@ Chris ... I am fully aware of the dangers of fertilizers and I spoke to a number of knowledgeable people before I started the fertilizing.

I used Organic Kelp Extract diluted to 60ml/5L water and only dropped around 200ml directly into each plant pot. I had to intervene on behalf of the plants because they were dying off due to the fact that my fish are still small and and I have a large amount of plants in the system. The lack of nutrients crippled the plants and allowed the algae to remain in control. Now my plants are stronger and lots of roots are beginning to appear out of the holes in the pots and they are no longer buckling down before the algae.

Well it is almost exactly 6 months to the day that has passed by since I added my fish. Tiny 6-8 cm little kois that almost looked lost in the two ponds. Each pond did get the number of fish that I expected to be happy once they have grown up.

During this time I went through many phases of anxiety and happiness and these were all well documented here.

Since the fiasco of the pH meter being wrong I have done a full test of all the elements of my ponds during the middle of November and have not tested the water again. The plants looks good ... still struggling here and there but the obvious rise in bio mass in the ponds are showing it's effects.

My water is clear and maintenance is down to cleaning the fiber matting once a day. I will post images of that as soon as my DSL is sorted out.

The bio diversity in the system is developing fabulously and I am very happy with what I see.

The mollies and platies in the final collection chambers are breeding and the population is fast reaching a point where I will need to harvest. The goldfish are doing well, actually too well with the result that they have spread into the koi ponds via the pumps and now I need to find a way to catch them out. I am actually contemplating a predator or two.

Of the initial 98 koi placed in the ponds I have lost two ... 1 to dropsy and one to unknown ailments. I am not concerned about that because it is an acceptable mortality rate for any population transplant

Back in July when I started a feeding session was two shooter glasses with small, tiny pellets. One glass per pond, no food to the goldfish in the veggie pond.

Today I feed around 1.75 liters of small pellets and they will eat more if I give more. The fish vary between 20 to 30cm and I am really impressed with how they are slowly but surely taking up the space in the ponds. I will have to remove a number of fish by the end of the season because I have many that are in same shades of the colour spectrum and I want more variety.

I am glad I stuck it out and allowed the natural system to kick in without adding mechanical components out of frustration. The whole system is busy settling into the surroundings and someone recently mentioned that this is actually not koiponds but a koi garden ... I liked that

I guess I have reached the goals of the vision to a large extent and confirmed my theory that far too many operators make the koi ponds too complex and too expensive. Lots of money are being poured down the drains with overspeccing and overbuilding ponds. From this over indulgence flows serious maintenance issues and in the end lots of heartaches for the inexperienced koi enthusiast.

My next project will be to build a 30,000l little pond complete with integrated bio filter and water polishing ... running on one submersible pump. I want to get to a fully working pond and fish for around R20,000.00

I will keep you posted. Thanks for all the contributions here and remember to keep it simple ... mother nature is a wonderful koi partner to have.

That sounds great - we all followed your saga with interest. Enjoy your water feature.

Yes - the KISS principal - keep it simple stupid .....

What do you mean by an integrated biofilter and mechanical filter?

Regards,
Chris

Chris Neaves wrote:

That sounds great - we all followed your saga with interest. Enjoy your water feature.

Yes - the KISS principal - keep it simple stupid .....

What do you mean by an integrated biofilter and mechanical filter?

If you look at this shot you will notice on the right hand side a series of chambers ...



Now those chambers are fed by the bottom drain. With this project I learned a lot about these chambers and how to get good performance out of them. If they are properly designed you can achieve basically all your filtration from something like this as well as polishing the water with some synthetic fibre. It must include gravel, this coarse filtration to catch the initial solids in the water. Then another gravel bed and plants ... here you will get the dangerous stuff out of the water. Then some more filtration, brushes or shade cloth ... I prefer the brushes now and then some form of polishing to clean the water of all solids that is left. From here you need to cascade the water over some steps into the sump where your pump is.

In this setup your pump is pumping clean water and by doing this you are prolonging your pump life and also preventing the pump from adding to your woes by churning solids up into small solids

I am obviously not handling the various chambers in detail here but I think you can imagine what it will have to look like. With an integrated filter like this you have the advantage that you can depend on gravity to do most of the work and the pump only returns the water to the main inlet source of your pond.

I am an old carp angler and in my mind koi is just colorful carp with the same type of needs as a wild carp. Now carp is not fond of busy water and by this I mean you rarely find them in rapids or in fast flowing channels. For this reason I think it is not natural to jet your water into the ponds and I have a really bad idea of all and any airstones ... the high pitch whistle of that compressed air is surely not good for the sanity of your koi.

