Hi everyone. We just discovered this forum and would like to share our great and painfull pond building experience with you all. We bought our first new/old house in Centurion with an existing little water puddle contained by some concrete. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] By ImageHousing.com We thought it would be nice to put some fish in and went to a local petshop to buy some fish. We ended up buying 5 small koi and needless to say, after a couple of weeks our water puddle turned into a pea soup muck, because of the lack of any filtration. We started researching this new found hobby and realized that we had no clue as to what we were doing. Settlement chamber....Mechanical filtration... Bio.... etc... etc... What??? Huh?? We then moved the koi to a fish tank. (They were still quite small at this stage, but were growing like hell) They soon had to be moved to the spare bathroom, into the bath. Just imagine that.
With the fish out of the little water puddle, we emptied it and started to dig
our new pond.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] By ImageHousing.com We then discovered that our house was built on something like mount everest... Huge rocks everywhere. Because of the orientation of our property, no backactors or any other earth moving equipment could be used. Everything had to be done by means of manual labour.
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After reading a lot of other pond building tips, we realized that you should build it as big as possible the first time and therefore the digging did not stop for a very long time. Discoverring more and more mountains of rocks as we went along. Eventually we had to get some reinforsements in...
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After a whole yaer of digging and removing at least 40 tons of rock, we finally decided that hole was big enough and building could commence.
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Hi Ricco and Angy
Firstly, welcome to the forum.

Wow, I have to say you really wanted a koi pond hey. Cannot waite to see the rest of this mamoth task you undertook.

Please keep us posted on progress. How far have you progressed to date, stil building?

It look's like we have some koi keeper's in the making here. Well done guys keep on and don’t give up. I think you already learned the most important thing in koi keeping - is it in the best interest of the Koi.

Welcome to the forum and thanks for sharing.

Please feel free to ask questions. There are a lot of knowledge and experience on this forum.

It would also be a good idea to visit the koi show at Cresta in May.

Can't wait to see the end product.

Thanks everyone.

To answer some of the questions. Yes, the building work is almost finished, but there is still some piping and electrical work that needs to be completed. The last photograph posted was taken the beginning of Dec last year, but we kept taking photo's during the whole building process and will post them so that you can see the progress as we went along.

During the year of the digging process, I did quite a lot of research and spoke to a lot of koi keepers and koi salesmen, to try and learn from previous mistakes.
One of the first things we noted was that everyone told us to "Build the pond as big as possible the first time". This ofcourse meant that everytime that our guys thought that they have finally finished digging, I wanted it to be extended another half a meter this way then another half a meter that way and a bit deeper and so it went on and on. We finally ran out of space and decided to stop digging and start building.
The next important thing that I spent a lot of time on was the filter system and the amount of power that will be used. I got some very clever ideas from William at happy koi and thrown in some other ideas and I think that we have come up with quite a good system at the end of the day.
We will post more pictures of our progress and design during the week till we get to the current stage of the pond constuction.

We would definately like to visit the koi show at Cresta and would appreciate it if you can send us some more info.

As promised, here is some more photo's leading up to where we are at the moment.

We dug a 300mm wide x 300mm deep foundation to build a 300 mm wall on top of it to contain the concrete floor. The inspector seems happy with the work so far.

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We also bought a small concrete mixer for mixing the concrete for the foundation, but realised very soon that we will not be mixing all the concrete for the floor ourselfs.

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With the foundation finished we started with the retaining wall.

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The retaining wall is finished and we went to Lafarge to order the ready mix concrete for the floor. We have already bought reinforced steel mesh for the floor, but Lafarge suggested not to install the mesh, but that they will rather supply us with a fibre mix. "No reinforcing required" I don't know if any one else has done it this way, but they assured us that it will work.
We layed the piping and bottom drains and the next day the ready mix arrived.

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As previously said, due to the orientation of our property, no large trucks can get to the location of the pond and therefore the ready mix truck had to park at our gate and we had to wheelbarrow 8 cubes of concrete to the pond.

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The floor is finally finished. 300mm thick fibre mix. This was no joke...Next time I will gladly pay to hire a concrete pump.
The profiles is also up and we are ready to start building the walls.

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Hi Ricco welcome to the forum, this looks very interesting keep us updated.

Hi, well done on the build so far, can't wait to see the finished pond!

my goodness, that is going to be a very deep pond!!!

I just love these threads.

Well done so far!!!

Thanks guys.

So here is the design of the pond and filtration system that I have ended up with. I did quite a lot of research on the net and spoke to a lot of people and after changing the desing about 30 times, this is what I ended up with.

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Looks like there is no skimmer ?

Looks good!
Some questions please;
Volume of pond
It looks as if you intend using powerheads if so what is the flow rate
What type of media
Pipe diameters.

Hi Ricco & Angy

Welcome to the forum.
I must congratulate you on your persistance in your pond building. It is a very well designed pond and I would like to know more about your filter system. (Filtermedia, flowrates, returns to the pond etc.)

Well done so far on your patience.

Christie

Hi guys,

Yes sorry Colyn, we did alow for a skimmer. I simply did not put it into the 3D model. It takes me quite a while to do the 3D's as this is not really my line of work, but it is installed on the edge of the dry chamber where the 4 UV's are installed. The return pipe from the skimmer comes through the wall right above and in the middle of the UV isolation valves.
Sorry about the confusion.

Jan and Christie, with regards to the pond volume and the filter design, the dimentions are as follows:
6,1 m in length x 3,6 m wide x 2,2 m deep giving a volume of just over 48 000 litres.

