Summerizing (Starting) A Previously Set-Up Pond

[ginger_biscuit69]

thats a pretty meaty pump, 2900gallon at 5', thats likely to exceed 3500gallon at minimal head like you are (filter submerged to pond level), which considering your estimated 600 gallon pondsize is a VERY regular turnover. Make sure the inlet has a decent grill on or any new fish is going straight in and out in pieces.

Id give the pond a good pumpout, once half way, use the outlet of the pump hose to spray at the pond bed to wash crap down to the bottom and carry on pumping out, once near empty, use a hose to repeat this process washing the muck down, and eventually you should end up with the pondbed being reasonably clean again. The filter definatly needs a good cleanout, and possibly the media updating with a mechanical layer at inlet side like foams, and biological undernearth like Kaldnes K1 - alfagrog (or 'scrubbies' lol) etc....

Keeping goldies would be fine once the water settles (temp and chlorine/metal levels), would definatly consider a winter stock tank if the whole thing will freeze or you will be replacing the stock every year!

Without plants to consume nitrates produced by the breaking down of nitrites (a product of ammonia - ie: sewage - breaking down), you may well find the water going green. The addition of a UV clarifier will help solve this. No amount of 'filtration' will cut nitrate levels, only the consumption of by plantlife (be it wanted or algae blooms) or by nasty pond additives.

Please dont go getting 'biostart' type filter stuff.... its a joke. Theres no scientific proof for it doing a single thing compared to leaving nature too it

 

[vertigo72]

Please dont go getting 'biostart' type filter stuff.... its a joke. Theres no scientific proof for it doing a single thing compared to leaving nature too it

? I suggest you try it. It sure did a thing in my pond after I cleaned and refilled it with tap water. Test it yourself, fill two glasses with rain or tap water, add some pond muck and apply bacteria lift to one of them. You might be in for a surprise - though I dont see how it would be surprising. If you have a mature pond with biologically very active water, it may be pointless, but it certainly helps kickstart dead water.

 

[ginger_biscuit69]

fill two glasses with rain or tap water

yeah i hear tap water full of chlorine really kickstarts Nitrification bacteria :beerchug: .

Can i ask what evidence you have to show it sped anything up? You can only measure decrease in ammonia/nitrate levels when you already have them. If you dont have ammonia traces to begin with, the only way to know it is working is that the levels dont increase. A pile of muck from a puddle will have just as much, if not more, of the same bacteria.

Your pond (unless stagnent from no oxygen at all), brand spankin new or full of chlorinated tap water, will have the bacteria colonised on every surface inside already, so soon as you begin to pump, it will start to colonise the filter media.

As the bacteria will die shortly after oxygen depletes, i dont know how they can bottle it, seal it, and give it a shelf life (unless there isnt any bacteria there:yikesu. I certainly wouldnt starve by filter of fresh oxygen for more than 15minutes, on long maintenance streaks when the pump is off, its left full of water with an airpump going.

Pond keeping is not a branded product you pay over the odds for in the local petshop as its a 'pond product', its processes of nature easily manipulated when you understand the science of it. The doc bio filter works as it provides a massive surface area for bacteria, thats it really, its costs very little in parts, yet a manufactorer would shamelessely charge 100's for something not fancy whatsoever.

Sorry started ranting.... :bowdown:

 

[vertigo72]

yeah i hear tap water full of chlorine really kickstarts Nitrification bacteria :beerchug: .

Im fortunate enough to have virtually chlorine free tapwater, but if you dont, then do the test with dechlorinated tap water, well water or demineralised water if you like.

Can i ask what evidence you have to show it sped anything up? You can only measure decrease in ammonia/nitrate levels when you already have them. If you dont have ammonia traces to begin with, the only way to know it is working is that the levels dont increase. A pile of muck from a puddle will have just as much, if not more, of the same bacteria.

Thats why I said, try it in a glass of water. If what you say is true, there would be no difference between both glasses. Thats not quite what I witnessed. The glass where I added bottled bacteria to became clear in a day or two, and most of the muck simply vanished, as if by magic (after mostly floating on top for a while in a foam), leaving just a bit of what looks like clean sand on the bottom. The other glass didnt change, a much thicker layer of muck mostly settled at the bottom, but thats it.

As the bacteria will die shortly after oxygen depletes, i dont know how they can bottle it, seal it, and give it a shelf life (unless there isnt any bacteria there:yikesu.

I dont know how they do that either, but not knowing hardly proves it cant be done.
Anyway my point was never that you need such products, if conditions are right, aerobic bacteria will colonize your filter regardless, but adding a bottle almost certainly speeds up the process, especially in a new pond.

 

[shakaho]

Vertigo, all your test shows is that there is a flocculating agent in the bottle. Clay will do something like that. There may or may not be any kind of living bacteria in there. Nitrifying bacteria do not produce flocculants, so that is not what you are looking at.

