Do I need bottom drains?

[audioenvy]

Can you please tell me more about your BDs?
Where does the water go once it goes through the BD? Do they clog? Trap fish?

I have Koi Toilet bottom drains with the built-in aerators. There are lots of other options. If you get one 4" drain I would recommend something like the Rhino II because of the integrated check valve for the air.

There are various ways to plumb the bottom drain but something like the bottom drain to a Nexus 320 or an Eazy Pod Complete with the pump AFTER that is a fairly complete filtration solution. The water is pulled through the filter by the pump and is then pushed up to the waterfall. Other people use a settlement tank but I don't have personal experience with that so I cannot weigh in on that.

My drains have a 3/4" gap meaning only something that small would be able to get sucked up the drain. I have no fish small enough for that to be a concern. As for clogging, it's pretty hard to clog a 4" pipe. I'm assuming you would also have a skimmer to catch leaves or other surface debris and you'd have things situated to prevent rocks and/or gravel from falling into the water.

There are videos on YouTube showing the installation. My favorite is the pond construction series from The Pond Digger. It has step-by-step instructions for the bottom drains as well as just about every other aspect of building a liner pond.

This is a garden pond forum so under no circumstances am I "judging" anyone who doesn't have a bottom drain or who has gone years without needing one. If you are planning on, say, 10 total pounds of Koi in a 4000 gallon pond then you're really not talking about a lot of waste. But if you have 50+ pounds of Koi in that same space it's a different challenge altogether. The koi poop has to go somewhere and having it settle on the bottom having to be manually vacuumed out is a maintenance challenge. I say this as one who did that every other day for a year. If you are starting a new pond rather than working with an existing pond, now is the time to install a bottom drain if you're ever going to have one.

 

[Gemma]

I'm trying to figure out the plumbing and number of pumps necessary if I do BDs and skimmer

 

[audioenvy]

I'm trying to figure out the plumbing and number of pumps necessary if I do BDs and skimmer

I have an inexpensive submersible pump in the bottom of my skimmer that feeds into a Little Giant bead filter and then back to the pond via return jets in the walls. This helps move water around at the bottom of the pond so that stuff migrates more quickly to the bottom drains.

I have a separate circuit for the bottom drains. Separate 3" pipes all the way up to the filtration station where I will have (waiting on some remaining parts to complete this) a sieve followed by an external pump that then feeds into UV and a combination rotating drum filter / bakki-style shower. That outputs to a 4" pipe that gravity feeds the waterfall. I don't believe you need all this stuff for a hybrid pond but you do need mechanical filtration and bio filtration. Something like the Eazy Pod or the Nexus is sort of an all-in-one for that while still being easier to service than a homemade filter. You could certainly save a lot of money make a sand-and-gravel mechanical filter and build your own shower filter but I wasn't confident I could make something that was both easy to service and also fault tolerant (meaning no overflow if too much debris collects).

 

[Tombstone]

You can add a bottom drain, external.
I wished I would have installed one but I will put a external 2 inch copper pipe with a filter at the bottom.
Cleaner pond if you can draw off the bottom.

 

[Gemma]

Thank you for your input, everyone..... I actually decided against installing a bottom drain!
There are no trees where the, pond will be built, I don't plan on keeping a lot of koi nor feeding to speed up growth, so I think I'm just going to have the same simple filtration that the other pond has, and vacuum up the bottom if it ever need to be

 

[gliebig]

I have slotted pipe on the bottom of mine. I just don't trust bd's.

 

[Jimmy Gibson]

Personally I like my bottom drain, since I shaped my pond and sloped the whole pond to the bottom drain I have no problem with muck.....leaves and such on the bottom.....that being said if you plan on babies or small fish the bottom drain is a death trap......out of the 47 baby koi that I raised this year probably twice that many ended up in the pump prefilter......

 

[sissy]

To me if a bottom drain is not done completely right it can pose more problems then you could imagine .I did not risk it ,liners are not cheap

 

[audioenvy]

For a dedicated koi pond they are an absolute must. For a garden pond I totally get not wanting one.

 

[sissy]

I have koi and no bottom drain and no skimmer and it does work for me .I use a pool net this way I can net gunk and put it in a bucket ,this way I do not kill any thing I do have 2 filters .

 

[Meyer Jordan]

I have koi and no bottom drain and no skimmer and it does work for me .I use a pool net this way I can net gunk and put it in a bucket ,this way I do not kill any thing I do have 2 filters .

But your pond is not a DKP. You have other species of fish and plants.

 

[sissy]

To me a dedicated koi pond is not healthy for the fish no matter what the say .The only other fish I have ar fancy tail and my butt wigglers .My fish are mutts so no fancy names to them .Poor fish in a dedicated koi pond are probably not really happy ,how could they be .It would be like have a fish tank with nothing in it but fish ,how boring for people and fish .Besides I have never seen a fish tank with nothing in it but fish .To me a pond without plants is water in a hole with fish

 

[Meyer Jordan]

To me a dedicated koi pond is not healthy for the fish no matter what the say .The only other fish I have ar fancy tail and my butt wigglers .My fish are mutts so no fancy names to them .Poor fish in a dedicated koi pond are probably not really happy ,how could they be .It would be like have a fish tank with nothing in it but fish ,how boring for people and fish .Besides I have never seen a fish tank with nothing in it but fish .To me a pond without plants is water in a hole with fish

Can't say that I disagree, but everyone has different tastes. Makes the world go 'round.

 

[sissy]

True but still boring .The world needs more interesting things to make it brighter and happier and calmer

 

[Lisak1]

I'm with you @sissy - the poor fish just swimming in circles with nothing to keep them interested seems so sad. But maybe those fishy brains don't realize they are looking at the same four walls over and over and over again!