Top man your dad is, solving those little problems and making them better and enjoying it. I’ve just started my raised sleeper pond, 2.2 x 1.2 x 0.6m and will use a 240ltr wheelie bin filled with rocks, pebbles then gravel as the filter media, the water will then flow down a pebble and gravel and planted waterfall back to the pond. If my calculations are right I should only need to drain the wheelie bin once every 12 months or 6 months if really hot during the summer. Top respect to you dad, great man.
Now thats brilliant, dad is a genius to come up with all that. Ive seen ponds with tens of thousands spent on filters when all you need is a few water butts, some pipeline and an imagination. Well done dad, top man and i will be copying some of this.
As a plumber, aquarium hobbyist, gardener and fisherman, the idea of turning a front yard garden bed into a 2wx10lx 4 deep baitfish or goldfish pond is exciting. From experience, I know I want an easily accessible and serviceable filter. I really like your dad's innovations. Being in Canada I'll have to account for a few weeks at -20 to -30°c, but I have ideas cooking now. Really enjoy your videos sharing a practical approach, among all the pie in the sky pond stuff here on UA-cam.
Great to see a nice pond with out the branded, overpriced and not up to the job £3000 filter system from the local koi shop! In process of building a bigger pond with bottom drain so was looking for ideas for a DIY system to show exactly the point you've made! Nice one
I have done exactly the same. My pond is 6' deep and at ground level, i just took my bottom drain to a plastic sump and dropped my pump in, the just pump across to an above ground screenmatic. so easy to sort if you have pump issues etc.
I have 4inch pipe coming out out the ground with 2 inch hard pipe and a 4 inch rubber pipe bung at the bottom of the pipe using a dry pump to eazy pod works a treat
Wow! really impressive, i would like something this, especially not having the filter right in the.pond, but ddnt hv a clue about where to start, very inspirational, thank u.
This is one way of doing it, but not a very good way. As many have already pointed out, you do not want the first piece of filter equipment after the pond's drain to be the pump. All this will do is puree the waste and make it much more difficult for the rest of the filters to remove it from the water column. Here's a much better way: What you want is a pre-filter between the pond and the pump connected via the bottom drain. This is the real purpose of a pit and gravity fed system, but if you don't want to dig a pit, buy a Zakki sieve. A Zakki sieve is a sieve within an air-tight container. This allows the owner to place the sieve above the water level of the pond. Everything below 250 microns is collected in the seive screen and the pump pulls the water from the bottom of the sieve and pushes it on to the rest of the filters. Using this kind of sieve also allows you to use an external pump verses a submersible pump, which has a tendency to fail much quicker. As for thepOndman setup, the Zakki sieve can sit where the submersible pump container is now, or you can set it inside the shed with all of the other pieces of pond equipment. Good luck and reach out if you want to see my setup that uses a Zakki sieve on two 5' bottom drains.
Koi pond is awesome system but I think the saving the rain water is more interesting. What happens in the winter when it snows do the drums have to be empty and lines vacuumed? The auto clean is brilliant
Very interesting and very intelligent system. I'm from Brazil and I had a little difficulty understanding all the details of the flow. Would it be possible to ask your father to make a diagram with blocks and arrows showing each step of the process and where the bombs are? I also didn't really understand how the screen filter works, so I would be grateful if you could explain it better. Thank you and congratulations on the project.
Nice half Gravity have pumped you can do so much more when the return to a pond is Gravity thats part of why i went this way plus my ponds on a hill. Happy to hit a Sub for you have a good weekend
I find hose pipe gets air locks and dirt stuck. The thin size is for high pressure mains so I find it only needs one ball of air in the pipe to stop working.
Just some thoughts... For the bottom drain container on the side of the pond what if you installed verticle sieve screens of different microns that filter the water before the pump?
Hi again doesn't the rainwater cause a build up of algae with its rich nutrients. Don't get me wrong but im tempted to try this instead of tap water and putting in the declorinater solutions..