So it is my personal feeling that you need to think carefully about your water inlet ... get that water up ... 1 to 1.5 meters is enough and then cascade it as vigorously as you can into your pond. The cascades plays a big role in gas exchange in your water but once it hits that pond it must not be disturbed any longer.



This cascade of mine was designed to be functional but I also had to handle the noise of that waterfall because it is right next to my bedroom window.

Note the structure with the steps each having a deep hollow at the back ... sort of a sound box. This channels all the sound outwards to wards the pool. If you walk along the pool the water noise is really loud but the moment you pass the last box the noise level drops by around 80%. I can hardly hear the waterfall in my room.

Now to get back to my story about the water flow in the pond. From the waterfall the water lands in the pool and flows along the curve towards the outlet on the other end. This creates a slow clockwise flow pattern in the pond with some of the dynamic water going out into the cascade stream towards pond #2.

The bottom drain is about a meter away to the right of the waterfall ... so the water in the pond circles around from the waterfall and then comes back over the bottom drain.

My ponds have extremely quiet water and it is interesting to see when the fish goes down to rest on the bottom, in which areas they do it. Always way back from the waterfall.

Obviously I am saying things now that goes against most of the popular ideas about water circulation and water dynamics but I am confident that by mimicking what I see in nature I am doing things right for the koi.

I have heard stories about people having jets in that generates strong currents and that the fish is forced to "exercise" against those currents ... ja well so be it ... people is known to put their animals on treadmills, force their kids into gymnasiums etc. People sometimes do things without thinking

Why should a koi be exercised ... it is not a predator like a marlin or a snoek or a trout ... it is a lazy, laid back browser and as such needs to have calm water ... that is why they live in huge water bodies like dams and lakes and wide slow moving rivers with them in the deep quiet pools.

It is my opinion that if we claim that we are koi lovers we need to take note of the real requirements for koi to be happy. They bring us a lot of joy and we owe them at least a comfortable and viable environment. To blast them with jet streams and air bubbles is basically cruel. They live in a solid element that transmits the faintest sound for long distances. Why pollute their habitat with the high pitch whine of pressure pumps and airstone jet streams.

As I have said elsewhere ... from 98 fingerlings in July I am now at 96 fish of between 20 and 30cm and I have not seen a single sore or skin lesion ... I am beginning to think that because my koi are happy they are healthy. Lately I have been asked by a number of people to come and look at something that is wrong at their ponds or fish that is sick. In all the instances where I had seen sores or bad infections on fish their was one common factor ... HIGH DENSITY. I have also seen a few pump systems that looks like a space control center with presure pumps all over. The noise in these pump rooms are serious. Now think about it ... that noise transmitted through the water in the pipes into the ponds ... cannot be a peaceful environment.

But enough of my philosophy ... I am way to green in this game to claim experience.

PS ... I see mechanical filters in two main groups ... those that operate with gravity and where strata is used to catch debris and then those that use high pressure pumps ... I am totally against the latter.

Hi Colin

Moet se dat jy 'n pragtige dam het en dat dit 'n reuse profek was. Welgedaan. Ek het baie uit jou posts geleer en kom agter dat ek baie foute met my eie dam gemaak het. Sal so teen volgende week aan my dam werk en verskeie veranderings aanbring.

Weereens geluk met 'n pragtige stukkie werk

Groete
Marius

Dankie Marius ... jy is reg ... dit was a groot projek en op stadiums het amper weggehol.

Ons maak almal foute met ons damme en ons leer baie by mekaar soos ons aangaan. DIt was een van my doelwitte om hierdie joernaal so te skryf dat iemand wat wil begin dit goed kan gebruik as riglyn. Ek het ook baie detail gepos oor die frustrasies wat ek gehad het. DIt is wanneer jy goed so dokumeteer dat jy self baie leer.

Sterkte met jou damme.

Colyn wrote:

DIt was een van my doelwitte om hierdie joernaal so te skryf dat iemand wat wil begin dit goed kan gebruik as riglyn. .

Ek dink jy slaag in jou doel, jou thread het al tot op datum 2123 'views" gehad, still going strong. Dankie nogmaals vir al die inputs.

Ek wonder wat gaan daar by Rhenosterkop aan. Dit is dood stil.

Die damme moet nou al lekker "mature" wees en die koi te groot vir die damme.

