A friend of mine is building a small pond. He is using a fiber glass mould with a bottom drain and skimmer. It is not very large – around 5kL. He will be using a sand filter with the bigger gravel and the correct ‘fingers’ in the filter as well as a 25L drum filled with bio balls and a small UV. He is going to use a little stream with rocks and plants as a return to his pond

Since I gave him some of my Koi, I don’t want to stress them to much in the new pond / different environment and would like to help him not to make the same mistakes I did.

My question now is?…. Will it help him if I take his bio-media and gravel and place it in a piece of shading net and ‘hang’ it in my last filter chamber to mature while he is installing his pond / set up. My last filter chamber is empty and the outlet to my pond is about 20 – 30cm lower than my inlet. This creates a lot of air and some violent water flow near the inlet of the chamber.

If it is a good idea to place his new media in this area, how long should I keep it in my pond before he can use it?

By the way, he is using a 25L drum that the abattoirs are using to put the ’casing of sausages(‘derms’)’ in to make ‘Boerewors’ They cost R65 each if someone is interested – excluding transport which might make it an expensive choice

Hi Marius, I believe that there is nothing better to boost a new pond than mature media with colonies of beneficial bacteria on it.

The best would be to rather give him some of your mature media to get his system going, because if you place new media in your pond, it might take a few weeks for the bacteria to estabish on the media.

If you use for instance bioballs, exchange some with new ones. As far as I can remember, you are using matala. You could even give him a sheet of mature matala matting and he can replace it with a new one.

When he transport the biomedia, he should place it in a bag submersed with water to prevent the bacteria from getting dry. When I sell koi to a hobbyist that has a new pond, I normally give him some haircurlers and bioballs in a bag filled with oxygen.