Hi John rainwater has pretty much nothing in it so you won’t get a build up of nutrients which is great. It’s not a bad idea to add a buffer to rainwater to keep the gh/kh etc at a good level and which helps with the mineral content. Buffer is cheap I’ll put a link in below. Lots of people don’t use it but to be fair I would do it every other water change. And also if you harvest water with a rainpod you will actually pay for the pod fairly quickly depending on how much water you use and then topping up your pond and using water for the garden is a completely free task. www.swelluk.com/aqua-source-aqua-balance-gh-and-kh-buffer-up?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIjODq1f6l_AIVysvtCh3j2AAOEAQYAyABEgK3m_D_BwE#aqua-balance-gh-and-kh-buffer-up-1kg
55W UVC lamp for how many litres? 4000? Crikey the commercial boxes are underpowered then! Interetsing video, though why not put the pump directly into the pond? What's the benefit of having a bottom drain and separate tank?
The pond in the vid is 2000g so approx 14k litres. Bottom drains are usually in the lowest part of the pond, no pipes in view so it’s More pleasing on the eye, it costs a lot less to do it the way in the video cheers
@@thep0ndman thanks. I've since learnt the differences between the more common gravity setup where the pump is in the pond basically pumping dirty water and probable macerating the waste, bottom drain setup it's pumping clean water, so the mechanical filters are less stressed in that the crud is spread in size better. Makes sense as in my pond, it's the fine filter that gets clogged every 24 hours, the other coarser ones are working fine.
Hi FB. Not not really, we are just showing another way of utilizing a bottom drain so you can incorporate a "pump fed" or above water level filter system rather than going through the expense a filter system at the same level of the pond (gravity). You can still run a water fall or simply increase pond circulation by adding an extra pump in the "pump chamber" connected to multiple pond inlets. I think most people would always prefer a bottom drain but not everybody has the space/money for a water level filter room. Always nice to have an option i guess. Cheers thep0ndman.
@@dbuts5136 Yup, which does 2 things:- 1. Chop the waste up, making it more difficult to trap. 2. Put more strain and wear on the pump, shortening it’s life. It does however what they intended it to do, which is enable the filter to be sited in an alternative location!
Love a homemade filter. All my aquariums and pond use them along with plants. Really low maintenance and crystal clear. Too many go high tech before learning to balance a natural system. So many forums are full of people running very expensive, high-tech algae farms. Hats off to your Dad
Hi Craig was definitely expecting different opinions on this. It’s just a way of using a bottom drain with a pump fed filter system as lots of people like the bottom drain idea but not the expense of a gravity system. Yes the pump may “chop” debris but as long as the filter catches it doesn’t make much difference. The pump will need maintaining as it’s first in line but either way the debris will be manually removed at some point by somebody. Cheers
Just and idea for the water but straight from BD... could you raise pump up and maybe put a plastic mesh shelf in so to catch all the fish poo and let it settle rather than possibly be chomped up by the pump blades so there's more clean water going from the pump?
So basically what your are saying is that all other filters are completely pointless because all the dirt etc goes into them where all the beneficial bacteria live is a bad idea and all natural healthy ponds have sieve filters to remove all the “unhealthy” debris 😂
@@thep0ndman The whole point of the sieve filter is to take the shit out of the system. Makes zero sense to have the shit drop back into the sytem just to save a little water. You dont need a sieve filter to have a decantation tank.
Hi Thiery! I know the Netherlands is a highly industrialized nation but I doubt your rainwater has too much acid for Koi or any fish for that matter. Koi don't mind mid/low 6 PH to mid/high 8 PH. They wont like a sudden change in PH but gradual is not a problem. If i was you you can buy a test kit if you are that worried take a sample of your rainwater and test it your self. Generally speaking rainwater is fine, Koi are carp, they are an extremely hardy fish. All you need to worry about is your water quality so make sure it is filtered properly, aerated and you are not over feeding them. Ammonia and nitrite are your biggest fish killer. cheers the p0ndman ps hope my dutch is ok =) Hallo Thiery! Ik weet dat Nederland een sterk geïndustrialiseerd land is, maar ik betwijfel of jouw regenwater te veel zuur bevat voor Koi of welke vissen dan ook. Koi vindt het niet erg midden/laag 6 PH tot midden/hoog 8 PH. Ze houden niet van een plotselinge verandering in PH, maar geleidelijk is geen probleem. Als ik jou was, kun je een testkit kopen als je je zorgen maakt, neem een monster van je regenwater en test het zelf. Over het algemeen is regenwater prima, Koi zijn karpers, het zijn extreem winterharde vissen. Het enige waar u zich zorgen over hoeft te maken, is uw waterkwaliteit, dus zorg ervoor dat het goed wordt gefilterd en belucht en dat u ze niet overvoert. Ammoniak en nitriet zijn je grootste visdoder.