Admin wrote:

Ek wonder wat gaan daar by Rhenosterkop aan. Dit is dood stil.

Die damme moet nou al lekker "mature" wees en die koi te groot vir die damme.

Jis ek is jammer ek is so skaars maar dinge in my besigheid is hectic. Ja die damme is great en ek het hel baie klein storietjies om te vertel ... ek sal probeer om in die volgende paar dae so bietjie nuwe shots en stories te post.

It is almost exactly one year since I placed the first koi in my ponds. I placed 94 fish in the two ponds initially and then bought 4 more in the weeks following that initial stocking. I added 6 grass carps, also fingerlings in October.

In the veggie pond I placed 34 goldfish, 8 vlei kurpers and my son "dropped" 4 Oscars and two funny barbel like things in the veggie pond as well.

I placed 8 Platies and 8 Mollies in the final filtration trough. All of these fish were placed in the system in the first 4 weeks and then I placed a strong prohibition on any new fish into that system.

The veggie pond and filtration inhabitants was done for specific reasons, each of those species had a task. The goldfish are extremely effective in cleaning up algae growth. The Platies and Mollies were placed into the system to control the mosquitoes and the tilapia was earmarked to help with algae and other water insects.

Many people, including my own family was of the opinion that I have lost my mind and were unrealistic to think that I will be able to get a self sustaining eco system going.

I battled with algae and mosquitoes and "muggies". But in the meantime the mollies and platies started breeding and by late November the presence of the "muggies" and mosquitoes in the final filter chambers and sump was almost non existent. It was also around this time that I noticed the first small kurpers appearing. The gold fish was also spawning but I noticed very few actually making it to "fish" in that veggie pond. I think between the other goldfish, the kurpers and the oscars the fry did not stand much of a chance.

My plants were struggling because the bio mass in the ponds was too low to sustain them and I was forced to add fertilizer. I used seaweed extract and twice a week we poured around 100ml of a double diluted mixture into every pot. This helped the plants but also fed the damn algae.

In July I bought two earthworm farms from a guy in the Cape and by late October the worms were beginning to produce around 3 litres of "tea" per week. Diluting this 10:1 meant that every week I had 30 liters of organic fertilizer of the highest quality. I started feeding this to the plants both in the pots as well as spraying the leaves. The spray has one huge advantage in that it basically wipes out all sorts of critters that wanted to eat the plants. The most important thing is that this worm tea is completely safe for the fish.

During November and December I lost two koi to what is believed to be dropsy. 2 of the grass carps in the veggie pond also disappeared and only 3 oscars made it to 3 inches.

Now remember all my koi was placed in the ponds as fish of around 70mm long. These fish looked almost lost in the big ponds but I calculated how many big koi could be sustained comfortably in each pond and then stocked those numbers. My idea was that the fish must grow into the ponds.

By late December I began to see the plants were needing less feeding and in January I stopped feeding them all together. The koi was now around 100 to 120mm and the increase in bio mass was obviously beginning to show it's effect in the nutrients that became available to the plants.

By this time my water was crystal clear and this is when I began to notice goldfish in the koi ponds The only way they could get there was through the pumps. Initially I netted a few of them and placed them back in the veggie pond. I also noticed mollies in the veggie pond and the only way they could get there was through the pumps down the whole koi pond system and finally into the veggie pond. Quite amazing to me. They did not hang around in the koi ponds and followed the streams back to the veggie pond.

In April I noticed that there was a really big population of kurpers in the veggie pond and a few in each koi pond. I am sure I am going to see a huge population explosion of kurpers in the Spring. The original 6 is now the size of my hand. I will harvest the kurpers for my own consumption but I am afraid that I may be forced to introduce a fairly aggressive predator into the system to contain the numbers. I am not too happy with the other species in the koi ponds and I am planning to net them all out in Spring and place a fairly big Blue Kurper in each pond to sweep the fry up that pass through the pumps. I initially considered a bass but the problem with bass is that they grow fairly big and a bass will grab anything that fit in it's mouth and that will certainly also stops me from ever again place small koi in my ponds. If anyone has any advice on a good predator I would like to hear it.

I am sure that all of you can imagine the huge frog invasion I had to live through during Spring and I have made peace with that. Frogs are vital in nature and they are under threat. They are also an indicator specie and for that I just tried to scoop out the bulk of the eggs in the mornings while still allowing a fair number to remain in the veggie pond. I have seen how the tadpoles devour algae in my filter chambers and along the edges of the ponds so they are obviously part of the system and I need to accommodate them.

