The Filtration for the Damn sorry I meant DAM!

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1 The Filtration for the Damn sorry I meant DAM! I was gently coerced into sharing with you (complements of Boggen) our Damn (sorry Dam) experience and just how much money can be spent (sorry wasted ) by just doing everything WRONG! We all learn from experience this is a simple and unfortunate fact! I hope that this article will help those who are currently building or plan to build a koi pond! These are all lessons very well learnt! When experienced Koi Keepers tell you that you need Sumps, and you should gravity flow your system there is a very specific reason for this. I wish that I had taken more time in the beginning to research and learn everything I could rather than just relying on Sales People who needed to make their budgets.. I have left out the names of the guilty and those I had to go and kill for having given us all the wrong advice. Of course at the end of the day the BIGGEST IDIOTS here and we have only ourselves to blame are US! So pay careful heed to the mistakes of others and ensure that you NEVER EVER go this route! In an attempt to lighten the severity of just how pathetically stupid any person can possibly be (myself - of course), I have used humor where possible but please believe me when I say There was NOTHING funny about this at all!!!! The Whole Damn Story The dam was constructed roughly 7 years ago it was our first pond we had no information, no internet, no books etc we were going to rely on the experience of others to do this right! We knew nothing green as grass! We live on a 2,5 acre property so it HAD to be large enough to make an impact we did not want this tiny thing that simply got lost in the garden (which I was still going to landscape.) The dam is roughly about 10m x 12m (but round) it has a shallower section of cm depth and then slopes down to about 1,3m. All the sides slope downwards as well! It holds roughly about litres of water given all the slopes etc When we built it we were told to install under gravel filters inside the pond and to install bottom drains so this is kinda what it looked like. Oh, it gets better the 2 x 50mm outlet pipes from the bottom drains then still T d together (luckily) right at the pump and not under the concrete, with also a weir (Skimmer) and became 1 pipe from which we sucked with a 1,1KW Pump to 1 x 3 Bag Sand Filter Expert Number 1 > I am sure he can not be in business any more. We realized very soon that this was just not going to work so we got some advice from another pond filtration expert Expert Number 2. Here we were convinced to purchase another 3 x 3 Bag Sand Filters and 2 x 55W UV s

2 So then the filter looked something like this -> 1,1KW Pump(sucking from Weir and 2 lines of Bottom drains) to 4 x Sand Filters in banks of 2 into the 2 x 55W UV s and return to pond.. OK - stop the bus - something is just not right here the water is still crappy have added fish we know that they are in there somewhere the food disappears oh bollocks everyone is dead at least we think it is everyone there might just be a fortunate live one somewhere you know maybe a stronger fish (one which can handle loads of bacteria and ammonia and preferably does not need much oxygen!!!!) So in came Expert Number 3 not a train smash (we were told) all we needed to do now was split the line and add 2 x more 55W UV s an additional pump and Venturi s (gosh that was a big and scary word Venturi s!!!). So now we were cooking with gas we were finally going to have the dam we always wanted, and could then go and buy more fish.. filter looked like this: Ok so now we could see what was going on we added some fish - water was not crystal clear but this time we could actually see fish in there not in detail, but in shape Ah, there swims one now! We were told to be patient the UV s will eventually clear the water. Now the only problem (or so we thought) was that the pumps and filters were always clogging we had to do daily backwashes but we could see fish and now through the murky haze they started to appear with sores! So in came Expert Number 4 Ah! We need bio filters! How silly they do what you breed bacteria to eat the ammonia etc and they do not eat your fish Ah! Those things!?! So we purchased 8 x 25 litre bio filters each filter could handle litres of water and with the sand filters etc we would get to the correct numbers.whatever those were.you know what I mean!!! So the system changed to this: Now we had the filter system of the century (or so we thought) but we still had fish with sores so we phoned a Professor in aquaculture, no kidding a real Professor her response was wait for one to die and bring it to me which happened of course - so took dead fish in and we were told you have ARGULUS this is bad!!! You need to treat your water immediately! Use 8ppm of Potassium Permanganate I asked her to please speak English and to do the calculation for me she did! So I went out and bought PP (gosh this stuff is sooo cheap we can use it all the time!!!!!)

