Hi All,

Wow, what a forum :-) Just spent the best part of an hour going thru pictures and reading articles ! (Thanks Chris and Wayne for a great debate LOL)
Great to have a forum at home rather than overseas. At least this way advice and equipment is local!!! :-)

Hope you guys can share your knowledge and experience with me.

I am in the progress of building another pond round my pool area. Going to be about 35 to 40 000 liters. Due to location, I don't want to have filter upon filter upon filter.

I have read and seen some pics here about trickle / tower filters. This looks like the better option to go for, as you can stack crates on one another and save a huge amount of space. However my questions are these:

Is this setup good enough to use instead of a normal wet down flow filter?

How many of them will you need for a pond the size I want to build?

If you cannot do without the regular filter, can it be run in conjunction then with a wet filter?

Looking forward to your responses. Have posted a pic of the "Planned" look and feel of the pond. And YES, Im NOT a photoshop pro LOL

Filter will be on the right. Piping will run under the jacuzzi, into the Top Waterfall and top pond. The top pond will contain waterlilies, submerged plants etc, to assist with nitrate absorption. This will then fall into the lower pond, which will contain tall plants, such as papyrus, water reeds etc, then finally fall into the main pond, next to the pool.

Lee

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Hi Lee -

Lots of ways to do this.

What is the size of the area where you are going to return the water - how wide and how long?

Are you going to do this yourself?

Can you post a picture with out the ideas or photoshop - i.e. the area and the stone wall at the back.

Chris

Morning Chris,

Pics as requested.
Right hand side. This is where I will be placing all the filtration equipment.

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Left Hand Side where the smaller ponds will be. Top and bottom are about 70cm wide and 5m long. Each area can be a maximum depth of 50cm

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The Entire area :-) Ohhh so excited! Dreaming about it every night :-p

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Yup, I will be doing this myself, with the help of a mate. We are going to fibre-glass the pond, as with this size, don't want to take a chance with having to deal with leaks etc.

If I have to have a myriad of different filters, space isn't a problem, I just would prefer as little as possible. (Hence me querying the effectiveness of the shower filters) The settlement chamber will be on the ground level, and from there will pump up to the first level (right hand side) into the filters.

Lee

I would make a cascading water fall from part of the top flower bed to the bottom flower bed and then into pond...decorate with stones...to be attractive...or even just simple water falls drom top flower bed to bottom one...not the whole width of the bed...just part of it...It is a matter of digging out some of the soil and constructing inside 50cm deep basins from concrete with a flat weir.
The rest the boys will advise U.

Hi Neli,

Thats exactly what I am going to do. Not the whole length, I agree with you, that would loose the effect.

The entire length on the left hand side though, will be fulled with water, and contain plants to aid nitrate absorption. Check out the very first pic in the first post. Its my very bad photoshop attempt at what I am going to try do :-)

Hi there Lee ,

I love ur idea of ur new pond.
I really dont have much experience on building koi ponds and filter systems.
I just know the basic of a pond and filter system.

I im still new and learn everyday more and more.

You will not go wrong with fiber glass , i did mine to.
Will post some pictures of my pond. It is not nice when ur pond is leaking.

I cant wait when you going to start with ur new pond.

Good luck with everything.

Regards

Quinten

Yea leaking is the WORST!!!!! Especially when you then have to find temp homes for the fish while you track and repair - been there done that!

Have already started buying the equipment and things now, but I think major construction etc will only happen early next year, after the summer rain. That, and Ive decided to contract the work out rather, as its going to be too much of a mission for me to do alone, which means its gonna cost a hell of a lot more :-) So this will also give me time to save up a bit of cash. At a rough guess, I think its going to come up at about 60k. So yea, some serious saving here.

Getting to old and lazy to do the manual labour myself LOL

Let me know when youve posted pics of your pond - would love to see. Have got such nice ideas from looking at other peoples setups.

Hi Lee,

I'd be carefull of having the pond and swimming pool so close, if you have small children [ or big ] and they run past the pond and dive in the pool , you can get splashing from the one to the other, plus you can make the fish very skittish with all the noise and running. JMO.

I used to have my pond and pool close as well and the fish were skittish, and it's amazing the vibration that travelled underground between the two.

Cheers,

Costa.