necessary. I am told by others that a skimmer is a good prefilter, and that a commercially available biofilter falls unit is adequate. I do like the idea of a trickle tower,along with a traditional biofalls unit. Can your trickle tower or a commercially available one be incorporated either before or after a biofalls filter? How are the connections made? I am more inclined to buy these and connect everything rather than a diy configuration. Thank you Steve p.s I plan to build a 10x11x2-3 ft pond w/5-7 koi/other fish/plants

My reponse:-

Hi Steve,

I can sympathise with you!

Yes I also thought that a filter needs cleaning reasonably regularly. I
once wrote to the Skippy site and asked them the same sort of question,
and they said that a prefilter will help to prevent large amounts of crud
getting into the bio-filter.

That's why I designed my own DIY bio-filter to employ a pre-filter before
going into the main biofilter unit, and even then it has a section at the
bottom which I call the vortex area, where I angled the inlet pipes to
make the water spin around so that crud settles out into the large bottom
drain hole. Look at the photos on my site to see what I mean.

Both the pre-filter mechanism and the vortex section are quite good at
removing larger sediment, then the cleaner water goes into the bio-filter
media (green scrubbies) where the bacteria do their job to break down the
ammonia in the water.

I clean the pre-filter every few days, and drain the bottom section every
week, but the main bio-filter I generally leave alone and only actually
dismantle and clean once a year.

You will see that my bio-filter then exits the water into a homemade
trickle tower, i.e. the water comes out of the top of the bio-filter and
simply trickles down through some lava rock in the green trickle tower.

I would recommend that you get your pond setup and working with some basic
fish and plants to establish a good natural balance before you spend lots
of money on Koi which are generally far more sensitive creatures to
imbalances in the pond, or disease.

Also make sure that whatever filter you use (bought or DIY) is sized
sufficiently to cope with the amount of sewage (ammonia) the fish will
produce. Koi are voracious eaters and therefore produce a lot more
excrement than smaller fish! Small fish ponds with the traditional
goldfish can usually keep up with the natural filtration and biodegrading
of fish poop without the need for water pumps or bio-filtration. But not
so with Koi.

So the filter must be able to cope adequately. Another thing I say to
people is not to skimp on the water pump. I recommend a solids handling
pump that does not clog up with weed easily, otherwise it will lose
pressure and you forever be removing it from the pond to clean it.

If you intend getting Koi, I suggest you do plenty of homework on the
setup of your pond, and talk to your local aquatic supplier for advice, or
frequent some of the online fish pond forums to learn as much as you can
before going for expensive fish. While a DIY setup can be perfectly
adequate for the task, if this is the first time you've owned fish and
setup a pond I think you would be better starting off in a simple way, and
getting used to fish keeping in a pond for a year, before moving onto
larger fish.

Alternatively if you have the money and wish to pay for a professional to
build the pond and equip it, and advise you then of course go that route
and get some nice koi from the start. It depends on you aspirations and
current experience.

Personally this is the route I have taken, with my pond in its current
form for about 5 years now, but my fish keep having babies, and the two
ghost koi I have are now monsters, so I've got to a point where I am
considering upsizing the pond, making it deeper, and re-equipping with
some more pro kit.

However, in all the time I've had the pond the DIY skippy has kept the
pond clear and clean (although blanket weed will tend to be a problem at
times, simply because my pond is not deep enough, so sunlight causes it to
grow too fast).

If you're going for koi, I would try digging deeper than 2-3 feet. They
will need the depth to swim in, and a pond that shallow may have a harder
time with green water in the summer, and may suffer from wide temperature
variations which heightens algae problems, and oxygen deficiency resulting
in the fish gasping for air.

This is why you will often see pro koi ponds with some kind of pagoda
providing shade and cover for the pond, to keep leaves and twigs out, fend
off marauding herons, and keep sunlight out so as to control the
temperature and photsynthesis of phytoplankton (algae) in the pond. If you
over feed the fish, you will end up with too much fish waste, or uneaten
food polluting the pond, and this provides nutrients for the phytoplankton
to feed on resulting in a bloom of these tiny living creatures. When
sunlight falls on them, they photosynthesize and turn from clear
transparent bodies to green, and this is what makes the pond water become
green and unclear, and now suddenly you can see only the plankton (algae)
so preventing you from seeing your fish, and in extreme cases using up all
the oxygen in the water, so suffocating the fish, causing them distress
and even death. Things have to be in pretty bad shape for this to happen,
so don't worry about that too much. The thing to understand is the natural
balance you are trying to achieve.

