Planning a new pond and Hi
 

Hi,

This is my 1st post on here. I'm Dan and I'm 16. Im from the UK and I am a bit of a mad ponder. My current pond is pretty feeble. about 4ft square and 35cm deep with small filter and waterfall. Has 4 goldfish, 1 white/ orange comet and 1 shubunkin.

Hypothetically if I were to build a new pond I am going to build a 1ft wall raised type which has 2 planting shelves and is about 1m (3.33ft) deep. It will be about 2m (about 6ft) long by 1.5m (5ft)wide. Still quite small but a bit bigger. It would have water reentry from a garage wall through a ceramic pipe and hopefully filter systems would be housed inside a garage.

I hope to stock your normal fish such as Goldfish, coments, shubunkins etc and not koi because the pond is still too small.

Anyway a rough calculation brings the pond volume to be 1950 litres (433 gal).

Anyway I need a bio/ mech filter, UV clarifier, pump package at a good price. I have seen various systems on the net but I would like your comments on which makes are good. I like the look of the green genie and fishmate systems and need feedback on these.

I like a fast flow rate in my pond to air aeration and keep waste movement going to prevent settlement in the pond. I would like about 1250 lph movement from the new pump and would use my current 600lph and my current filter for a second filter which I will stock with different media at a later date unless anyone has any suggestions for the old kit?

Airation wise ive seen some japanese piston (not cheap diaphram) air pumps that do baout 50 litres a min air output. I think 1 airstone in each filter to give benificial bacteria some O2 but might also fit 2 air rings/stones to the lowest area in the pond near to the pump to help churn up and shift sediment which I belive can store bad ammonia.

So any chance of a system like this for under £100. I dont need any extras ontop of this as I have budgeted for hosing and the like but if you can get it me for less than £100 that would be brill! thats a pump and boi/mech/UV package.

Also any opinions on systems like fismate and green genie are appreciated + any more advice welcome.

Thanks,

Daniel

Hi Daniel!
Hopefully you'll get some answers from some UK
ponders.
I just wanted to say hi to a mad ponder and if you
are this far along at this age who knows where you'll
be at our collective ages on rec.ponds. Ponder
Extremus of the Universe and we'll be proud to say we
knew you *when*.

Good luck with your project and your answers and
we'd love for you to stick around and help out with
our ponders across the big pond.

kathy :-) www.blogfromthebog.com
this week's entry - water striders!
Pond 101 page for new pond keepers ~
http://hometown.aol.com/ka30p/myhomepage/garden.html

"Daniel Finn" wrote in message
...

Hi,

This is my 1st post on here. I'm Dan and I'm 16. Im from the UK and I
am a bit of a mad ponder. My current pond is pretty feeble. about 4ft
square and 35cm deep with small filter and waterfall. Has 4 goldfish, 1
white/ orange comet and 1 shubunkin.
====================
Hi Daniel. Welcome to rec.ponds. Keep us updated on your progress. :-)
--
McKoi.... the frugal ponder...
My Pond Page http://tinyurl.com/cuq5b
~~~ }((((o ~~~ }{{{{o ~~~ }(((((o

Hi,

Thanks for the warm welcome. Is this forum a multi country forum. If so thats quite cool. The ones I am on are quite divided.

Anywhoo I hope to stick around and I will be more than happy to help anyone who is stuck. I'm not a newbie to the pond game as this new ponds will be my 4th pond project and I want to build it as big as I can as I always see the bigger the better, Easier to get ecological balance etc.

I am steering towards the fishmate compact 8w UV and bio/ mech filter and a fishmate pump of about 1500 litre/ hour.

I would love to do something like running my current 600lph pump into my ecocell 2200 filter but use a spray bar to aerate the water or maybe use a ventur into the filter but this might cause too much movement. I would then use the ecocell as a secondary filter but use better filter media like some nice brushes and some flocor type stuff.

I could then run the fishmate pump and filter as the main filtration system with additional air stones.

Does anyone know what filter media the fishmate gravity fed compact filter uses? I cant really tell from the pictures.

Thanks,

Daniel

So any chance of a system like this for under £100. I dont need any
extras ontop of this as I have budgeted for hosing and the like but if
you can get it me for less than £100 that would be brill! thats a pump
and boi/mech/UV package.

Also any opinions on systems like fismate and green genie are
appreciated + any more advice welcome.

Thanks,

Daniel

I don't think you'll manage it new for under £100, but depending on location
of your pond (full sun, depth under 2 ", usually adds 50% to the pump and
filter system you're running.

FWIW I'm using a Hozelock Ecoclear 4500 and 2200 systems.
Each system comes with a pump that will handle solids, and a pressurised
filter with UV.
The 4500 can be had for £150 new, the 2200 I've seen for £120.
More he http://www.hozelock.com/aquatics/I053.asp?region=ROW

Peter