BonniesPlants.com

I am in the planning stages of a veggie filter for my pond. I have read Bonnie’s page on veggie filters and have a few questions (probably more to follow).
Rather than try to size something to my existing pond I plan to go way overboard (not really just twice as big). I have a piece of 45mil epdm left over from another project. I plan to use it all. It is 15 feet by 15 feet. I live in zone 7A. East of Atlanta I am sure that fish will live there but it will primarily be a filter.
I plan to construct it from landscape timbers.

How deep should it be?
If it ends up being 1800 gallons should I have an 1800 gph pump feeding it?
Should the pump pull from the top or the bottom of the pond?
How much aeration is needed?

Comments on successes and failures is greatly appreciated

Make sure if using landscape timbers that they are not going to come in contact with the pond water. The timbers are treated with arsenic and it will leach into the water and be lethal to the fish.

What kind of media are you going to use?

Will it be a water fall set above the pond?

Bonnie

I have yet to make a decision. at this time I am leaning twards lava rock. I buy bulk (1.5" thick by 30" wide by 50 feet long) furnace pad type material for my other filters. I just can not figure out how to make that work in the large filter.

I have had good success using a home made veturi set up to get the oxygen into the water going into the filter. I plan to haver a water fall out of the filter into the pond.

One suggestion was to have several smaller filters
easier to clean and they could be cycled through for cleaning
I like the looks of a larger "pond" looking filter

Well not much response from the group but I have started the filter.

It is approximately 8 feet long x 6 feet wide,. The bottom is sloped and is 3 feet on the deep end and 2 feet on the other. It is not completely full yet but it looks like it will hold about 1,000 gallons. I calculate about 57 square feet of surface area.

I have decided against the lava rock and am searching for an inexpensive alternative.
I am considering building a rack to suspend some filter padding in the tank.
I am currently using a 100 gallon stock tank as a bio filter and am planning to use it to feed the new veggie filter. I can place the stock tank above the veggie filter so the water will fall into the veggie filter. The veggie filter is about two feet above my existing pond and I plan a rock waterfall into the pond.

Thanks for all comments and questions.

murph,

what did you use instead of lava rocks....i think i am going to use a 5 gallon bucket with lid and drill holes in the side...line it with furnace filters like yours.....i tried the pool filter but it feeds the water out of the pump into the bottom of the filter part....if i could only turn the filter part upside down.... i think my husband is going to hate this pond...to much work is what he says now.... our other pond is so easy since it is small enough that you can just pump and empty it in just a few minutes....(@100 gallon)
any filter and pump ideas?

sheryle

I used pot scrubbies from the dollar store. Bonnie recommended them.

Hello All,
This is my first post. I live in Qld Australia.
I looked at a post from this site with great interest at http://www.australianfreshwaterturtles.com.au/index.php re Vegie Filters. I have decided to build one. I intend to use treated pine sleepers with a liner. The size will be 6ft x 4 ft x2ft. I am going to include a baffle system so the water flow will pass through the entire filter media. The water will be fed in from the top down a PVC pipe to the bottom at one end. There will be a gap between the inlet hose in the PVC pipe and the top water level. The idea is to prevent water fowing back to the pond should the power go off. This also eliminates the need for a flow valve that can clog.
The filter medium will be lava rock in two sections and river sand as a final filter in the last section. Once it is built I will let you know how is goes.

Cheers Brian

Good luck Brian,
I decided against the lava rock and sand so let me know how it works. Mine is very effective though I did have some ammonia spiking during start up this last spring.
John-Paul

Murphj01 wrote:Good luck Brian,
I decided against the lava rock and sand so let me know how it works. Mine is very effective though I did have some ammonia spiking during start up this last spring.
John-Paul

Hello John-Paul

I don't have fish but 2 turtles. The weather here ( near Brisbane Queensland) allows for the turtles to remain active all year round so once it is up and running it will run all year round. I haven't started yet so I am interested to find out your reasons for going away from lava rock and sand? Also what did you use as a fllter medium?. It is alway better to ask questions before you make a mistake than after. What do you think of the baffle system idea? If I can work out how to post a picture of a rough drawing I did, I will so you can see the idea better.
Cheers Brian

