Bought a new house...have a pond with koi and need some help.

[WhiteNoise]

Yes you are correct, some of the dirty water will divert into the 1" pipe and go to my waterfall and back to the pond. This was recommended to me earlier in this thread or maybe my pump thread, (though i was told to just run that dirty water straight to my pond) but I have decided to have it feed my waterfall over stones. I figure if this filter works as good as I think and the amount of water being filtered; the water being diverted shouldn't be too bad at all. I will remove dirty water via a 'T' pipe when cleaning which is attached to the upper out-flow pipe. All in all if the filter is doing it's job the water coming in isn't going to be that bad...I'm pumping 2000gph (give or take) from a 1200 gallon pond. One person thought I should divert some of the water back to the pond without hitting the filter so I'm doing just that. I put a shutoff valve on it because even though I have a 2 tier fountain I can shut the valve off and not pump any water to it. I'm getting ready to bobcat my yard up and gonna be laying concrete walkways, patio, fire-pit etc.. with the extra dirt I plan to build a decent sized mound of dirt, with stone (compacted) and plastic covering then stone on top to help with the very little rain we get here in So Cal. Then I'm going to create a short stream bed/waterfall to the pond. This will be made out of river stone and in itself I think it will help filter slightly. I can either run the 1" pipe water to it but I was actually planning on running the out-flow water (all of it) to my waterfall. the 1" dirty water would then be shut off or maybe run to another water feature, OR attach a UV filter to it before it heads back to pond. Nothing is set in stone yet.

Anyways..with the amount of water I'm currently pumping plus my 950 gph pump arrived today I will be able to move load of water, most being filtered and some being diverted to waterfall. I really don't see this as causing any issues. Am I wrong? I'm early into this build and I'm willing to make any changes if needed.

 

[WhiteNoise]

Got it up and running tonight!! :tank:

So far the water is already cleaner.....amazing!

Rock stage one: (Large river rock)

Rock stage two: (3/4" gravel)

Rock stage three: (Pea gravel)

I'm going to pick up some chick grit or granite grit (or whatever its called) as a top layer. Also I'm putting my bio balls on top as soon as I get a net bag. This filter is working well but there needs to be a finer top layer to get all the stuff that is too small for the pea gravel to filter.

 

[WhiteNoise]

I tossed in 30 lbs of chicken grit on Saturday and after two days my pond is crystal clear. before building this filter the water was so green that when I placed my hand into it I could not see my hand at all. Not even where it entered the water. It was bad. Now though I can see straight to the bottom and I'm quite happy. This week I'm going out to buy a few lily plants and maybe one or two other water plants.

A couple of poorly shot pictures but here is where I'm at now: