Homemade pond filters

The Nitrogen cycle operates within a pond filters. For maximum performance your pond filter needs oxygen, food source and biomedia on which bacteria can reside. Pond filters come in all shapes and sizes. Choose your pond filter wisely. If you keep fish a pond filter is essential. The simplest of all pond filters is the black box type. Building a pond filter of such a type requires a rectangular or other shaped plastic box which contains some or all of the following. It is easy to make home made pond filters once you have an appreciation of the following:

• Open cell foam used to mainly remove leaves, and larger particles of whatever can get into the pond filter. It has a limited amount of biological capacity
• Brushes as an alternative or adjunct to foam to remove solids
• Plastic tubes, plastic balls or other plastic shapes or other biomedia on which bacteria accumulate
• Inlet pipe, outlet pipe and overflow pipes back into the pond perhaps. If you want to see how easy a diy pond filter is go to your nearest stockist and take a look inside one of the pond filters you see there.
• The simplest homemade pond filters contain almost anything you can imagine from hair curlers to gravel.

Homemade pond filters are easily constructed to save money. Such a box type pond filters comes in different sizes to cater for different pond volumes. However a lot of this is to do with parting you from your money. My book will show you how to dramatically improve the biological capability of any box type pond filter. This will save you a stack of money.

Build a biofilter

You can make a pond filter (diy pond filter) by incorporating inside a suitable container a solids catching device such as stiff bristle brushes and or flat foam. This would act as the first stage. You can make a pond filter second stage using biomedia through which water pours or flows (up or down the pond filter media). This pond filter media must be kept wet using recirculated water at all times. That is how simple it is to make a diy pond filter.

You must always remember there is a lot of salesmanship around pond filter selection. The prices of some larger pond filters are quite ridiculous I think. Do try to understand as much as you can about biofiltration and save yourself a lot of money.

You might want to take a peek inside commercial box pond filters and take home the ideas. Then create a diy pond filter; diy pond filters can be just as effective as most commercial box type not necessarily homemade pond filters.

The box type pond filter operates under gravity conditions and generally is placed at the highest point in the water circuit. My book identifies other ways of placing pond filters to save money and space - the cyprio bioforce filter introduced around 1998 introduced the concept of a small scale pressure filter to pond keeping. Since then numerous other companies have introduced similar designs to the cyprio bioforce filter.

The above components play a specific role in the operation of pond filters.

Open cell foam most pond filters have this in them. It is designed to remove larger solid particles from the water before the water enters the biological chamber (a fancy word for the place where the media is located). The foam also becomes a holding place for bacteria within the biofilter. Some designs spray the water onto the foam surface inside the biofilter as a means to introduce more oxygen. It is a gimmick.

Brushes (look like large bottle brushes) these tend to be found in larger box filters. They are designed to catch solids much like the foam. In very large very well oxygenated filters brushes can make a difference. For the rest they are a waste of money in my opinion.

Plastic shapes acting as biomedia the most common are ridged plastic tubing and things that look like hair curlers. The purpose is very simply to allow surface area to be provided onto which bacteria can create their colonies so that the nitrogen cycle can take place efficiently. These shapes generally have small surface area per unit of volume and they provide little resistance to flow of water through the biofilter. Items like flocor or bio balls or whatever name is used is generically referred to as biomedia. Not all biomedia is the same.

Connecting and overflow pipes are there for obvious reasons.

One important criterion to bear in mind is that water flowing into a gravity biofilter must be able to come out fast enough. You run the risk of pumping you pond dry if you try to pump more water in than can come out of the outlet pipe. Look for a biofilter with large outlet pipes, or even two outlets. Sounds obvious but believe me it has happened.

Some people refer to uv pond filters. You should note that the term uv pond filters or uv filters for water gardens refers to items NOT designed to purify water but to remove the pea soup appearance of pond water. uv filters for water gardens are covered in a different web site - see the ultra violet links. Pond filters with uv are however commonplace and can save a lot of hassle since it is normally simpler to install combined pond filters with uv than the two separate components.

If you prefer to buy a basic pond filter try here ...

How to select a bio filter for the average garden pond

Typically therefore a filter will claim to handle or purify up to 5,000 litres of pond water. The claim will be based upon qualifications such as fish stock density, amount of food fed and so on. If you can afford it always go slightly bigger to get better performance. You need a UV + Bio Pond Filter to keep your fish alive and the water clean clear of green algae & healthy

Here are THE 2 CRITICAL facts about  UV + Bio Pond Filters ...

1. The UV section CLEARS water of green or brown algae

2. The BIO FILTER section CLEANS the pond water and removes dead algae killed by the UV

How to make the right choice is simple. You ONLY need to know the volume of your pond to choose the right system for 90% of all garden fish pond situations. See TABLE below for filter with or without UV