Multi bay and plant filter combined?

[vertigo72]

Your pond may be getting to much run off looking at a couple of the pics up close your land looks higher around the sides than the pond .That will cause your water to get dirty faster and fertilizer getting into your pond from your yard.

You are assuming Im using fertilizer. Which I dont. Look closer at the grass, its all moss, why would I fertilize that .
But no, the land is not higher than the lining of the pond. No risk of that getting in.

I like how you hid your filters because I cannot see where they are at .I also like how you put your plants in your filter in plant baskets in pea gravel .Gosh looking close still cannot find your filters.I only see a hose so far

The barrels are to the right, behind that bench on the pic. You indeed cant see them from there, but you can if you are closer to the pond, especially from the left. Hardly intrusive though, but I will put some bamboo around it once its all finished. Especially for the winter.

 

[sissy]

The pics you cannot tell it is moss ,just looks green to me .See here we can get downpours like today it is coming down hard and heavy here .I use fertilizer here but use all natural fertilizer .I use quilt batting here to pick up all the fine stuff and then try to get the bigger stuff out before it sinks to the bottom,I know that stuff just rots and causes a lot more work for me .Here I have to empty filters and turn most everything off because the last 2 winters have been colder than our normal average temp of 55 degree's .Two winters ago it was 70 degree's christmas day .Well I can tell you, you hid them well

 

[vertigo72]

Woke up this morning, and my new filter worked so well, the water had cleared to the point of invisibility. It was like the pond was empty. Oh wait, it WAS empty.

Over night, it seems the hose I used to connect the 25K pump to the "fountain" sheered and somehow managed to pump everything out of the pond. Oh dear. At 8am I was rescuing fish.

Every catastrophe brings an opportunity (or what is the saying?), so at least I now have the perfect opportunity to clean it out properly, and boy, was it needed. This is after a day of work:



The mud/slib is so thick you wouldnt believe it. Not much more my pumps can do, and dont be fooled, the bottom is still more than knee deep. I had no idea it as actually that deep.

I put the fish in my newly build filter asap, and then built an improvised pond for them. i think I got most of them, if not all (at least all Koi)
Here is the improvised mini pond where they will spend the next few days:



ITs the little basin to the right of the pond. There is about ~30 fish in there, most of them small, one huge and a few large. I hope they will be okay. I did what I could, the water is a mix of dirty water I tried to salvage from the pond, all the water from my filters and tap water (which is of outstanding quality here, thankfully). I put an air pump in there and a bag of zeolite. Crossing fingers.

 

[j.w]

Man there is so much mud in there it looks as if they were trying for a mud bottomed pond to grow plants in and not fish. I hope your fish will be ok but then what else can you do at this point, right? Good that you have them in some of your old pond water. Maybe you can save some more of it by pumping it through some kind of floss or fine screen so when you put them back in the old part it won't be like starting all over and shocking them

 

[DrDave]

This happens to all of us at some time.
Good points, be careful when re-filling that the water chemistry, temperature and chlorine levels are monitored.

 

[vertigo72]

Man there is so much mud in there it looks as if they were trying for a mud bottomed pond to grow plants in and not fish. I hope your fish will be ok but then what else can you do at this point, right? Good that you have them in some of your old pond water. Maybe you can save some more of it by pumping it through some kind of floss or fine screen so when you put them back in the old part it won't be like starting all over and shocking them

Not sure if thats worth it. I might be able to salvage a few 100 liter more, if that. The pond's capacity is somewhere around 50.000 liter. Ouch, that will be an expensive water bill too..

Anyway, not sure what Ill do next after I finish cleaning. If the fish do alright in their small pond, I think Ill keep them there for several weeks until Im confident the "new water" is okay. Ill run it through my biofilters meanwhile and hope the plants survive. And yeah Ill have it tested.

If its okay, Ill probably slowly mix "new water" in the small pond, until the water there is identical, then Ill release them. Something like that.

 

[j.w]

That sound like a good plan. I wasn't sure you were going to be able to keep the fish where they are as it's a smaller place. Watch them so they don't try to jump out as it's a new place for them and I remember a thread here recently where someone's fish were jumping out and they put a net over it after that just til they got used to it

 

[vertigo72]

question about Ph. My neighbour has a water well. I was thinking of filling my pond with that water rather than tap water, as its free, unlike tap water. But I tested it, and the Ph is off the scale of my tester. Over 10, and probably 11+.

I know that would kill my fish (just like it killed his last year), but I was wondering if its advisable to use it nonetheless, provided I add enough acid (and probably NaHC03 and whatever else to get GH and KH up to sniff), before adding fish to it?

 

[addy1]

I would think if you get it balanced and stable before you add fish it should be ok. Our well is 5ish in ph.