Cutting poly tubing all afternoon

[DrDave]

I have 20 Koi in just under 2000 gallons. My largest is 22" and most others are 15" or so. I also have about 60-100 fry in my nursery which has been plumbed into the main filtered ponds.

I don't believe in these formulas as anything more than a guidline. It all comes down to:
1. How well your filter performs.
2. How good your circulation is.
3. How clean your bottom is.
4. A nice balance of floating and other plants.
5. Do diligence.

With over 40 years of ponding, I have never had a problem with water quality.

 

[Telkwa]

As you point out, there's no one-size-fits-all formula.

I'm always hoping for a simple answer, but it never works out that way, does it? Was looking at the stock tanks yesterday. Leaning toward a 100 or 150 gallon Behlen. Rubbermaid makes some nice stock tanks too, but they cast a spiderweb of reinforcing ribs into the bottom. I'd have to do some fancy carving with the router to open up a spot for the drain.

 

[Telkwa]

We looked at stock tanks, and changed direction AGAIN. Decided to go with the tote after all. The spool of strapping showed up, and we filled a healthy portion of the 350 gallon tote in a few minutes. Still got about 2/3rds of the roll of strapping.

What a breeze compared to the tubing! Realised the strapping was floating after filling with water. I tossed in a few pieces of PVC pipe. The PVC has weight in air, but is fairly buoyant in water, so it seems to be acting well as a self-regulating device for keeping the mat of strapping in the water.

The strapping is in one big sack of bird netting. We just got water going thru the tote a few hours ago (supplied by the little DC Aquasolar 400, which quits during the dark, and an AC Laguna Max-Flo 600) so it'll be a while before we can report back with results.

 

[addy1]

Great! it should work for you, the tote will give you great filtering being the size it is.

 

[Telkwa]

Hi, addy -
Thanks for the encouragement. The tote is a translucent plastic. Maybe I'll get around to posting a few pics. Cutting the top off seemed wrong somehow, but once that was out of the way the tote is easy to work with.

The drain is centered on one of the four sides, and it's indented into the tote. This creates a shoulder that sticks into the tank several inches. Instead of trying to build a support for the lighting grid that went around this hump, I just built the grid support over the top. So there's quite a bit of water under the grid. 7" X 3' X 4', whatever that works out to in gallons. I wasn't really too concerned because there was still a lot of room to work with.

I think I bought the same white lighting grid as most everyone else. Not very impressed with it - very brittle and doesn't seem very strong. Used a tablesaw for the main cuts. Used a hacksaw blade without the handle for notching the grid in two places where the pump feed tubes came down thru the grid.

A few trips to the Darigold feed store and I had the necessary bulkhead fittings. The pump input bulkhead fittings should be placed at least two inches above the big drain bulkhead fitting. I hated to add head to the pumps so I placed the pump bulkhead elevations too close to the drain elevation. I'd leveled the tote before filling with water by putting a board under the drain side. The simple workaround was to jack the tote up and pull the board out from under the drain side, then set it back down. The drain is now working but we want to bring the outlet water back to the pond thru a waterfall so further testing will be necessary before committing ourselves. May have to jack the entire tote up.

 

[Telkwa]

If I can attach (we're on dial-up and the Pond Forum server keeps resetting before the task is done) here's a pic with the tote in temporary mode until we figure out what we can do with the return plumbing.

This is pretty much modeled after the DIY stock tank sticky, but I didn't see the need for check valves. Instead we just brought the pump inlets up high, and turned downward inside the tank. If both pumps quit, the tank doesn't empty back out the pump inlets because they're above the tote water line.

I hated to lose pump output to increased head, but if you think about it the height of the water at the tote outlet determines head if we were to use check valves, so the loss is minimal. And we didn't want to mess with check valves.

 

[addy1]

Looks similar to what I had, and it worked great. The light grids should work for you, you are not putting a lot of weight on them. I had rocks on mine, so had to pay for some heavy duty grid.

Good idea to put your pump inlets high, protects them well.

I had water below my grid, about the same amount as what you are saying. A lot of the garbage collected there, when I back flushed black water came out first.

Doing great there, bet you will have great filtration.

