The ONLY thing you NEED for a CRYSTAL CLEAR POND

creating and maintaining a Crystal Clear Pond is very easy in fact there's only really one thing you need to understand to be successful you don't need to spend lots of money or high upon professionals you can if you want to but it's not necessary if you don't already know me my name is Kev and the aim of my channel is to help people build and maintain ponds without spending a fortune if that sounds like something that interests you feel free to subscribe and check out my we it o ponds.com so the one thing you need to understand is how a biological Filter Works once you understand what a biological filter is how it works and how to size one for your particular situation you can achieve crystal clear water and a low maintenance Pond pretty much every time so first what is a biological filter a biological filter is a filter whose main job is to grow better beneficial bacteria it's called a biological filter because the filter is alive it's alive with the beneficial bacteria there's lots of different types of bacteria and it can be a real rabbit Warren if you want to go down all the different paths but for this video I'm going to keep it super simple the main type of bacteria we are hoping to grow in our filter is bacteria that process nitrogen when fish Turtles ducks or whatever you are keeping inside your pond produce waste it creates ammonia ammonia is a form of nitrogen and nitrogen is a plant food even the breathing of the living animals inside the pond produce ammonia decaying plant material will also create ammonia so even a pond without livestock will produce ammonia if nothing processes the ammonia plants will grow crazy and so will algae algae is incredibly opportunistic and will take hold much quicker than standard plants but bacteria can react and process ammonia even quicker than algae and these are the bacteria we desperately want in our ponds the more bacteria we have the more ammonia they can process the great news is these bacteria are living all around us they're free and all we need to do is provide the perfect habitat for them to thrive in a pond setting all these bacteria need is wet surfaces to grow on and some oxygen to help them process the ammonia so you're probably thinking while the pond is wet the walls are a surface area there's rocks there's Pebbles and there's plants the pond is exposed to oxygen so won't the bacteria just grow inside the pond and you're right it will but the question is will will it be enough see a pond that has lots of messy turtles will produce a lot more ammonia than a pond with some tadpoles therefore the pond with the turtles needs a lot more bacteria and that means it needs a lot more wet surface area and a lot more oxygen if there isn't enough bacteria the algae will grow and so will fast growing aquatic plants like Duck wheat a clear sign that a pond doesn't have enough BAC Mator is green water the green is a single celled algae feeding on the nitrogen it's just the Classic case of supply and demand the algae demands nitrogen and because there is a supply it grows if the bacteria eats the supply the algae cannot grow so this is why we add a biological filter to a pond or aquarium its entire purpose is to grow these nitrogen processed bacteria my personal favorite type of biological filter is a bog filter but there are lots of different ways that a biological filter can be constructed for this video Let's just explore how a bulk Filter Works to create clean Clear Water a bog filter is a mini Wetland it's using the same technology or biology that nature has used for Millennia basically we're going to pump water from the pond into the bog filter ideally the bog filter is slightly higher than the pond so that the water can be pumped up into the bog and then gravity will carry it back into the pond the bog filter is filled with rock Pebble and plants the water from the pond is pumped into the bottom of the bog filter the water is then forced to rise up through the rock Pebble and plant roots nitrogen processing bacteria are growing on all the surfaces of the bog every Rock every Pebble and every plant route because the water is constantly moving from pond to bog it's mixing with oxygen as the water moves through the bog the bacteria consume oxygen once the water moves right through the bul it's exposed to oxygen again it can then return to the pond via gravity you can use a stream a waterfall or even just a pipe dumping the water from the bog filter back into the pond the mixing of water and air will further add oxygen to the water the beauty of pumping water through a dedicated filter like a bog is that all the water inside the pond is constantly moving through the filter and is guaranteed to come into contact with nitrogen processing bacteria without a pump and dedicated filter you're relying on the natural movement of water be it wind temperature fluctuation or animals moving it around but it's much less consistent a pump moves the same amount of water through the filter every hour and that makes it much more predictable there's certain formulas that I use when I'm deciding how big my bul filter will be what flow rate I use that's available on my website o pond.com if you're interested there'll be a link in the description and so far I've never created a pond that doesn't have clean clear water water when I use a bul filter and that's why it's my go-to for biological filtration I've tested and made other types of biological filters but I find it much harder to size them in relation to the Pond's use of course the downside of a bog filter is that it's a large filter in relation to the pond but I guess that's also what makes it so powerful it can simply grow more bacteria than most of its counterparts it also has other benefits I find for example I never need to do a water changes in my ponds running bul filters and it needs much less maintenance I do still encourage you to look at different types of filters it's quite fascinating all the different ways that water can be filtered but remember if your goal is clean clear water all you need to do is create enough habitat for nitrogen processing bacteria in relation to the amount of nitrogen being being produced large fish Turtles and Ducks produce more nitrogen therefore they need lots of biological filtration if you want to feed Lots you need lots of biological filtration and of course the less nitrogen being produced the less biological filtration you will need I hope this video was helpful I have many videos showing how my ponds and filters were DIY you really don't need to spend a fortune to create a nice healthy Pond thanks for watching see you

Channel: Ozponds

Views: 470,619

Keywords: Backyard Pond, DIY Pond, Pond filter, Ozponds

Id: VniL3yG_yRw

Length: 8min 7sec (487 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2024