bannrikae wrote:
Hi Davidm

Sorry to hassel you with more questions.

You say "The basic idea is upflow filtration through heavy matting with
aeration", Skippy dosen't seem to mention anything about extra aeration
in their build,(I may have missed it) have you got any air being
pumped into your filter?

I thought they used to say that, can't find any mention of it on their
website though. Anyway, I found my fish gasping at the surface after the
Skippy filter got going. The very large surface area encourages much
more bacterial growth than previously, and the good aerobic bacteria
have a pretty high demand for oxygen. After adding an air stone to the
filter and to the pond it was all OK. We don't have a waterfall or any
other source of oxygenation.



How big is your pond and what size filter are you using, how many and
what size fish?

Our pond is pretty small, under 1000 gallons. We have 5 koi in there
ranging from 12" up to about 20"


Thanks for your help so far, I'm pretty sure this is the type of filter
that i'm going to build, just need to decide on the right size.

My pond is about 2800 Gals and I will be keeping 12 Koi in there so I'm
thinking a skippy of around 100 - 150 gals should do it.
I think that my pump may be to large though, I have an oase aquamax
8000,(8000 litres/hour) but at the moment, with my current filter the
flow is so fast, the water is only spending about 1 minuet in the
filter.

How does this compare to your setup?

More than double the pond size and number of fish.

Our skippy filter is made using an old Oase filter tank, probably 30
gallons?. We also use an Aquamax pump, but one of the smallest that they
do. Our tank fills to the top in about one minute as well, but I don't
think time in filter is as important as turnover rate for the entire pond.

Sounds like an good filter that you have planned. Good luck cutting up
all of the scrubbing matting, you'll need lots. In my opinion it would
be well worth following the Skippy plans for plumbing and layout. Mine
would work better if the water had more swirl and movement. With that
volume of filtration, you can't really go wrong though. Hope it all
works out.
David