 

[cauzeneffeckt]

go with the 350 grid.. wont have to worry about upgrading your filtration down the line

 

[Telkwa]

I'm gonna build a hut around it, maybe insulated with some of that foam core board, to keep it shaded and cool in the summer. We're trying to keep our water a bit on the cool side. The tote gets blasted by late afternoon sun.

 

[addy1]

Good idea. Mine was covered with rocks.

 

[Telkwa]

Those pesky laws of physics

I'm working towards permanently plumbing the biofilter back to the pond via some small cascades. Had to turn off both pumps for a half hour yesterday.

When I turned them back on a half hour later I was surprised to see the 300 gal. tote half empty. At first I thought I had a leak, which was a ridiculous idea. Finally realized the only way the water could have vanished out of the tote. It had syphoned back!

I'd installed both pump hoses so that they came into the tote high & above the waterline inside the tote, then turned downward and injected the water at the bottom of the tote underneath the grid. I thought that would stop the water from going backward when the pump or pumps were turned off.

I forgot about syphoning.

This was easily fixed by creating a vacuum break or air break. I cut two lengths of some stainless steel tubing about 3" long. Reached inside the tote and drilled a hole in the tops of the two PVC elbows (I have two pumps going into the tote) where the pump lines turned down toward the bottom of the tote. Squirted a little ring of PL Roofing sealant onto the stainless steel tubing and stuffed them into the holes.

As soon as either pump stops, the little scrap of ss tubing will suck air and stop the syphon. When the pumps are running, the tubes do nothing because the open ends of the tubes are well above the waterline inside the tote. The water goes to the bottom of the tote just like before.

If someone were building from scratch, and installed their pump lines high in order to avoid putting in check valves, they could put a "T" into the system instead of an elbow where the pump lines come into the biofilter and attach a short piece of tubing pointing upward. Since I'd already built the thing I installed a patch that should work just fine.

 

[koiguy1969]

plumbing thru the wall near top of stocktank
https://www.gardenpondforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2233&d=1270244354
hose connection at down pipe
https://www.gardenpondforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2223&d=1270231453
these are how i plumbed mine.. first pic stocktank....second for my 55 gal drum filter....either setup will work for either filter.....these set ups will break the syphon if pump stops for any reason, aleviating the need for a checkvalve that could stick and misperform

 

[Telkwa]

Hey, koiguy!
Thanks for the links. I was too lazy to take photos or draw a picture.

What koiguy shows is what I was trying to describe. Anything that lets the plumbing take a gulp of air at the high point will stop the water from syphoning back to the pond.

 

[hewhoisatpeace]

I just used a check valve. Might pull it out one day, but I haven't had any flow problems yet. Hope I can say that next year! At least I don't have to prime my pump each time.

 

[Telkwa]

Well, so far so good. The strapping has a light coating of greenish stuff growing on it. Can anyone explain what we're looking for here? I'm guessing that what you see is algae. You can't really see the bacteria, can you??

Anyway, I turned off our little 10 watt UV sterilizer a few weeks ago. I can't see any difference. The water still looks clear to the bottom. Not exactly gin-clear - we have an almost pure white comet and when it goes deep you can see a little bit of brownish/greenish tinge to the water. But pretty darn clear.

I would also note that the water lettuce and water hyacinth roots are remaining very clean. In our old pond the roots would acquire a mat of loose algae that would easily shake off and ruin water clarity. I don't know what this says about the new pond's ecosystem, just noting the difference.

This is with the huge 300 gal tote, and two pumps. A Laguna 600, which is probly only pumping half of that against the 2.5' of head, and a little PV powered Aquasolar 400, which probly only moves 75 to 100 GPH against the head. The Laguna is on 24/7, the Aquasolar follows the sun.

What I'm getting at here is that the "rule of thumb" is a complete turnover every 2 hours. We're nowhere near that and doing OK. The pond is easily over 2000 gal. The tote holds just over 200 gal in its current configuration. So figure roughly 2500 gal. I'd guess we're pumping (24 hour average) maybe 350 GPH. That works out to roughly 7 hours for pond turnover under the best of circumstances.