Moments before taking that leap of faith into the pond ~ janj at
was heard opining:
What is your filter material made of?
I pre-filter with the screen door stuff.
Yes, I have that also. I wrap it around pumps to make smaller filters. It
does work well and hoses off easily.
Then it goes to open cell foam, that is only cleaned once/year.
I haven't seen that around here. The algae and other solids go through it?
My filter material seems to clog more with algae and plant bits than
anything else.
Ours is some very expensive thick
white material we bought at a LFS that caters to the pond crowd. He
only carries the best products. It's like white brillo but tougher
and less dense. It's about 2 1/2" thick and seems to be made of
some kind of extremely tough plastic.
Sounds like Matala, I think it is called. Can you find a picture on
the web?
I have the black Matalia for sure and it hoses out easily. I didn't see the
snow white filter material. It's as open as the black but the pads are much
thicker and don't hose out as easily. It's stiff and hard to work with.
Maybe your filter isn't big enough? ~ jan
I don't really know how large the filter *pad* should be per koi. I wish
there was a way to figure that out. But then there are other critters in
the ponds as well - small green frogs, tadpoles and loads of newts all
adding to the filter's burden. :0( There is never an ammonia or nitrite
reading in any of my ponds. Algae comes and goes even with the large number
of plants. Our homemade filters work as well as the Tetra filters but are
shallower and have a larger area to catch the solids. Again, even in the
less populated tanks the solids appear to be mainly algae and plant bits.
When I sold all those young koi (over 300) a few weeks ago and drained the
680g tank.... I couldn't believe my eyes! There was virtually NOTHING on
the bottom but a coating of algae,... no mulm, no plant parts... nothing!
There was nothing to clean.
--
Koi-Lo....
Frugal ponding since 1995.
Aquariums since 1952.
My Pond & Aquarium Pages:
http://tinyurl.com/9do58
*Note: There are several *Koi-Lo's*
on the pond and aquaria groups.
~~~ }((((o ~~~ }{{{{o ~~~ }(((((o