Greetings - i had posted on garden banter but saw a message saying
everyone was now on here, i'm afraid i've not used google groups
before so hope i'm doing everything ok.

Anyway i have bought a house with a pond, not a big pond. It has a
fish mate 2000 fountain and just discovered the pump round the back (a
fish mate 2500UV) which feeds a mini waterfall.

I've just emptied out the pond as it was filthy, full of leaves and
muck and thought i better find out what this equipment actually does.
Now as i say i'm a complete novice with ponds so please be patient!

What does the pump do (apart from feeding a flow of water to the mini
waterfall) does it clean the water? is it just for keeping fish. We've
not had the pump on since moving in would this have stopped the pond
becoming so mucky.
I don't know if i should open up the pump and replace or clean
anything before i fill the pond for summer.

Appreciate any guidance on this!
phil

On Wed, 23 Jun 2010 07:54:03 EDT, sorethumbs wrote:

I posted the below in reply to you on rec.ponds but I don't know if you
will go back to look for replies so it's below as well.

Anyway i have bought a house with a pond, not a big pond. It has a fish
mate 2000 fountain and just discovered the pump round the back (a fish
mate 2500UV) which feeds a mini waterfall.

The Fishmate 2000 will be the pump and there should be a pipe going
from it to the Fishmate 2500UV, unless there was another pump, which is
the filter and also contains an Ultra Violet bulb.

I think this is the filter you have:
http://www.pondkeeper.co.uk/prodpage.asp?ProdID=1165

You should remove the sponge and filter media and clean. Assuming you
don't have fish it's ok to clean them in tapwater since you are
starting the pond up from scratch, the chlorine/chloramine in tapwater
will kill any bacteria.

The UV is to keep the algae down in the water. Only the minute type
that make the water green is affected by the UV, if you get blanket
weed it isn't affected since it doesn't go through the filter. The
bulbs only last about a year and then their output drops off. You may
not need it though and there is no point in replacing the bulb if you
don't have green water.

--
Regards - Rodney Pont
The from address exists but is mostly dumped,
please send any emails to the address below
e-mail rpont (at) gmail (dot) com

Hi Phil,

Welcome to rpm!

Sounds like you have a project before you with the pond. The rule of
thumb is circuklation 2 x pe hour or more for pond maintenance. Your
pump is about right.

If you have a water feature, some of the energy of the pump will be
used pushing water up to the feature. You can estimate actual flow by
timing the filling of a 5 gallon bucket (or its metric equivalent).

Are you planning to introduce fish to your pond? They are good for
regulating mosquitos...and pretty.

Let us know how your project works out.

Jim