Has anyone used the quilt batting for quick cleanup?

[Miami Al]

I will add that, in our pond, the bog is fantastic biological filtration but over time we found we needed more mechanical filtration. Perhaps a function of our bog not working quite like it should - I don't know if we have enough settlement time to reduce fine floating debris. We also do not have a skimmer - our pond has a negative edge design.

Anyway, we purchased a box filter with six filter pads last year - so much better and easier than the quilt batting for long term use. We tried to janky up a quilt batting filter, but it was literally clogging up in hours. Too much work for this lazy ponder. The box filter could run for a week or more. It was more expensive, but it will also last forever, so it was a good one time investment for us.

Thanks!

I bought a cheap small pump (50 GPH pump), a dairy crate, and threw it in last night. Probably will have benefited from a "moderate" pump (300GPH), but this morning the batting is starting to turn green. The water is noticibly clearer.

I had box filters with pads before, I HATED them. I hated pulling them out of the pond, hated replacing or cleaning the pad, hated everything about it. I'm super lazy.

I have two 7 Gallon buckets (deeper versions of the ones at the hardware store). Both are gravity fed from pond, one off the skimmer, one off the bottom drain. At the bottom of the bucket is a pump.

The skimmer system goes to the bog.
The bottom drain goes into an Aquascape "Filter Urn" -- I cut the inlet off and rigged a 1" PVC connector with a uniseal.

I love the look of the Filter Urn spilling over, but I think I want to change the materials inside. I think I'm going to replace the pad and the ceramic discs with a series of mechanical filters that I can swap out every few months. But it's pretty, water spills over.

My bogs are also pretty. I took 3 Resin pots, and using uniseals plumbed them to be bogs with a pipe return. Then filled with pebbles and "marginals." Instead of an ugly bog, it's a pretty bog. I'm actually going to clean out the brown leaves this weekend and replace any plants that need replacing.

I also was automatically filling the pond with some well water to replace evaporation. I think this led to poor water quality. I believe that over time the filtration will handle this. So I stopped that process. I only add small amounts of water into the bogs (not directly into the pond). Water is clearing up.

I don't want to commit to needing to pull anything out of the pond. All filtration must take place outside of the pond. I can add mechanical filtration to buckets (pre pump), but nothing that requires me to dig in the pond, I just won't do it.

 

[Lisak1]

I had box filters with pads before, I HATED them. I hated pulling them out of the pond, hated replacing or cleaning the pad, hated everything about it. I'm super lazy.

Mine is external - still have to pull the pads out and clean them, so it is a bit of work. But I'm not pulling anything out of the pond. We went 7 or 8 years before the floating fine debris started to bug me. It was never terrible, but was slowly getting worse. Anytime the rain exchange would get low it would pull from the bottom and we could tell by all the murkiness in the water.

Here's the one I have:

I should also add that we added a biofalls to our waterfall when we had it rebuilt last summer, so I don't know that we will ever need this piece of equipment again. Time will tell I guess!

 

[Miami Al]

Ah - thank you. I was looking for something like that and could connect
It between the bottom drain and urn. As you said, more mechanical filtration.

 

[sissy]

stock tank filters . I don't care it looks natural . I care that the fish are healthy and happy . I wanted the pond near my covered front porch so we could sit and enjoy it .Not that I get to sit often over 3 acres gives me lots to do 2 filters one on each end 2 pumps feeding filters

 

[Miami Al]

I ordered on Ebay the discontinued OASE Biosmart 1600. It looks small enough.

I am hoping that I can elevate it and have gravity flow the water all out to the Urn so I can hide this a bit and the pond look pretty from the outside.

If I could fight a water/airtight solution that I could fill with filters that would be ideal, but I couldn't find anything like that. My other thought was to pull the biofiltration stuff out of the urn (to make space) and fill it with mechanical filtering pads. Main thing I don't want to do it be playing with algae covered filters more than I have to. That was the beauty of the bogs.

My quilt batting wrapped milk crate appears to be cleaning the water pretty quickly. Obviously this is a stupid short term solution, but is definitely reinforcing the "needs more mechanical filtration" thought.