@@thep0ndman dag en bedankt voor de reactie zal zeker mijn regenwater testen want zal mijn vijver vernieuwen dit jaar en zal toch veel water nodig hebben
![Koi Pond Filters - Gravity fed vs Pump fed [which is best?]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xM2s6B9AcSI/mqdefault.jpg)
Top man your dad is, solving those little problems and making them better and enjoying it. I’ve just started my raised sleeper pond, 2.2 x 1.2 x 0.6m and will use a 240ltr wheelie bin filled with rocks, pebbles then gravel as the filter media, the water will then flow down a pebble and gravel and planted waterfall back to the pond. If my calculations are right I should only need to drain the wheelie bin once every 12 months or 6 months if really hot during the summer.
Top respect to you dad, great man.
Good stuff! thanks for the comment
Now thats brilliant, dad is a genius to come up with all that. Ive seen ponds with tens of thousands spent on filters when all you need is a few water butts, some pipeline and an imagination. Well done dad, top man and i will be copying some of this.
As a plumber, aquarium hobbyist, gardener and fisherman, the idea of turning a front yard garden bed into a 2wx10lx 4 deep baitfish or goldfish pond is exciting. From experience, I know I want an easily accessible and serviceable filter. I really like your dad's innovations. Being in Canada I'll have to account for a few weeks at -20 to -30°c, but I have ideas cooking now. Really enjoy your videos sharing a practical approach, among all the pie in the sky pond stuff here on UA-cam.
Thanks for the comment wow -30 that is super cold stay safe!!
You are truly gifted sir.. Kudos to your father's work..
Cheers bro
Great to see a nice pond with out the branded, overpriced and not up to the job £3000 filter system from the local koi shop! In process of building a bigger pond with bottom drain so was looking for ideas for a DIY system to show exactly the point you've made! Nice one
Thanks for the comment Neil!
Amazing. Your Dads a genius. 👏👏👏👍
Thank you very much!
that is the cleanest pond water I've seen. great idea!
Thanks Mel!
I have done exactly the same. My pond is 6' deep and at ground level, i just took my bottom drain to a plastic sump and dropped my pump in, the just pump across to an above ground screenmatic. so easy to sort if you have pump issues etc.
Very good! You can even add another pump in the chamber to run a water fall or even just to circulate more water.
I have 4inch pipe coming out out the ground with 2 inch hard pipe and a 4 inch rubber pipe bung at the bottom of the pipe using a dry pump to eazy pod works a treat
Wow! really impressive, i would like something this, especially not having the filter right in the.pond, but ddnt hv a clue about where to start, very inspirational, thank u.
This is one way of doing it, but not a very good way. As many have already pointed out, you do not want the first piece of filter equipment after the pond's drain to be the pump. All this will do is puree the waste and make it much more difficult for the rest of the filters to remove it from the water column. Here's a much better way: What you want is a pre-filter between the pond and the pump connected via the bottom drain. This is the real purpose of a pit and gravity fed system, but if you don't want to dig a pit, buy a Zakki sieve.
A Zakki sieve is a sieve within an air-tight container. This allows the owner to place the sieve above the water level of the pond. Everything below 250 microns is collected in the seive screen and the pump pulls the water from the bottom of the sieve and pushes it on to the rest of the filters. Using this kind of sieve also allows you to use an external pump verses a submersible pump, which has a tendency to fail much quicker. As for thepOndman setup, the Zakki sieve can sit where the submersible pump container is now, or you can set it inside the shed with all of the other pieces of pond equipment. Good luck and reach out if you want to see my setup that uses a Zakki sieve on two 5' bottom drains.
