BenignVanilla wrote:

I tried a veggie filter before this and I just wasted a bunch of money


I am interested to hear more about this, as my VF is my only filtration.

Long story short: I built a 1300 gallon pond with 2 small koi and 4
shibunkin late one year. Pea green soup. Year 2: VF sounds good so I
added a 10' long stream full of lava rock and pea gravel with the intent
of filling it with plants. It plugged up in less than a month. Tore it
all out. Bought 15-20 iris, a few taro, and some other cool looking
plants on line, a bunch of mesh pots, lots of hyacinth, put the whole
thing in the pond. Yellow hyacinth, yellow iris, one taro going crazy.
*Green* water. If people say you need to dip hyacinth in fertilizer tank
when they turn yellow how can they possibly be filtering the pond? Check
water, add iron and potash and epsom salts. Remember, 2 small koi and 4
shibunkin in 1300 gallons. Sad plants, sad hyacinth, green water.
Shibunkin have babies. Lots of babies. Good news is fish couldn't care
less about green water. Year 3: Added big air pump to circulate water
like you wouldn't believe (fun watching fish swim up stream!). No
change. Add lots of surface area in pond. Fish happy, water green, sick
plants. 40-50 small shibunkin. Went camping. Considered ripping out the
whole thing except the water fall sounded nice. Year 4: Shibunkin
getting mid size. Pulled air pump. Decide I need a lot of surface area
so I get 110 lbs of beany baby beads real cheap, along with a stock
tank. Beads clog with green slime in 2 weeks. Will be selling lots of
beads soon on ebay. Buy 25000 drinking straws cheap and add 16 sq ft of
quilt batting for a prefilter that I rinse out every other week. That
was May. Now, water so clear I can see fish shadows on the bottom of the
pond. The plants are growing this year, although not as much as I'd
like. And guess what? More babies.

So, biological filters do a lot more than remove ammonia. Full sun will
not cause algae. Plants need more than fish waste, epsom salts, and
potash to grow. Clear ponds need lots of nutrients in them if the plants
are to grow. Lots of filter designs on the net will plug. I don't know
what biological filters do and I don't know what pond plants need. I
suspect the filters have a byproduct that kills the algae and from there
added nutrients go to the plants, but I'm not sure. Pond plants (or a
VF) might *require* a large fish load or added fertilizer.

People may tell you what works for them but it might not work for you
because, I suspect, people don't know what's going on in their own
ponds. However, pond store people know less so I'd stick with rec.ponds,
and add a grain of salt.

Matt