In May I cut feeding the fish back to around 10% of what they got previously. I am feeding 3 times a week now. The result of this is that the koi is keeping the ponds very clean and when the algae started appearing in early June it was only in the two stream beds.

A friend of mine is a Marine biologist and I asked him about my drastic feeding reduction and he told me that it good to starve the fish during winter. According to him it allows the fish to work off their fat layers and trim them out for the Spring. He reckons that if you do not trim them out in winter you get a situation where the seasonal fat layers start building up in the fish and this is apparently the reason for so many fatalities in female koi when they are around 3 years old. I don't know how much is true but it does make sense and the truth is that the species in my ponds are not feeding aggressively in winter time when in the wild.

In mid June we had a severe cold spell and that killed the 3 oscars and fair number of the mollies and platies. It was expected but deep down I hoped they would survive. I really grew fond of those three oscars ... they had some real attitude.

Now the current status is that since December I did not add any chemicals to my ponds and I also did not test the water this year. The plants looks good, the fish is well with no visible ailments and I feel things are fine. I will add some salt this coming week because it will curtail the string algae in the streams and I do have a few fish that flashes from time to time. I will not add too much salt because the plants really suffer if you push the salt too high.

Interesting is that all the hyacinths died off in my ponds.

As I sit here tonight I am of the opinion that I have achieved my goal of establishing a koi garden and that my ponds have matured into a well balanced and healthy eco system. My koi are between 170 and 300mm now. The bulk is in the range of 250mm with a few smaller ones and a few bigger ones. I am happy with their growth. If I fed them more aggressively I am sure they could have been bigger but I do tend to be quite sceptic of overfeeding any animal.

Here are two pictures.



I will post another contribution on more details of the ponds as well as the spinoffs around the ponds. I planted strawberries, mixed birdseed and sweet potatoes. The latter was done to assist in getting the soil ready for next season as well as priding rapid ground cover.

Thanks again to all that contributed here and I am happy to say that I think that I have achieved basically all of my initial goals.

Hi Colyn, looks good, well done!

Admin wrote:

Hi Colyn, looks good, well done!

Thank you Paul.

Tonight I sat down I read the whole thread and I am quite convinced that there are a lot of valuable pieces of information in this thread for any koi keeper ... especially a new one that is planning his pond.

I will take some time and do another detailed photo survey of the ponds to explain exactly how my system works.

I also noticed that the real volumes were never published. In November Chris Vis did a chemical calculation and concluded that the water volume in the whole system was around 140,000 liters. For a day or so I wondered how my initial calculation was so far off ... around 25%. I contacted my friend in Sweden that did the initial calculations for me from the measurements and CAD drawings of the pond excavations. He then pointed out that we did our calculations and measurements from the excavations and not from the finished ponds. The loss of depth from the floor slabs and the loss of volume from the walls and plaster can easily explain the drop in volume. It made sense. I am also happy to have the actual water volumes now because if I should ever need to medicate then I know the volumes involved.

I noticed tonite that I have a thick covering of algae in the stream between pond #2 and the veggie pond. I also noticed that some algae is beginning to grow stone bags that was used in the veggie pond to prop up the plant pots. I will stop feeding the goldfish all together now. From August last year till late December I never fed the fish in the veggie pond but then I noticed the pond was very clean and began to give the fish some food.

As I mentioned previously I am basically starving the koi as well and they are browsing the pond constantly and their is no algae buildup.

I also browsed through some of the other threads here where people are building ponds and I am quite surprised to notice that nobody floats their pond floors on crushed stone. I wonder why

I also notice that most people cast their floors between the walls. This is also strange to me because that is surely an invitation to a leak aat some stage of the dam's life. In anycase I only built these ponds of mine and is no expert but I am just curious about the lack of component unity because you can increase the strength and durability of your pond many time over by making a few simple adjustments in your building plan at zero extra cost and probably save yourself some money in the future.

Thanks again to all that contributed here and I am looking forward to the new season. Two months to go and it will be Spring.

Wow that must have been a huge project but the results are amazing, love how natural it looks with the plants, streams and rocks.

Well done.

Hallo Colyn

If I am not mistaken, you were in the building industry, so maybe you can share a few little secrets with us concerning the construction of ponds. Maybe some info on the use of brick force, foundation and floor construction, salt in plaster.
I am sure many of us will find the information helpful

Regards
Marius

Colyn wrote:

I also notice that most people cast their floors between the walls. This is also strange to me because that is surely an invitation to a leak aat some stage of the dam's life.