3 went home and we added it. At some point when the water was now so purple we could not even see fish I said to hubby do you think this dosage is correct his reply was that I should not be silly, of course the Professor knows what she is talking about! Needless to say we went to check on the fish before going to bed and were horrified to find that at least 80% of them were floating and dead!!!! So now in the middle of the night amongst a lot of fighting and screaming at each other (and almost a divorce) first we were trying to focus on the most expensive koi after about 5 minutes we were just grabbing any fish which was still living (Humor in hind sight -> they were soooo easy to catch you just had to pick them up in your hands and put them in the plastic baths, they even all came to the sides to make it easier for us to get them out!!!!). We managed to get the remaining few out and moved them to another pond (7500 litres) which we had built at the top of the house! Most of them died in our arms as we were trying to hold them in front of Venturi s in the other pond..a few survived!!! This was an extremely sad night for us! The next morning the water was completely dark brown, and I set about to bury all the dead fish! I was so angry! I phoned the Professor and her response was quiet simple I only gave you advice you should have checked with other resources! Lesson well learnt!!!!!!! ALWAYS CHECK ADVICE WHICH IS GIVEN TO YOU!!!! Check and double check any calculations which are given to you if in any doubt do not ever treat with any chemical at all!!!! Besides the severe over dose on the PP we also had salt in the water (other advice which was given to us) and our ph was really high (9.2)!!!! WRONG, WRONG, WRONG STOOPID!!!!! OK well now we did not seem to have a bacterial problem any more (I have NO idea why???????) In fact we had, effectively nothing living whatsoever in there.the water was not clearing and the filters were shot to shite! I got the internet.. Ah, Hydrogen Peroxide 3% - Volume 10 so off I went and bought lots and lots and lots of Hydrogen Peroxide (If I remember correctly about 5 x 2lt bottles) and WALLA just like that as I was throwing it in the water was clearing in front of my eyes! Aren t I a clever girl!!! Check here hubby I can do magic! Anyway, back on to the filtration so now with the Internet at hand I was armed I spent hours and hours researching everything I could on filtration etc. I started big A4 files (4 of them) - that is how much info I printed and read! Now this was also confusing as there were always so many options and each person advocated theirs naturally. So I learnt about the nitrogen cycle I learnt about bacteria s I learnt about Turn Around Times I learnt about Retention times you name it I learned it.(oh, I also learnt about Dimilin..) So now I was ready to take on the whole world! The dam was still damned (technically shouldn t have been with the amount of bio filters we had?) and then the light started to come through - I realized now that our biggest problem/s was that we were pumping wastes out which we were pulverizing into the itsiest bitsiest little pieces, sharing bottom drain lines, using 50mm pipe, using sand filters AND the under gravel filters just had to go. So wheel barrow after wheel barrow we carted all the stone out we were stuck with the 50mm pipes and we were stuck with having to pump, (no sump and no gravity feeds 50mm piping only) so now we had to make the best with what we had and make sure that we could get all the millions of little pieces of waste out of the water. At this point in time, we should have said Ok let s cut up all the floors but the very thought of doing that was daunting.. so we decided more and more and more filters!!!! So, after another +- 2 years of trying a few more systems out which all did not work we really did learn the hard way stoooopid is what stooooopid does we finally ended up with this: Line 1 Sucking from Weir 1,5KW Pump 5 Bag Sand Filter 4 x 50lt Bio Filters 8 x 25lt Bio Filters 6 x 55W UV s Return to pond via 2 Venturi s

4 Line 2 Sucking from Bottom Drains 2 x 1,1KW Pumps Going to 2 x Settlement Tanks (each is roughly 3m x 2m x about 1,8m deep) with 110mm drains (to settle out as much solids) Overflows into 6 Brushes Chambers (each roughly 2m x 1m wide x 1m deep) with 110mm drains each can be flushed to waste separately Flows under into Matala Filter (roughly 1,8m x 90cm x 80cm deep) also with a 110mm drain Flows into a Stream filled with plants which then flows into the dam

5 Line 3 1,5KW Pump Sucking from new bottom drains (which we had to install additional pipe work over the concrete and lay the drains on their sides!! - not ideal but they are working!) 2 x Vortex s and 1 x Brushes Chamber 2 x Massive Trickle Filters Flows in another series of trickle filters (this was to use a filter we built wrongly) into dam

6 Line 4 0,45kw Pump 3 bag Sand Filter 6 x 25lt Bio Filters Venturi into Dam

7 Centre of Dam Tsurumi litre per hour pump to circulate water Additional 1 x 450 Litre per hour air pump (for emergencies and very hot summer days) 3 x Ozone Units And the very best stoopid mistake of them all would just have to be the 20KW Heater (yes, no mistake please see picture to believe me!!!) ya all, just do not want to know what the electricity bill is every month!!!!) Generator Water is perfect fish are perfect no problems at all just a lot of work and lots of electricity I have subsequently built more ponds after this and guess what I did not do them this way!!! I was still in the learning curves and still fighting with the dam filtration at the time so the other ponds have sumps but I really wish I had gravity fed them all and sucked after mechanical!!! If I could do the dam over from scratch big bottom drains -110mm pipe all the way gravity flow sump gravity flow mechanical filters filled with a combination of brushes and matala pumped to trickle filters and UV s.. would work out a lot cheaper with less hard work (maintaining) and be far more effective! So Guys and Girls this is How not to do it! unless you really need to seriously punish yourself and your wallet and kill lots and fish in the process!!!!

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