 

[Lisak1]

definitely reinforcing the "needs more mechanical filtration" thought.

That was exactly why I janked up a quilt batting filter before we bought the box filter - I wanted to see how much stuff was really in the water. An hour of running water through the them convinced me that it would make a huge difference. The fish don't care... but it definitely makes for a more enjoyable viewing experience for me!

 

[sissy]

It is not always filtration ,it is more about balance . Water movement and aeration and adding in plants for a bonus cleaning and also not over feeding fish . Just like chilfdren need to learn to clean up after themselves ,fish need to clean their own room

 

[Miami Al]

That was exactly why I janked up a quilt batting filter before we bought the box filter - I wanted to see how much stuff was really in the water. An hour of running water through the them convinced me that it would make a huge difference. The fish don't care... but it definitely makes for a more enjoyable viewing experience for me!

Bingo. The mucky water changed I could see the bottom. That made it a no brainer. Only concern I have is am I signing up for cleaning filters all the time again. What I have loved with bog land has been low maintenance. We shall see. My other option was to keep this quilt batting filter in the garage for if the water gets gross. I'm hoping that cleaning this filter can be done infrequently and easily enough, but time will tell.

 

[Miami Al]

It is not always filtration ,it is more about balance . Water movement and aeration and adding in plants for a bonus cleaning and also not over feeding fish . Just like chilfdren need to learn to clean up after themselves ,fish need to clean their own room

I have lots of movement and aeration. The water got gross when I over fed them. But I'm liking having lots of fish, so more filtration is the only option.

 

[GBBUDD]

fish need to clean their own room

Your a better mom than i no matter how much i raise my voice and tell that dang channel cat to come it never listens. AND when i tell them all to leave the lillies alone they ignore me

 

[sissy]

mine eat out of my hand and little butt wigglers always come into my hand when i put it into the pond for that belly rub . People that come here get a real kick out of that .My fish listen better than my 2 sons when they were growing up . Only time my sons heard me was when I said their full names . Even their friends would perk up and listen . FISH ARE MUCH EASIER They don't throw their dirty laundry here ,there and everywhere and I can find plates to eat off when I get home so glad my sons grew up and moved out a long time ago peace is great , I still love them but peace is better

 

[sissy]

only things aggie and bert do is kill frogs and leave me to fish out what is left

 

[GBBUDD]

Glad one of mine is gone too he's lost his mind , but there's hope. he's seeing some of the light.

 

[Lisak1]

It is not always filtration ,it is more about balance .

But when it IS about filtration, it's nice to have options. My pond is balanced, we don't overfeed or overstock, but it is outdoors. Which means things fall in, blow in, drift in, etc. The big debris gets caught in the negative edge overflow, but the tiny stuff makes it's way down into the bottom of the rain exchange where it slowly builds up. A tiny bit of tiny stuff is no big deal. But eventually those tiny bits become millions and millions of fine floating annoyances. All the aeration in the world won't fix that. I know my plants do catch some of it. Watercress in the waterfall does a great job of vacuuming up the sediment and holding on to it in it's root mat. But then you have to thin it out and in the process of yanking it out you release some of it back into the water where it just starts circulating again.

I know more experienced bog builders understand how to engineer a bog so that fine sediment has time to drift to the bottom of the bog where you can pump it out from time to time. I suspect our water just moves too fast through the bog for that process to happen. But a little mechanical filtration was just the ticket for us and now all is good.

 

[sissy]

That is the main reason I have a pie in the bottom of my pond that has water from the pump running into it and holes drilled in it . No build up on the bottom of the pond . But the big advantage to that is my pond is rectangular . The only thing I might get is a few leves on the bottom of the pond . Easy to scoop them out with a pool net .I need my pond to be as easy as can be to maintain ,I just don't have the time . These days nothing is easy to build or even close to cheap to build . I bought 2x3's at over 6 dollars a piece and 2x4 's at over 9 dollars a piece and wanted more gravel delivered for a project and used to get 10 ton for 230 dollars delivered and called and because of fuel costs it is now over 500 for 10 ton to be exact 580 dollars . I wanted bails of straw and used to cost me 2.88 and now is 10 .99 each . That was a month ago so probably went up even more since