If you're trying to stuff too many big fish into too small a pond, with
too much sunlight, too much food, and not enough plants to oxygenate the
water to use up the nitrates before the algae can, that's when the trouble
begins! And that's when you need a bio-filter, pumps and venturis to
oxygenate the water and help mother nature keep the balance with good
bacteria to maintain a healthy pond.

There's a few things for you to think about. If you have any more
questions I would be happy to answer them.

Cheers
Jim

Picture of Damselfly

Here is another nice picture of a Damselfly taken by my friend James Billings.

Advice for starting a new fish pond

As we move into the year I often get queries from visitors at my web site about how they should set up a pond and whether they need a pump and filter. The following is a typical example, and my response:-

Hi Jim - Hope you dont mind this email but, Ineed your advice, I have a pond approx 1.50m x 1.50m and approx 1m deep. I have built this myself and I am now at the stage where I need to put a filter and a pump in, but can't seem to get the right advice, everyone telling me different ways, and the fact that i am a female is no help - they try to sell me items I just know are either to expensive or bigger than I need. After reading your site and looking at your bio-filters I am now wondering if you can help me, I hope to keep a small number of fish in the pond but thats another stage that I need to look at later, in the mean time any advice will be most welcome.
Many thanks.
Christina.

Here is my response:-

That sounds like quite a small pond, and if you're having just a few small fish in it, (goldfish, golden orfe, shebunkins, etc, but not carp which can grow too big), you may not actually need a pump and filter system because the pond will probably be able to obtain its balance on its own. A small fountain may be all you need to aerate the water. Unless of course you've built it with a waterfall? In which case you will need a pump.

Its only if you put too many fish in it, or feed them too much, and then have too much sunlight on it that you might have trouble with green water, or poor water quality. Blanket weed is nearly always a problem at some time of the year regardless of what you do, but a well balanced pond
suffers from it less. A pond is a man-made (or in your case woman-made!) enclosed environment, and if you put too much "life" into it, which creates too much by-products in the way of poo and ammonia because you fed them too much, and don't have enough plants to use up the excess nitrates produced by the bacteria in the pond (nitrification cycle), then you're gonna have to give nature a helping hand by adding a filter!

So I would suggest patience is the key. See how it goes on its own for a start (no pump or filter). Don't buy expensive fish just in case your pond isn't right and they die. Get some bacteria culture added into the water to get things building up the natural good bacteria in the pond. The fish
pee ammonia, which the bacteria can get started feeding on, and so the cycle begins. Add a few nice pond plants, lilies, marginals (shallow water), water hyacinths (these are great because they float on the top, and naturally prevent too much sunlight going into the pond, and can be easily removed if they grow so much as to cover the pond - which they do!). I use Bio-Claire Pond Conditioner bacteria (see http://leisure.prior-it.co.uk/pond-biofilter-bacteria.shtml).

Just don't overfeed! I just give one full handful of fish food pellets in the morning and one in the evening. I have about 20 fish in my pond, two of which are ghost-koi each about 1 foot long. Far too many for my pond really! But they keep having babies. The fish will feed on other life in the pond as well, e.g. shrimps, larvae, algae, etc. So don't worry about them starving.

Kids love to feed fish, and this is often where the problems start, they feed too much. The uneaten food will drop to the bottom and rot, producing food for phytoplankton (the little buggers who turn green in the sunlight, so giving you green water). The more food the fish eat the more they will excrete ammonia - fish pee thru their gills when they breath. This is what the bacteria feed on and turn into nitrites and nitrates (fertiliser). Pond plants like fertiliser - so do phytoplankton!

So take it slow and easy to start. See how the pond copes with the summer as it is. Add a small fountain if you like for effect and to help move and aerate the water. Moving the water helps regulate its temperature in summer, and oxygenates it - warm water doesn't hold oxygen so well, and this can make the fish gasp for air at the surface. I think that us guys like to play around with our equipment (ahem!), and can't help ourselves building pipes and waterfalls and filters and all that. I think you should just do it in your own way, and not be brow beaten into buying the latest big-bucks filter.

Unless I am totally wrong and you are more ambitious? In which case the only thing I have always recommended is not to go cheap on the pump. A decent solids-handling pump will run for years, and if its well-designed with a big plastic cage around it then it won't block up with weed too quickly. My Titan 8000 litres per hour runs for 2 or 3 months between me hauling it out to clean it. The power of the pump is important too, but this depends on whether you will have just a filter, or a waterfall as well.

