Homemade Biological Pond Filter

this is my old fish fund Fulton it's a Bioforce 3000 UV the 3000 refers to a filter capable of filtering a pond up to 3000 meters and the UV means that it has of ultraviolet light as part of the filtration method I purchased this water around 6 years ago off the internet and it was advertised as a filter capable of filtering a fish pond up to 3,000 gallons I later discovered there was actually three thousand meters lot gallons but by then I had already discovered that this Fulton was justly capable of keeping the water pond clean not only did this Poulter struggle to keep our water clean but I had a number of issues with it shortly after I purchased it the first issue was that the inlet and outlet pipes both broke next the inlet water fitting cracked into and lastly the clogged filter indicated jammed and then never worked it was also very expensive to maintain this falter as yearly you would have to replace the pond filter material which was actually very expensive so I decided to make my own fault Rob did some research on the internet and I found that most users were saying that they could make a fault at for roughly $25 or less in my experience even though I got a lot of materials from our fault free of Craigslist a story ended up paying about $60 so depending on the size of your fault or size your pond and the number of components you need to purchase you should probably bank on spanning between fifty to hundred dollars to make your own filter in order to make a biological filter you will need to start with the tote the size a total depend on the size your pond and the number of fishes my pond is around a thousand gallons and I'm using a 14 gallon rugged tote I purchased at Lowe's for around $6 the plumbing inside the tote is really simple you'll need an inlet pipe and an outlet pipe the outlet pipe should be larger than the inlet I'm using a one and a half inch pipe for the inlet and a two inch pipe for the outlet you need to place the inlet pipe along the top your tote and the outlet pipe around halfway up one side or at least a distance above your bacterial colony the outlet pipe needs to extend both upwards and downwards and to do this I'm using a tee joint the PVC pipes are connected between the inside of your tote and the outside world with bulkhead fittings these were the most expensive part of my homemade filter costing around $18 for both for both bulkhead fittings I purchased them as slip fitting on the inside and threaded on the outside I just used friction foot on the inside where it is not critical if the pipes are not absolutely watertight and the threaded fitting on the outsides allow me the flexibility to disconnect everything in case I need to move the filter the inlet pipe should be drilled so that the water coming in from the pond is showered over the filter material the outlet stem will draw water up from the bottom of the tote so you will also need to drill holes at the bottom of the outlet stem to facilitate this the upper pipe will extend upwards to act as an overflow safety mechanism it is normal to use three layers of filter material starting with coarse and following that by medium and final layers of filter material the coarse material will trap the larger waste products first and the final wastes will be trapped by the finer filter layers to keep the overall cost as low as possible I purchased a roll of filter material of ebay for around seven dollars the material is a one-inch thick sandwich of coarse and fine material I just stacked several layers of the material on top of each other which is not ideal but seems to work just fine finally I'm using bio balls for growing my bacterial colony and I was fortunate enough to find around two gallons of these for free off Craigslist other photos I saw online suggested using plastic pots gaara's as the medium to grow your biological bacteria I found a set on Amazon for cheaper than purchasing these at the dollar store as other people were suggesting and I purchased these before I found the bio balls for free so I am stacking these on top of the bio balls but you really only need one or the other finally you'll need to make some sort of support system to keep your faulty material above the bio balls I used a plastic mesh container that was used to grow seedlings in and I cut it to fit neatly in the tote one thing to highlight is the need for an overflow system the reason for this is because the top layers of falta material can become clogged over time slowing down the water flow through the filter material this can result in an increase in the water level in the tote the overflow pipe will allow the excess water to escape in order to prevent the water level from rising to the top of the tote and overflowing the filter system this is pretty much all you need to know in order to make a simple biological filter for your pond if you want to learn more about how pond filters actually work in google pond nitrogen cycle [Music] [Music] 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Channel: Trevor's Workshop

Views: 1,291,774

Rating: 4.7826648 out of 5

Keywords: pond filter, homemade bio filter, diy bio filter, diy pond filter, bio filter, biological filter, skippy, pond, trevor green, trevors workshop, diy

Id: N45FP6ctLes

Length: 13min 35sec (815 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 19 2013