Depth of Intake Bay?

[YShahar]

Don’t recall how big your pond will be, but an intake doesn’t need to be very big to be effective, especially if you don’t have a ton of leaf drop.

The pond is about 5.5 x 6.5 meters, most of which won't be more than about 20 cm deep. The deepest part will be about 2 meter in diameter and a meter deep, so I'm hoping the intake bay will be sufficient. We don't have a lot of leaf drop, since the trees around the pond are mostly citrus, but olive bloom can be rather messy in fall. I think my main concern is going to be dust. We get sandstorms that dump huge amounts of new soil a couple of times of year, plus a lot of dust blowing in during the summer. So I'm guessing most of what I clean out of the intake bay will be silt that builds up over time.

 

[combatwombat]

The pond is about 5.5 x 6.5 meters, most of which won't be more than about 20 cm deep. The deepest part will be about 2 meter in diameter and a meter deep, so I'm hoping the intake bay will be sufficient. We don't have a lot of leaf drop, since the trees around the pond are mostly citrus, but olive bloom can be rather messy in fall. I think my main concern is going to be dust. We get sandstorms that dump huge amounts of new soil a couple of times of year, plus a lot of dust blowing in during the summer. So I'm guessing most of what I clean out of the intake bay will be silt that builds up over time.

Got it. As long as you have a nice thin depth of water over your weir, the intake will do a good job skimming that dust. Problem will be cleaning it out of the intake. If it's extremely fine dust, it might not even get caught by the gravel in the intake. Could go straight through and go into pond circulation. Need a really fine filter for that kind of stuff, I believe.

 

[YShahar]

If it's extremely fine dust, it might not even get caught by the gravel in the intake. Could go straight through and go into pond circulation. Need a really fine filter for that kind of stuff, I believe.

I'll be building a DIY biofalls to act as a bio filter for the first stage, until I can get the bog / hydroponics system built. I'll probably put some extra fine sponges in the biofalls to try to filter out the dust. It won't be a problem all the time, just a couple of times during the year, when we get the dust-apocalypse, wind blowing from Mordor sort of thing.

 

[GBBUDD]

I'd consider shutting down the pond during a dust storm and maybe just have an air stone. But also an intake bay is nothing more then a large skimmer. i have seen some that are nothing more than a narrower end of the pond. i don't see how that really works all that well . But if you have the intake with a shallow and narrow area the fish can swim in and around and back out thats works far more efficiently. the intake size past the opening is.nt all that important as i said before mine is rather large so hopefully most of the debris that falls in the pond then gets sucked in and drops within the shallow area of the intake

 

[GBBUDD]

FOR ALL THE ISUES YOUR HAVING DIGGING AND I JUST READ YOUR POST HERE AGAIN "damn caps" your intake bay could be no more then 6 inches deep just enough for the little fish to have a place to go and hide and easy for you to catch them . make the opening like a foot wide or less and only 3 to 6 inches deep at the opening. that would work for an intake bay. all depends how many gph your planning

 

[YShahar]

Sounds like a plan! My real question was really about the total depth, that is, how much space do I need to allocate for gravel and cleanout area. But yes, I'll definitely want to have the bare minimum of water on top of the gravel. I've already picked out a couple of really nice rocks to make the opening.

 

[combatwombat]

The more surface area you give to the bay, the longer it can go between cleanings. Just like a skimmer basket. That’s all it really comes down to.