4 Bottom drains feed to the settlement chamber via 110mm Class 9 UPVC pipes. The settlement chamber will be equiped with filter brushes. From here the water overflows into the second chamber, via 4 110mm pipes. We are not quite sure what filter media to use in this mechanical filtration chamber. Any advice will be appreciated. From the bottom of this chamber the water flows through 4 110mm pipes to the biological filter chamber. The biological chamber is filled with 300 litres of K1 bio media. This chamber will also be aerated. From the biological chamber the water will be pumped with 5 low energy pumps to the gravity discharge chamber, Jan I think this might be the power heads you are refering to. I will post a picture of the pumps later. These units will transfer about 6000 litres per hour each and only uses a total of 27 watts each. The water gravitates through 4 x 15 Watt UV's to midwater returns, one on each corner of the pond creating a circular flow in the pond. We are using a 0.75 kW pump for the waterfall from the skimmer, but will not run continuously but will be on a timer.

Conclusion:
I am not sure if anyone else is using a similar system, but what it comes down to is the equipment that will run continuously is:
5 x low energy pump - 27 Watt
4 x UV's - 15 Watt
1 x 160l/min air pump - 100 Watt

Giving a total power consumption of only 295 Watts.
Our end goal is to install solar pannels and run the whole pond off solar power at a later stage to ensure uninterrupted power supply.

I really hope that this system will work, because Angy said she is going to give me a good kick in the butt if we end up with dirty water as she wanted to install a bubble bead filter at the end for addiional polishing.

Here is some more pic's of the progress.

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Thanks for everyones interest, we will post some more images tomorrow.

Any more comments or advice is welcome.

The low wattage energy pumps with a total of 295watt for 4 pumps sounds too low. Please post pics of the pumps...the power consumption is amazing.

Its a nice big pond that you are creating here.

on the pump issue.
I am not sure what pumps you intend using and what their ratings are.

Consider using a pedrollo.

0.37kw, 18 000 L per hour.

You clearly did your homework very well and it is going to be an amazing pond.

I am also very curious about the pumps that deliver 6000 liters each at 27 watts each. Are you sure about the specs? I would be very interested in buying a few of them if the specs are correct.

wayneb wrote:

The low wattage energy pumps with a total of 295watt for 4 pumps sounds too low. Please post pics of the pumps...the power consumption is amazing.

If these are the power heads I am thinking of I have seen them working, at that stage some teething problems were attended to.
Ricco
On that size of pond I suggest that you consider using 4x55 watt UV's. Run them when needed and switch off when the water is clear. Avoid the good kick in the butt at all cost.
Can you change the UV bulbs without the water running out?
Consider static K1 for the mechanical chamber.
An observation; make sure that the circulation is anti-clockwise.
Is the skimmer feeding directly back to the pond?
Allow for belt and braces; bear in mind that in future you might want to expand your filter system by installing a sand or bubble bead or whatever filter. To this aim I suggest that you install a few blank pipes leading from the settlement chamber, doing nothing at this stage.

Hi Ricco

Thanks for the update.
Question: Will 4 x 50mm gravity pipes be enough to handle 30 cubes of water per hour seeing that your filter chambers are all on pond level?

Christie

Well spotted CvZ!

Hi Ricco
With a pond of 48 000l in my opinion your turnover rate should be a minimum of once per hour depending on the media used. KI works well with a slow turnover rate of once an hour. The x 4 110mm pipes can delver 12 to 14000l p/h so 4 pumps at a minimum of 12000l p/h is required.

My experience is only with the 1200lt waterfall pumps drawing 180w per pump. I would recommend x3 55w Quarts UV lights.

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all the replies and advice.
For everyone that wanted to know about the low energy pumps (powerheads), here is a photo of the pump. I bought them from William at happy koi. Oh and sorry they only use 26Watts not 27 as I said earlier. The quality of the photo's is unfortunately not that great.

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Jan & Bobby, thanks for the advice about the 55W UV's, unfortunately we already bought the 4 x 15 Watt UV's. I guess that we will have to run them for a while, but it should not be a problem to change them later if it is required.
Jan, the UV bulbs can be changed without too much water running out. We have installed isolation valves on the discharge of the UV's and as the low energy pumps discharge is above the water level, only a bit of water will run out and then stop.
The 4 returns to the pond was installed in such a way that it creates an anti-clockwise rotation in the pond. I did not even think about the direction of the circulation, but I guess we had a 50% chance of getting it right. Lucky.

For now the return from the skimmer will just go directly back into the pond via a waterfall, but we did allow for enough space in the dry chamber to install a bubble bead filter if necessary at a later stage.

CvZ, I am also a bit concerned about the 4 x 50mm return pipes. My head calculations based on the friction factor throught the pipes at a velocity of around 1,1 m/s. It looks like I will have to lift the water by about 250mm. This will obviously affect the flowrate of the low energy pumps as the higher the lift the lower the volume pumped. I will play around with differrent heights till we get the optimum flowrate. Looking back at it now, I wish that we have installed double the amount of returns as this would have taken the required lift down to just under 100mm.

Anyway, here is some more photo's of the filter build.

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Skimmer going in
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We will post some more pictures during the course of the week.

These power heads are interesting. How do they connect to the pipe work...sorry i've never seen them. 6000l/h at 26watts is amazing. It obviously does not work like a normal water pump.

They are SEIO's wayne.

They are generally used in Marine aquariums for creating flow for corals and various other things such as anemone's

Google them and see.

I never thought of using them for a pond that is ingenious, brilliant actually

Hi Ricco & Angy
Is this filter, water flow and turnover rate your own design ?