When I designed my filter system for my new pond I hadn’t settled on any particular bio media material. I figured I would just build the tank and figure that out later, and I knew I would have all winter to find something. However the place where I ended up picking up my liner was having a customer appreciation BBQ day and a big sale. The sales rep I dealt with pointed out a bunch of pond related equipment they were discontinuing and selling off pretty cheap. Already having to pay for expense of the big liner, I wasn’t really in a favourable position to start buying a lot of other stuff, but I did buy a couple rolls of that Savio SpringFlo strapping stuff (shown in Todd Tmann’s link) It was $29 dollars a roll, which I have since found out to be a pretty good price.
I think how effective the surface area will be would depend largely on how you unroll it into the container or media bag. Obviously if you just dropped the coiled roll in the water, as is, it is not going to do squat. By the same token if you just uncoil it straight down with the coils falling right beside each other, or tie the coils together ( like in the aforementioned video) you are going to have some dead spots. But I think if you make the effort to randomly uncoil the roll in a way that spreads out the stands so they cross (X) each other rather than overlapping (II) like they do while on the roll, it looks to me like it would be very effective at exposing surface area.
Anyway, I have no experience yet with it, my SpringFlo media is still on the rolls and in the box waiting till spring.
The other thing I couldn’t resist buying while I was there was some Malta Filter media (also shown in Todd’s link). This looked like just the ticket for my mechanical filter tank. I got 3 densities, low, medium and high density, and cut them to fit across sideways across my 50 gal tank. They are rigid enough to hold their own shape in the tank without the need to build any bracing to hold the pads in place. They also look like they’ll be easy clean by just lifting them out and hosing them off outside.
Again, it remains to be seen just how effective this stuff will be, but I already know it can’t help but be a lot better than the kind of filter system I had in my old pond.
I think how effective the surface area will be would depend largely on how you unroll it into the container or media bag. Obviously if you just dropped the coiled roll in the water, as is, it is not going to do squat. By the same token if you just uncoil it straight down with the coils falling right beside each other, or tie the coils together ( like in the aforementioned video) you are going to have some dead spots. But I think if you make the effort to randomly uncoil the roll in a way that spreads out the stands so they cross (X) each other rather than overlapping (II) like they do while on the roll, it looks to me like it would be very effective at exposing surface area.
Anyway, I have no experience yet with it, my SpringFlo media is still on the rolls and in the box waiting till spring.
The other thing I couldn’t resist buying while I was there was some Malta Filter media (also shown in Todd’s link). This looked like just the ticket for my mechanical filter tank. I got 3 densities, low, medium and high density, and cut them to fit across sideways across my 50 gal tank. They are rigid enough to hold their own shape in the tank without the need to build any bracing to hold the pads in place. They also look like they’ll be easy clean by just lifting them out and hosing them off outside.
Again, it remains to be seen just how effective this stuff will be, but I already know it can’t help but be a lot better than the kind of filter system I had in my old pond.