A number of people have reported doing fishless cycling in two aquariums with and without "startup bacteria" products and found they required the same time to cycle. Now these are just forum reports, and they may be lying, but it is what I would expect as a biologist. It would make a nice science fair project for a kid.

If your pond is just like the vats they use to grow the bacteria in the factory, you may establish a culture of those bacteria in your filter. But more likely, the bacteria will survive for a few days, die, and generate ammonia to feed the native bugs which will colonize your filter media.

 

[TMF89]

Well I'll weigh in with my aquarium experience on the de-nitrifying bacteria. I've used it twice and had no issues with the tanks, but I didn't add a ton of fish at once either, although the tanks were new enough and the bioload was heavy enough that if the bacteria didn't do SOMETHING, I would've been in trouble! In marine aquaria there's a product called Bio-Spora that is held in high regard, as long as it's kept cold. As far as I know that's how the bacteria can survive, the environment is so cold they basically shut down, just like a koi through the winter.

But I digress, back on topic, I've pulled the pump out and it works and everything, but I'm not sure how to go about pumping the water out. There's a small intake (unthreaded) on the side, and then a 3-4" output on top that connects to a tube that as far as I can tell runs to the waterfall (there's a 12-15' creek leading to a little waterfall). However I ran into a problem, I can't figure out how to drain the pond! The small tube that connects to the pump is only a little over a foot long, so it's not long enough to lead anywhere out of the pond to drain. Am I going to have to run to Home Depot and buy a bunch of PVC piping to run it to my lawn?

Also I'm still trying to figure out how the lighting works, are those timers just for the lights, or do they control the waterfall as well? I plugged the box into an outlet and turned it to on, and as far as I can tell nothing happened? I'm going to try again at night, but I don't want to mess around with it too much in case something burns out or something like that. Thanks again for the help guys!

 

[vertigo72]

Just get some hose. You might even use your garden hose; though its probably too thin for your pump capacity, and the outlet, but if you buy an adapter, just for draining once its not likely to cause any problems.

As for the electricity, kinda hard to guess from here If the same pump is used for waterfall and filter, its not likely its on the timer. You want to run that 24/7.

 

[TMF89]

True, that makes sense. I have the pump hooked up and the waterfall going, it's nice to actually have made some headway! Where would I find an adapter to a garden hose? I'm sure Home Depot would have something, just wondering if there's a pond-specific one I could find at Petco or Petsmart or something. Here are a few pix of the pond, excuse all the equipment laying around, and obviously the water color. lol

 

[vertigo72]

Its hard to judge from those pics, but that is not the mudpool I was expecting. Looks like fairly clear water to me.

 

[TMF89]

It's decently clear, but you can't really make out anything on the bottom, and there's a BUNCH of debris and algae floating around, I'm not really concerned too terribly, but I definitely want to get all the original water out of there (through several smaller changes), because it's been sitting there for a couple weeks now completely stagnant.

 

[ginger_biscuit69]

suppose the yearly deepfreeze along with the reedy things have kept it well.

for a pump of that power, and the little trickle coming out, i would make sure the inlet is open enough to allow enough water in, and the outlet pipe is preferably of the same diameter as the outlet giving a nice unrestricted flow. A one way valve just past the pump could be useful to stop a massive backflow through the pump when you turn it off which will stir up all the crap.

Looks really nice, good quality build!!

 

[vertigo72]

Keep in mind that waterfall is pretty high. Hard to judge, but at least 2 meter I think? That will drastically reduce the pumps capacity, and its probably why the original owner bought such a powerful one to begin with. It looks as if he knew what he was doing.

 

[ginger_biscuit69]

but still, the 2900gallons at 5ft (1.5m) is a lot (~11000L/hr). Even at the head the pump is at, id envisage a higher flow rate.

And yes, whoever built it has done a superb job of it. Very well blended in etc. I look forward to seeing what you do to it.

Whats is your background? You say you are at college? What age, what do you do?

 

[TMF89]

Just went out and measured, and it's AT LEAST 13 feet diagonally from the pump to the outflow. Now I have no idea how your standard pond is plumbed, but I'm sure there are a couple elbows and what not, and it's probably not a completely straight shot from the pump to the outflow. The creek is anywhere from 1-3 feet wide and a few inches deep. How would I check the inlet and outflow? The only thing in the filter box was a bulkhead that the pipe/pump screwed into, and at the top of the falls there's just a box with a cloth mesh cover (held down with rocks and such, I didn't dig around in it.

 

[ginger_biscuit69]

head pressure is the distance VERTICALLY from pond surface to outlet, assuming pipe diameter is constant, a few elbows etc will have a negligable effect on the pumping capacity