Thanks for the comment. It’s not a food blended yes it may break the waste up abit but it all gets caught in any basic filter 👍
Koi pond is awesome system but I think the saving the rain water is more interesting. What happens in the winter when it snows do the drums have to be empty and lines vacuumed? The auto clean is brilliant
Very interesting and very intelligent system. I'm from Brazil and I had a little difficulty understanding all the details of the flow. Would it be possible to ask your father to make a diagram with blocks and arrows showing each step of the process and where the bombs are? I also didn't really understand how the screen filter works, so I would be grateful if you could explain it better. Thank you and congratulations on the project.
Wow 😲 what a clever setup 👍
Glad you like it!
Nice half Gravity have pumped you can do so much more when the return to a pond is Gravity thats part of why i went this way plus my ponds on a hill. Happy to hit a Sub for you have a good weekend
Thanks for the tips!
CLEVER DAD WELL DONE !!👍👍👍
Thanks 👍
I find hose pipe gets air locks and dirt stuck. The thin size is for high pressure mains so I find it only needs one ball of air in the pipe to stop working.
Great idea many thanks sharing your video 👍👍👍
Most welcome 😊
What kind of valve does your dad use for the seive auto cleaning. Great video by the way...I have a 3 barrel system similer to your dad.
not too sure which bit you mean
@@thep0ndman how does the app switch the water on?
Buy a smart plug and plug your pump into the plug, switch the plug on and off with app on Wi-Fi or normal internet
@thep0ndman makes sense now....sorry I didn't realise he was using pond water...I thought he was using mains water 👍
how about an air lift pump? just bubble rising in the pipe, takes the water with it, and DOESN'T chop up the waste like a normal pump. and it's cool.
Hi, interesting video, liked and subscribed🤓
Thanks for the sub!
I run a kockney Koi multi bay pump Fed
Nice hope it’s all running well. !!
Genius.
👌
Genius!
👊
Just some thoughts... For the bottom drain container on the side of the pond what if you installed verticle sieve screens of different microns that filter the water before the pump?
Makes perfect sense
No plants in Daddy pond lol 😝 👍
You always advocate how important plants are to a pond i didn't see any here is there a reason for this?
Hi again doesn't the rainwater cause a build up of algae with its rich nutrients. Don't get me wrong but im tempted to try this instead of tap water and putting in the declorinater solutions..
Hi John rainwater has pretty much nothing in it so you won’t get a build up of nutrients which is great. It’s not a bad idea to add a buffer to rainwater to keep the gh/kh etc at a good level and which helps with the mineral content. Buffer is cheap I’ll put a link in below. Lots of people don’t use it but to be fair I would do it every other water change. And also if you harvest water with a rainpod you will actually pay for the pod fairly quickly depending on how much water you use and then topping up your pond and using water for the garden is a completely free task.
www.swelluk.com/aqua-source-aqua-balance-gh-and-kh-buffer-up?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIjODq1f6l_AIVysvtCh3j2AAOEAQYAyABEgK3m_D_BwE#aqua-balance-gh-and-kh-buffer-up-1kg
55W UVC lamp for how many litres? 4000? Crikey the commercial boxes are underpowered then! Interetsing video, though why not put the pump directly into the pond? What's the benefit of having a bottom drain and separate tank?
The pond in the vid is 2000g so approx 14k litres. Bottom drains are usually in the lowest part of the pond, no pipes in view so it’s
More pleasing on the eye, it costs a lot less to do it the way in the video cheers
@@thep0ndman thanks. I've since learnt the differences between the more common gravity setup where the pump is in the pond basically pumping dirty water and probable macerating the waste, bottom drain setup it's pumping clean water, so the mechanical filters are less stressed in that the crud is spread in size better. Makes sense as in my pond, it's the fine filter that gets clogged every 24 hours, the other coarser ones are working fine.