Brian,

For submerged applications, lava rock will provide the fastest bacterial colony, and the densest submerged or trickle. The problem is that it requires more maintenance. Once put to use, all of those pours tend to clog and fill up with debris, bio mass and bacterial colonies. They fill up the pores in the lava rock thus reducing the surface area and the efficiency of the media. No matter how hard you try you will not be able to clean the lava rock and restore it to what it was when it started. Lava rocks tend to be better for other applications like trickle and Bakki showers.

If you do decide to use lava rocks then I suggest to place them in a mesh bag for easy removal for hosing them down.

It would be better, long term to find a media that is high surface area and will not clog. There are many types of media that can be used for a DIY filter. Examples include pot and floor scrubbies, bio-balls, k1, etc.

As for using sand, the main issue is also maintenance. Cleaning can be a chore. Also need to concern yourself about and channeling, making the sand less efficient. Sand/gravel filters work great for fines filtration, but suggest you need an air manifold to help in cleaning the media.

Hope this helps.
Steve

Well Brian
Turtles poop a lot. So a good mechanical filter that is easy to clean would be my first recommendation along with the biological. Suck the water off the bottom of the pond if possible. Discarding the waste is much easier than trying to convert all the waste biologically.
Turtles mostly breathe through lungs unless you have one of the ones which can transfer oxygen through the lining in their mouth but even those mostly use their lungs making your filtration considerations are a little different than for koi. It also helps to add aeration in some form prior to or in the biological portion of the filter.
I like your baffle design.
Steve's comments are the reason I use pot scrubbers for media. They are the size of the palm of your hand. Made of thick plastic thread woven to make a tough little scrubber for pots and pans
They provide good surface area and excellent water flow. They can be purchased here in the US at a dollar store 8 or 10 for a dollar.
As a side question how do you intend on keeping them from leaving?
John-Paul

We put the pot scrubbers in laundry bags as they are much easier to clean. We had access to a large amount of strapping tape, used to hold large boxes together for shipping and that works nicely too. Lots of surface area! Be sure to cut the metal ends off first.

We buy filter material in large rolls that come 54 inches wide and cut off the size we need. We place several layers of filter matting on top of the laundry bags. While I don't generally offer it for sale, I do have it to sell. Email me for a quote. Keep in mind it comes in 54" rolls It could be shipped by adding a piece of bubble wrap.

We use up flow so the water is pumped from the tank to a spray bar and then drips through to the filter mat. The nice thing on how we do it is all we have to do is take of the first layer of mat and hose it down with clean water. Once a year, we remove all the mats and the laundry bags and rinse them all in tank water. We fill a 100 gallon tank with pond water and just dip the bags and matting up and down in pond water. If there is a spike it only lasts a day or two. Only the top filter mat gets hosed down about once a week

Here is a simple trickle tower that is easily made

http://www.bonniesplants.com/how_to/TrickleTower.htm

The photo below is not the best but it shows 2 homemade filters on a 100 gallon stock tank we use for spawning

http://www.bonniesplants.com/images/image_misc/100g.jpg

Our daughter will be back on Thursday and I will have her take a photo of one we set up in a 650 gallon stock tank that better shows how we set them up.

Bonnie

Hello All,

Thank you for your replies. After reading them I am now considering keeping my initial 60 lt (Sorry I don't know the gallan conversion. I am just a mere Aussie ) primary barrel fiter which takes out a lot of solids. I am then thinking of redirecting to flow to the veggie filter and allow the water to filter through the baffles before returning to the pond via the waterfall. I cant understand how you can have a veggie filter if you are using pot scrubbers. If I keep my barrel filter I can do as you say drain it from the bottom and clean it out easily. Thanks again for your replies

Cheers Brian