Homemade pond biofilter: a pond biofilter is essential for clean healthy fish ponds
The Nitrogen cycle operates within a pond biofilter. For maximum performance your pond biofilter needs oxygen, food source and biomedia on which bacteria can reside. A pond biofilter can come in all shapes and sizes. Choose your biofilter wisely. If you keep fish a pond biofilter biofilter is essential.
“I have read your book with interest and have found it most interesting. I wish I had read it before constructing my pond” ........ Gordon Powell, seaview@scottburgh.co.za
Koi fish food can contribute greatly to poor pond biofiltration
The simplest pond biofilter is the “black box” type. Building a pond biofilter of such a type requires a rectangular or other shaped plastic box which contains some or all of the following. It is easy to make a home made pond biofilter once you have an appreciation of the following:
Open cell foam used to mainly remove leaves, and larger particles of whatever can get into the pond biofilter. It has a limited amount of biological capacity
Brushes as an alternative or adjunct to foam to remove solids
Plastic tubes, plastic balls or other plastic shapes or other biomedia on which bacteria accumulate
Inlet pipe, outlet pipe and overflow pipes back into the pond perhaps. If you want to see how easy a diy pond biofilter is go to your nearest stockist and take a look inside one of the pond biofilter you see there.
The simplest homemade pond biofilter contain almost anything you can imagine from hair curlers to gravel. Click here to learn about pond biofilter media.
Homemade pond biofilter are easily constructed to save money. Such a box type pond biofilter comes in different sizes to cater for different pond volumes. However a lot of this is to do with parting you from your money. My book will show you how to dramatically improve the biological capability of any box type pond biofilter. This will save you a stack of money.
Fish pond filters are the difference between success and failure in water garden projects.
Your fish stay lively and healthy. How to build a pond filter. Make sure your koi and goldfish live healthily and happily. It's quite simple if you keep pond fish you MUST have a pond bio filter. A bio filter combined with an UV light will guarantee a crystal clear pond ... the trick is to get the right size and combine with the right pond pump
Here's why this Fish Mate UV + pond bio filter combined for garden ponds up to 1,000 gallons can be rated very highly and yet is amongst the very cheapest you will find anywhere see pond supplies review for this product Buy extremely low cost yet effective combined Biofilter and UV for your pond click this image or link below
How To Make or Build a biofilter
You can make a pond biofilter by incorporating inside a suitable container a solids catching device such as stiff bristle brushes and/or flat foam. This would act as the first stage. You can make a pond biofilter second stage using biomedia through which water pours or flows (up or down the pond biofilter media). This pond biofilter media must be kept wet using recirculated water at all times. That is how simple it is to make a biofilter.
You must always remember there is a lot of salesmanship around pond biofilter selection. The prices of some larger pond biofilter are quite ridiculous I think. Do try to understand as much as you can about biofiltration and save yourself a lot of money.
You might want to take a peek inside a commercial box pond biofilter and take home the ideas. The box type pond biofilter operates under gravity conditions and generally is placed at the highest point in the water circuit. My book identifies other ways of placing a biofilter to save money and space - the cyprio bioforce biofilter introduced around 1998 introduced the concept of a small scale pressure biofilter to pond keeping. Since then numerous other companies have introduced similar designs to the cyprio bioforce biofilter.
The above components play a specific role in the operation of pond biofilter.
Open cell foam – most types of pond biofilter have this in them. It is designed to remove larger solid particles from the water before the water enters the biological chamber (a fancy word for the place where the media is located). The foam also becomes a holding place for bacteria within the biofilter. Some designs spray the water onto the foam surface inside the biofilter as a means to introduce more oxygen. It is a gimmick.
Brushes (look like large bottle brushes) – these tend to be found in larger box biofilters. They are designed to catch solids much like the foam. In very large very well oxygenated biofilters brushes can make a difference. For the rest they are a waste of money in my opinion and just add cost to the project. Plastic shapes acting as biomedia – the most common are ridged plastic tubing and things that look like hair curlers. The purpose is very simply to allow surface area to be provided onto which bacteria can create their colonies so that the nitrogen cycle can take place efficiently. These shapes generally have small surface area per unit of volume and they provide little resistance to flow of water through the biofilter. Items like flocor or bio balls or whatever name is used is generically referred to as biomedia. Not all biomedia is the same.
Garden Fish Pond Keeping Articles To Explore
Connecting and overflow pipes are there for obvious reasons.
One important criterion to bear in mind is that water flowing into a gravity biofilter must be able to come out fast enough. You run the risk of pumping you pond dry if you try to pump more water in than can come out of the outlet pipe. Look for a biofilter with large outlet pipes, or even two outlets. Sounds obvious but believe me ……… it has happened.
Some people refer to an uv pond biofilter. You should note that the term uv pond biofilter or uv biofilters for water gardens refers to items NOT designed to purify water but to remove the pea soup appearance of pond water. uv biofilters for water gardens are covered in a different web site - see the ultra violet links. pond biofilter with uv are however commonplace and can save a lot of hassle since it is normally simpler to install combined pond biofilter with uv than the two seperate components.
Select the correct pond & waterfall pump
copyright: 2002, this website and many others to do with water gardening and use of water in the home was created by Tony Roocroft who lives in Johannesburg South Africa
