"John Hines" wrote in message
...
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It isn't hard, get a clear glass tumbler out of the kitchen, fill it
with pond water, shake up, and see how long it takes for the stuff to
settle out to the bottom.

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A good idea if my pond existed anywhere but on and paper and in that muddy
hole I started digging in October. *laugh* I was hoping to design and build
this, and have it part of the pond from day one. I wonder if I could do a
test using some muddy water from the hole? Clearly it is much dirtier now
then the pond will ever get. I wonder if that would give a valid barometer
of anything?

I realize that I have a mind block on a true settlement tank, so I am going
to beat that to death before I give in. I don't want to have nine or ten 55
gallons barrels in my yard. I don't want to dig holes to bury them. And I
don't want another 500 gallon pond (well maybe not).

Ok, so here are my current ideas...

One...A large rubbermaid the 30-40 gallon sized, sunk into the ground. Easy
to dig, easy to lift out if necessary. A second smaller rubbermaid 5-10
gallons. I cut out the sides of the smaller rubbermaid and cover it with
screen material. The pump goes in and the lid goes on. This gets sunk in the
larger rubbermaid, maybe sitting up on a cinderblock to keep it near the top
of the larger rubbermaid. Water is pump out of the smaller rubbermaid, which
pulls water into the larger rubbermaid.

Does anyone think this could work? If I am not concerned with a true
settlement tank and just want to keep the large particles from my pump, I
figured this small and simple setup could provide the needed slow down.

Second idea. Two five gallon buckets. Again, sunk in the ground. Pump sits
in one. The other is fed from the bottom. Screening is placed in the top of
the first and the water flows out a pipe in the top of the first bucket and
down into the bottom of the second bucket. Again, just enough to keep large
particles out of the pump. The pump raised off the bottom of the second
bucket then pumps to the veggie filter. Again...easy to dig...easy to lift
and clean.

To sum it up, it takes a while, so the settling rate is how much (%)
settles out per minute.

Zactly. If only I could know this from a book.

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That will work. Try my test in the first point., a few minutes will
allow a great percentage of stuff to settle out.

The idea of the settlement tank is to get the big stuff out.

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Right! So I wonder if a multi chamber unit, that is small in size (a la, my
original 4-5 five gallon bucket idea) but has numerous fallout chambers
would provide the needed large particle drop out, purely based on the large
particles being less likely to survive an up and down churning of water.

Filtering needs to be done in stages,
first you screen out the fish,
then the largest items,
then the smaller items,
and so on.

I like that run down. *laugh*

A settling tank is for the larger, coarser, heavier items, a prefilter
to a finer filter, like the veggie filter.

I plan to keep my veggie fliter to a shallow foot or so in depth. So again,
I wonder if I even need a settlement tank. I wouldn't mind having to clean a
1 foot deep pond out every now and then. I would think it would be fairly
easy.

BV.