I agree, it makes much more sense casting your foundation and floor on one go and do your walls after that. Your foundation will be much stronger.

Admin wrote:

Colyn wrote:

I also notice that most people cast their floors between the walls. This is also strange to me because that is surely an invitation to a leak aat some stage of the dam's life.

I agree, it makes much more sense casting your foundation and floor on one go and do your walls after that. Your foundation will be much stronger.

Paul not only makes it the foundation stronger ... by casting the floor and foundation in one go you create a unified slab that will carry your walls.

Any person that lives in an area that is prone to severe thunder storms will know that when the thunder rolls over the landscape there is a distinct vibration in the ground. It as basically a tiny seismic event. Now this the thing that crack most ponds, pools and dams. Some areas also gets other types of seismic event, Gauteng gets it from mining activity and dolomite collapses. High traffic volumes also sends vibrations through the ground.

During these events your pond is vibrating and if you have used a solid floor and foundation like Paul said you are ok, if your floor was cast between your walls you will most probably eventually see a crack against the wall.

The chance of a crack is just bigger if you are in sand soil or you have a pond that rise above the ground.

You can increase your protection against seismic events many times by floating your floor-foundation unit on crushed stone. This is achieved by placing a layer of 100 to 150mm of crushed stone on the bottom of your excavation before you reinforce en cast your floor. The end result is a slab that lies on a bed of crushed stone. During seismic event the vibrations is transmitted into the stone layer and due to their multi facetted surfaces the forces are deflected and transmitted in millions of directions instead of directly into your pond floor. Most of the forces will be exhausted in clashing with itself in the chaos amongst the stones.

If you live in an area with unstable soil like "turf" then a floating floor is the only thing that will last. In unstable soil you also do not backfill with soil ... that is between the soil and the back of your walls. You fill that cavity with coarse riversand and water it well as you raise the level up to the edge. This sand barrier will also buffer and absorb soil movement. Make this backfill layer at least 200mm wide. As the turf or clay expands and move it will fight with the sand buffer, never really reaching your pond.

I see many photos of pond construction here and the ponds are built like fortresses. Double walls with brickforce with steel reinforced concrete filling between the walls. Yes it is strong, yes it should last but is it really necessary. That is a huge amount of costs that go in there. Truth is that if do not want to employ simple "force deflecting" methods in your basic construction you will eventually run into a seismic event that will overpower your brute force structure and trash it.

Go and talk to farmers that have to put up fences in sandy soil and you will see how easy it really is if you know how to use nature to assist your structure instead of trying to overpower nature. Just sit down for a while and think about all the forces that will work in your structure and then plan the construction around that forces instead of just against the forces.

A 100mm shell reinforced with plain diamond mesh is most probably more than enough for any sunken pond if you float the bottom on stone and backfill with really coarse riversand.

My ponds were done, finished and with fish in for around R0.50c per liter of water ... a far cry from figures quoted by others.

For those that do not have swimming pools and have to choose between that and a pond. By disciplining the swimmers and not allowing diving, bombing and splashing .... swimming amongst your fish is fine, just dont add stuff to their water

One year ago ... on this day I placed 94 little kois in my ponds

They really want to eat

Baie mooi, dis mos waaroor alles gaan.

Looks very healthy and a good variety of colours.

A while back we realised that that Pond #1 had a problem with the main drain that is used to flush the filter chambers. The second chamber contains "Palmiet" and over a period of around 10 months these have completely filled the box in a solid mass of roots and it also managed to get past the stopper I placed on the 110mm outlet.

It took some serious manpower to unroot that bush. Luckily the whole "worm" of roots could be pulled out of the pipe.

I will need to cut a lot of vegetation out at spots. After struggling to get the stuff to grow now I am overwhelmed

The seasonal algae bloom is now in it's end cycle and yesterday we added 200kg of salt to the pond system. Sofar everything is fine and the algae is managed manually in the filters. The salt has reduced them dramatically. This time I isolated my bottom drain filter chambers on pond #1 and #2 ... no need to stress the plants with the salt.

I have a Hamerkop that is showing his face here from time to time and I left him alone because it is not easy to get to the fish but it appears that he managed to grab a 150mm fish without success. However the fish has a nasty scar down the left flank. I have the fish in a tank for treatment.

