Welcome Preston

We have a new member! Welcome Preston, it's a small forum but a friendly one.

Preston----nice name, impressive. You'll fit right in here with the rest of us impressive people.

Welcome Preston, hope you enjoy your stay here, these are great people.

Seems my post didn't go through the other day. Wow, what a response! You all sure know how to make a fella feel welcome! To answer your question, I was searching DIY skimmers and found your site. I am a potter by profession and I am rebuilding the pond I built 15 years ago at my parents house. I lived out of state for a few years, it fell into disrepair got a few leaks and sunrotted. I'm digging it deeper installing a bottom drain and skimmer and updating the bio filter. My mom loves watching fish, but can't do any maintenance, so I'm trying to put in enough filter so it only has to be cleaned once a month. There you go.

Again, welcome Preston. I'm just about to start on my pond buy have been studying it for years. Right now, I'm fighting these weeds in my back yard. They are very invasive and the stalk is so fibrous that if you mow them they will bind up and stop the drive axle on your mower. I sprayed them with Roundup and that killed them, but the seeds that they dropped made new ones sprout. So, I sprayed them again last week, will pull them this week then spray the seedlings again until all of these buggers are dead.

Anyway, here's a great step by step with a lot of pictures of the type of biofilter that I am going to build. I'll use 2 of them close together to double my filtration and make a bigger waterfall. My pond is going to be about 25 X 15 X 3 so I'll need a settlement chamber and plenty of filtration. I went to a hospital laundry and they gave me the plastic drums for free. Here's the link....

http://www.koiphen.com/forums/showthread.php?36550-55-Gal-Drum-Sand-and-gravel-filter-DIY&highlight=kent%20sand%20gravel

jw wrote:
Do you sell it on-line or just in the shop?

Thanks for checking it out. I am not a big fan of constantly updating a site (as you can probably tell from my site) so my work is in several galleries in Western NC; I do art fairs, and teach workshops. Everyone tells me to sell online but it just doesn't feel right to me. I'm now thinking about doing some very large lilly jars. They won't survive ice, so maybe I could use them for tropicals and bring them in under grow lights for the winter. What do ya'll think?

Bullfrog-
The filter in the link you posted is the same as my current filter except mine has an aeration tower. The filter worked ok but was a pain to purge the muck in the bottom. I actually used a high output air compressor to clean the filter and it worked fine to clean the media. BTW I didn't use sand in the top. I will update the old bio with a more suitable media than rocks and give it a much needed settling cone and center bottom drain. My new setup will be BD>vortex>Bio>Bio>hyacinth pool>waterfall :and: skimmer>waterfall.

I will post when I get some good images! I'm not sure if I have any digital pics of the old pond. Maybe I'll scan some in.