On Thu, 26 May 2005 08:26:56 -0700, ~ janj JJsPond.us wrote:

Gorgeous setting! Interesting choice of the barrel, fermentation. ~ jan

BV inspired? I'd been looking round for something suitable for a long
while and saw this in Wilko (a hardware chain in the UK - Mostly in the
north) for GBP10 (roughly USD16). I got the size wrong in the comments,
it's only 5 gallons, now corrected.

I don't know whether you remember the problems we had at the beginning
of last year with the systemic bacteria but you helped with the
diagnosis and then we got an antibiotic from the vet. I think the root
cause was the poor filtration and we have been working on it since
then. We have a distinct lack of space for the traditional approach.

We tried a Fishmate pressurised filter but it even let tadpoles
through!!! We fitted inlet and outlet screens to it last year and
filled it with beads and that at least got it to filter. Unfortunately
it's connections were so restrictive that we couldn't get sufficient
water flow for it to keep the bottom clean and the backflush wasn't
very effective. This wasn't helped by the Otter Maximus pump, a caged
solids handling pump where once the lower intakes of the cage clogged
it only filtered the clear water taken in from the upper half of the
cage. We didn't get inches of muck on the bottom but I knew there had
to be some way of getting it it better. The Fishmate was too small
anyway and we were having to backflush it every day and dismantle it
every few weeks to wash the muck off the beads.

Luckily the Otter Maximus failed this year and we got a Blagdon Torrent
pump http://www.pumpsandspares.com/blagdo...orrent8000.php which
has a bottom intake and works very like a bottom drain. When we first
started this one up we had to backflush the filter three times a day so
we didn't let it run overnight but now it's only every two or three
days and even then the flow is as high as it was with the freshly
cleaned Fishmate. It will probably get backflushed once a week even if
it doesn't need it since it's a handy way of ensuring the partial water
changes.

Wow, I'm sorry but I think I got carried away a bit. It's hard to stop
me talking about ponds :-)

--
Regards - Rodney Pont
The from address exists but is mostly dumped,
please send any emails to the address below
e-mail ngpsm4 (at) infohitsystems (dot) ltd (dot) uk