This incident came a day after I decided to cull the scrap out of my ponds and start getting better quality fish. The incident with the injured fish made me rethink this again and I have decided that with the size of my complex I am not going to risk expensive fish in it. Fact is that I will maintain good pond fish in the system and will build a smaller pond for better fish.

My main reason for my decision lies in the fact that if I should get a health issue in my system I am not going to spend thousands of Rands on treating 120,000 liters of water.

My first priority now is to build some QT facility and then I will start removing the less good looking fish and get some new ones.

I watched my system closely for the past year and I want to do an experiment when I build the QT facility ... I want to see for how much it can be done and do it without using pressurized filtration. I want to scale what I have down to around 8,000 liters.

The green peasoup overwhelmed my ponds last week on Monday and visibility was less than 100mm into the water.

I replaced the two UV's and this morning I can see the pond bottom. Water is still murky but it is improving fast.

I cleaned out the bottom drain and fillter system on pond 1 and 2 as well.

The plants are all showing strong growth now and I think the algae issues should be over for the season now.

It was a bad week on Rhenosterkop ... 2 of my three pumps failed on the same day, hours apart. Both Leaders and both under one year old. I will place a new one in tomorrow but in the meantime the flow is down to a mere trickle.

I cut back severely on feeding the fish while this flow is so slow and the water is staying clear.

Here are two shots I did at the ponds ...

Way back when I started this thread I said that one of my missions was to provide future pond builders with a coherent and documented record of my trials and tribulations. I do believe that many people have found value from what they read here and contributions and responses in the thread indicates that it is read.

Now I started off in this adventure as a complete novice with zero koi experience. What made my life difficult was that although the web is full of information about koiponds I found very little information for a waterbody size of what I planned to do.

My first acid issue was the insistance by many that one needs to turn your whole water volume at least once in a two hour period. That would mean that I must pump around 60,000 liters per hour. It was completely out of the question for me because the electricity consumption was just not possible and further more the size of the piping and pumps would be just not worthwhile for a garden setup like mine.

Two very valued members of this forum sent me messages and they both indicated that I need not let this circulation issue derail my mission because most of the documentation and contributions were not applicable to such a big volume of water. It was mostly Jaco and Chris that encouraged me to proceed.

Once that issue was out of the way I sat down and turned my attention to nature. I had to find answers in nature for most of the potential water quality issues because I have seen hundreds of small water streams and pools in the wild that were healthy and crystal clear.

I did decide right in the beginning that I will not install any pressure systems and that I want the whole complex to be as natural as possible with gravity as my friend.

120,000 liters is what I roughly circulate here and I decided that I will assign at least 30% of that to active bio and natural water quality control. My pods are three separate ponds all linked by a 600mm wide stream and 50mm gravity fed pipes.

All my water enters the system through the primary waterfall at the head of Pond #1.



This is the waterfall and I will now discuss some of the built in features.

When you look at the steps you will note that at each cascade there are some loose quarts stones. Behind that stone there is a hollow stretches around 200mm in under the step to form sort of a cave. There is a layer of stones that goes right to the back of the cave. Water splashing from the cascade keeps the cave wet and lots of water run back and then returns through the stones to the next cascade.

This cave and quarts combination provides me with the following ...

1. Shaded area with lots of surface for bacteria and moss to grow.
2. Lots of cascading and splashing to promote gas exchange.

These two advantages plays an important role in managing nitrites and amoniac as well as adding oxygen to the water.

A very important role of the cave is that it forms a soundbox that projects the noise from the cascading straight out forward accross the pool and as such baffles the sound to such an extent that if you walk along the pool towards the waterfall you will hear that once you are level with cascade the noise from the falling water drops by almost 80%. This was important because my bedroom is 3 meters away from that waterfall. The result of the design is that I cannot here the waterfall at all in my bedroom.

Another feature of this waterfall is that the top receptacle basin contains yellow irises that were packed in between quarts stone and all the water runs through the roots of the plants. Over time it was interesting to see how the plants slowly but surely took hold and as the bio mass in the ponds increased by the growth of the fish the plants became more virile due to the increase in nitrates.

I have one pump that brings water through two UV lights to the waterfall and ends in a spraybar. The other two pumps deliver water to the 2x 5000l Pennels drums in the koppie from where it runs by gravity to the waterfall.



This is a recent shot of the waterfall. Note the condition of the irises and here can also see the effect of my "Boer maak a plan" foam container

Next time I will discuss and explain the bottomdrain system of Pond #1.

Enjoy.