Filtration - The Totally Sweet Method

After seeing how much it would cost to buy a properly sized filtration system for my little 1,000 gallon pond, I decided to build my own. I love projects. This one seemed perfect: I get to research something extensively, I get an excuse to buy more tools, I get to be creative, and I get to muck around outside. Honestly, I probably could have spend the extra money to buy one premade, but I love how mine turned out.

Instead of focusing on mechanical filtration, I went for biological. The basis of this method is having water flow slowly through a reservoir containing something that houses beneficial bacteria. This bacteria then nabs the ammonia produced by my fishes and fixes it. Then plants can take it and use it for their own planty uses.

First, I bought a big plastic planter and drilled out a few holes for inlet and outlet. The PVC piping is where the water flows in and down to the bottom. When it comes out of the elbow joints, the water swirls around and then up through all the filtration media. The media could have been just about anything, but I choose cut up sponges (can house a shit-ton of bacteria) and lava rock (also good surface area and also looks awesome).

The biggest problem is that I only vaguely knew what I was doing. So there was a lot of false starts and many frustrating return trips to the hardware store. My daughters and their various neighborhood friends all found this pretty damned amusing. So I'm sweating and cursing in the hot, hot sun, trying to figure out how to make everything work, while they sat in a row and watched, making comments such as:

"Why aren't you wearing a shirt?"
"My dad is more bald than you."
"Was that supposed to happen?"
"OoooooOOOOoo! That was a BAD word!"

I finally finish with the pot and its innards, and go to hook it up to my pump. Well, great - somehow I break the damned pump while I'm cleaning it out.

This is what I find when I clean out the pre-filter on my old pump. This is some damned fine American homegrown marinated fish crap. You want some. You know you do. Don't hold back now.

I then realize the pump should have have heart failure months ago as it was designed for a tiny statuary pool, not a decent sized garden pond. I go back to the hardware store and buy a big-ass pump. I'm excited about this pump. It will sure as hell pump some damned water around.

Problem is, that when I hook up the pump, it is so bad-ass and forceful that water simply sprays through the system instead of percolating through. It's like a damned fire hose. So BACK to the store to get a more reasonable-sized pump.

Full of media:

Full of lava rock, too:

Plants added to the top of the filter:

And does it work? BY GOD IT DOES. And I also bought a bunch of bog plants to put in the top, so the roots can be part of the filtration system. So what I have now is a large pot that overflows into the pond, with some pipe that goes to the smaller pot and adds to the mini-waterfall, and tons of lava rock for bacteria to flourish on. All I have left to do is hide all the the pipes, but I don't want to do that until I'm sure nothing goes haywire in the next few days.

Funky pond

Last Fall, when we first moved into this house, I decided to put in a pond. There was a tiny preformed pond at my old place, and I wanted to bring my little feeder goldfish with me and not have to keep them in an aquarium. I wanted a much bigger pond, and I had more time than money, so I ended up digging the entire damned thing by hand.

This is how crappy it looked after this winter:

Woo muddy hole!

A combination of rain, more rain, and tons of goddamned rain made it difficult to get any plants in. And then the dogs enjoyed going after me and digging up anything I put in the ground. Or trampled it. Or ate it. Or generally made me furiously angry.

Well, the rain finally tapered off a bit, and I erected a great big White Trash Pride fence to keep the dogs away, and finally things began to grow. It doesn't look too shabby now. I still need to cement the rocks in (the dogs knock them into the water), and do something about the muckiness in the pond itself.

You can see some pots in the water - I am attempting to grow mini cattails and water lilies. The cattails have sprouted, but nothing out of the lily yet.

The filter I have right now is not up for the job of such a HUUUGE pond. I started looking for a larger filtration system, and was a bit blown away by how much they cost. Screw that noise. Then I stumbled across a site on DIY pond filters using giant rubbermaid containers, laundry hosing, PVC piping, and lots of scrubby pads as filtration media. Hot damn! I love DIY projects. And instead of an ugly rubbermaid container sitting around, I can substitute a large plastic attractive planter. The top will be open, and I can plant bog plants directly into the filter, and the roots become part of the system.

When I get that started, I'll be sure to post photos of the great big mess I make out of it and then you can all snicker at me and say, "Man, you should have just bought a damned professional filter." It'll be great!

I must not be screwing up too badly, though, since the fish all made it through the winter and appear to be pretty pleased with themselves. The other day I thought they were all having a seizure and then realized they were spawning. So hooray! We probably had baby fish for approximately two or three days before the parents all ate them for a snack. Ahhh families!