Too powerful and it will push water thru the filter so fast the bacteria will say, hey here comes dinner, whoah, um there it goes, as it swoops past them. The water needs to go nice and slow through the filter. But if you've got a waterfall then you want it to look like a nice fall of water that gives some sound, not just a trickle. Thats why I use a ball-valve to split the flow two ways from the pump, one to the filter, one to the waterfall and I can adjust them just right. 8000 lph would likely be too much for your pond. Maybe 4000 or 5000 would be better.

Anyway, I think thats probably stuff for the future. Live with your pond first, see how it goes for a few months. If it starts to get murky, very green or the fish seem unhappy get a water test kit to check the pH and ammonia levels aren't becoming too high. If they are then it means the natural plant life and bacteria balance in the pond aren't able to cope, and you've reached that point when its time to consider adding a small sewage treatment works - yes, a bio-filter, then you can try building something like I've done, or buying one from the shop if you're not DIY inclined.

So first relax, let nature do her job and only if she can't manage will you need to intervene. Keep it simple and natural to start.

Good luck
Jim

How to Build a Stream using Liner and Clay (Bentonite)

I recently created a new page on my web site detailing the method used by a visitor to my pond web site on How to build a stream using pond liner and Bentonite clay.

This is a fascinating method because it is far more natural than say fibre-glass mouldings, permanent rock+liner, or concrete based stream beds, and it allows reshaping of the stream bed over time to block up leaks or obtain better levelling to create natural pools in the stream bed.

My new page can be found here:-
How to Build a Stream using Liner and Clay (Bentonite)

And you can see additional matured photos of this Zen-garden style stream here:-
Garden Stream Workshops

Blanket Weed under the Microscope

Personally I use a concentrated liquid form of Barley Straw Extract at the beginning of the year to try and combat the worst of the blanket weed (although this liquid form can be expensive).

Barley straw is a more natural method of combating the blasted weed, but even at the start of the year before the various enzymes and bacteria start doing their work blanket weed can build up quite quickly in the pond.

In a stream you tend to get it all year long, simply because the water is shallow, and the sunlight has the most impact, therefore it has to be removed by hand regularly.

Like so many people, in the past I tried using chemical based products and solutions to treat blanket weed, but the main trouble with these is they just breakdown the structure of the blanket weed making it slippery and slimey and even more difficult to remove from the pond.

I prefer to let the weed grow to a suitable length, then use a cane stick to dip into the water and "twizzle" it in the blanket weed which quite easily attaches itself and wraps around the cane.

I just keep twizzling to "wind" in all the weed, which eventually breaks off leaving only short lengths attached to the pond sides and bottom.

After a bit of twizzling I then use a sharp Stanley knife to cut the blanket weed away from the cane. A twizzled lump of blanket weed is really very tough stuff and won't easily pull off the cane.

This cane method just isn't possible if you use chemicals to break down blanket weed.

Another alternative which I use is my pond hoover, but generally I use that to clean excess sediment, leaves etc from the bottom of the pond.

After physically removing as much as possible, I then give another good dose of barley straw.
After this first major growth in the spring, the pond balance and enzymes seem to get the upper hand and the blanket weed is much less of a problem for the remainder of the year.

Since building my DIY bio-filter I have never had a problem with green water.

Yes, blanket weed sometimes at the start of the year, but never green water all year long.

If this is your first year with a new pond, do not be surprised if you get a couple of green water blooms a couple of weeks or months apart as the pond and bio-filter all establish their equilibrium. Large pond plants are good additions but they need time to grow and then they will use excess nitrates (essentially fertiliser) produced by the bacteria life cycle in your pond, so starving phytoplankton of nitrates (they are the little blighters who actually make the water go green).

Did you know that phytoplankton is generally always there in your pond during the summer? It is simply "photosynthesis" caused by sunlight which makes them turn green, and when they multiply in their thousands and millions because of too much nitrate (think fertiliser), this is what causes your pond water to become green pea soup.

During daylight these microscopic plant-cum-animals absorb carbon dioxide and give out oxygen - good for your fish - but at night the reverse happens, and they take in oxygen, and give out carbon dioxide. This is when your fish can suffocate if you have a really bad green water problem!!!

Now to finish off you really should marvel at the beauty and mechanics of these tiny creatures.

Picture copyright © Wim van Egmond - www.micropolitan.org

Take a look at the Microscopy UK's wonderful "Smallest Page on the Net"
You will find some amazing micro-photography and learn a lot about what algae really is.

Absolutely fascinating!