The impellers aren’t food processors so it doesn’t make any difference it all gets caught in the filter
@@thep0ndman OK!
Defeats the purpose of a bottom drain gravity system doesn’t it ?
Hi FB. Not not really, we are just showing another way of utilizing a bottom drain so you can incorporate a "pump fed" or above water level filter system rather than going through the expense a filter system at the same level of the pond (gravity). You can still run a water fall or simply increase pond circulation by adding an extra pump in the "pump chamber" connected to multiple pond inlets. I think most people would always prefer a bottom drain but not everybody has the space/money for a water level filter room. Always nice to have an option i guess. Cheers thep0ndman.
100%
Still pumping dirty water.
@@dbuts5136 Yup, which does 2 things:-
1. Chop the waste up, making it more difficult to trap.
2. Put more strain and wear on the pump, shortening it’s life.
It does however what they intended it to do, which is enable the filter to be sited in an alternative location!
Love a homemade filter. All my aquariums and pond use them along with plants. Really low maintenance and crystal clear. Too many go high tech before learning to balance a natural system. So many forums are full of people running very expensive, high-tech algae farms. Hats off to your Dad
This is not gravity feed.... the pump still chops up the sh## waste.. not good
Hi Craig was definitely expecting different opinions on this. It’s just a way of using a bottom drain with a pump fed filter system as lots of people like the bottom drain idea but not the expense of a gravity system. Yes the pump may “chop” debris but as long as the filter catches it doesn’t make much difference. The pump will need maintaining as it’s first in line but either way the debris will be manually removed at some point by somebody. Cheers
Just and idea for the water but straight from BD... could you raise pump up and maybe put a plastic mesh shelf in so to catch all the fish poo and let it settle rather than possibly be chomped up by the pump blades so there's more clean water going from the pump?
A bit pointless to have a sieve filter and have that junk stay in the system
So basically what your are saying is that all other filters are completely pointless because all the dirt etc goes into them where all the beneficial bacteria live is a bad idea and all natural healthy ponds have sieve filters to remove all the “unhealthy” debris 😂
@@thep0ndman The whole point of the sieve filter is to take the shit out of the system. Makes zero sense to have the shit drop back into the sytem just to save a little water. You dont need a sieve filter to have a decantation tank.
Dag men zegt toch dat regen water niet goed is voor koi dat het te zuur is
Hi Thiery! I know the Netherlands is a highly industrialized nation but I doubt your rainwater has too much acid for Koi or any fish for that matter. Koi don't mind mid/low 6 PH to mid/high 8 PH. They wont like a sudden change in PH but gradual is not a problem. If i was you you can buy a test kit if you are that worried take a sample of your rainwater and test it your self. Generally speaking rainwater is fine, Koi are carp, they are an extremely hardy fish. All you need to worry about is your water quality so make sure it is filtered properly, aerated and you are not over feeding them. Ammonia and nitrite are your biggest fish killer. cheers the p0ndman ps hope my dutch is ok =)
Hallo Thiery! Ik weet dat Nederland een sterk geïndustrialiseerd land is, maar ik betwijfel of jouw regenwater te veel zuur bevat voor Koi of welke vissen dan ook. Koi vindt het niet erg midden/laag 6 PH tot midden/hoog 8 PH. Ze houden niet van een plotselinge verandering in PH, maar geleidelijk is geen probleem. Als ik jou was, kun je een testkit kopen als je je zorgen maakt, neem een monster van je regenwater en test het zelf. Over het algemeen is regenwater prima, Koi zijn karpers, het zijn extreem winterharde vissen. Het enige waar u zich zorgen over hoeft te maken, is uw waterkwaliteit, dus zorg ervoor dat het goed wordt gefilterd en belucht en dat u ze niet overvoert. Ammoniak en nitriet zijn je grootste visdoder.
@@thep0ndman dag en bedankt voor de reactie zal zeker mijn regenwater testen want zal mijn vijver vernieuwen dit jaar en zal toch veel water nodig hebben