Question on fish load

[mrsclem]

OMG! I have had the same feeling. Pond construction thread started and never followed up on. Would love to see those 50+ koi in one pond.

 

[carolinaguy]

Yes! I wear a mask but only to bed and in bars. I’m just a pond guy who is a koi health advisor for our club. I’m also a retired military flyer and quality engineer. The plural is for me and my wife. If I don’t give her the credit she rightly deserves in collaboration with our designs I have to sleep on cold hard bare concrete for a while and that ain’t happening. She has had some of the best design and configuration designs we have ever employed and helped me dig out our first 5000 gallon pond by hand. The we is honoring her input.

As a masters prepared guy, I know how to research and love it. You will also see some of my published articles in older issues of koi magazine.

Pictures some day soon. I just don’t like to honk my own horn.

 

[Tara]

Yes! I wear a mask but only to bed and in bars. I’m just a pond guy who is a koi health advisor for our club. I’m also a retired military flyer and quality engineer. The plural is for me and my wife. If I don’t give her the credit she rightly deserves in collaboration with our designs I have to sleep on cold hard bare concrete for a while and that ain’t happening. She has had some of the best design and configuration designs we have ever employed and helped me dig out our first 5000 gallon pond by hand. The we is honoring her input.

As a masters prepared guy, I know how to research and love it. You will also see some of my published articles in older issues of koi magazine.

Pictures some day soon. I just don’t like to honk my own horn.

Thank you for the earlier advice. As @Jimmy Gibson said winter will come, and will be the perfect time to access and plan for the following spring. The more options to explore the better. Nice to see you give your wife credit deserved, give her a hello from me, and to grab a camera.

 

[Lisak1]

@carolinaguy what pressure filters have you used or seen in use? We're looking for something to add one as a "sometimes" fines filter so I don't want to invest a lot in a unit if I don't have to.

 

[carolinaguy]

@carolinaguy what pressure filters have you used or seen in use? We're looking for something to add one as a "sometimes" fines filter so I don't want to invest a lot in a unit if I don't have to.

Tough question. We currently use ultima II and are a little disappointed in them. We get a lot of fines returning to the pond in a short period of time. We know others who are questioning the quality especially since pentair took over the company. GCTek sounds good but they are a little more costly, and they never answer their phone in order to ask questions. I think they might have an illness in the family and are a small operation. Aquadyne might be good but I don’t know much. The biggest problem we have with them is that they all appear to have switched, except for some aquadyne models, to plastic tube media instead of beads. Glass beads might do what you want in removing fines, but I haven’t been able to look into the performance with users. I’m moving toward a bakki with those oil barrel screens myself at the 100 micron level for fines removal. We can install the screens in the bakki and in our plant sumps. Glass bead pressure filters used to be the go to tool for water polishing.

 

[Lisak1]

Excuse my ignorance - what's a plant sump?

Any opinion on the sponge type pressure filter that you basically spin backwards to clean out? They're cheap, but we probably won't run it for more than a few weeks a year.

 

[carolinaguy]

Not ignorance. Our sumps are 2 240 gallon pools and 2 120 gallon pools 2 feet deep that feed our waterfalls. It’s just a chamber. But instead of a bog filled with dirt, we place our plants in plastic baskets with a small amount of dirt to start and the plants grow roots out into the water to absorb nitrates, solids, and fines. You can compare it to hydroponics. The space fills with roots that filter the water. All the advantage of a bog without the creation of a hydrogen sulfide, anaerobic space that’s needs cleaning.

 

[carolinaguy]

I’ve not looked at the spinner sponge filters. We saw the mechanical wheel filters at the Orlando show. They were Popular with aquaculture facilities. I’ve seen a koi farm with dozens of them. Makes sense but mechanical motion systems in water environments are prone to corrosion and breakdown. The jury is out. I like stuff that doesn’t move like our oil screens.

 

[Lisak1]

Gotcha. What kind of plants do you grow in your plant bogs? Do you find you have to thin them out over time?