#Thegreatpoolpondconversion - 210221
The waterfall bilge pump died three weeks ago.
We’re trying something new.
Saturday we test installed two tiny aquarium pumps to get the waterfall going again.
These pumps are very small but are designed to run all the time. Bilge pumps aren’t. Though ours will only run in daylight.
They pump less water so we’d need 2 or 3 to equal one bilge pump. We’ve got 2 going now.
3 equals about the electrical load of 1 bilge pump so no problem there.
Which means more tubing (of course a different size than the corrugated).
Oh, and naturally different sized check valves and hose clamps.
Before we finalize anything, bury any wires or hoses, we’ll let em run for a while and see what happens.
One advantage is if a single pump dies, the waterfall keeps flowing…
Sunday we moved the filter tower. It cleaned up the deck nicely.
Way back when we decided on a filter, it was going to go next to the butterfly bed.
Then, rather than wait till everything was ready, we set it up on the edge of the pond so it could start building up some ‘good bacteria’ in the lava rocks.
Then we decided to move it to next to the Jasmines instead.
The white pipe will be replaced with a wooden return chute with the waterwheel at the end.
Then we’ll extend the wood slats to screen in the green.
We mounted the terminal block for where the solar feed wire from the barn will come out.
Simple and effective weather protection.
Next week we expect to start, and finish, trenching the 12v supply line from the solar distribution panel in the barn to the block. Then we can move the two solar panels to the barn roof in 2 weeks.
The three foam pre-filters in the top filter bin were clogged.
The pond is cloudy. We’re getting a bit of a build up probably due to several issues.
Winter months, less sun, less pump, less filtering.
Some of our plants died and a lot got eaten by the fish and tadpoles.
The tadpoles and extra fish are a bigger fish load than we planned.
After cleaning the filters, we drained a foot and refilled with fresh water.
And decided we’d need some extra filtering help, for a while to get things back under control.
(Remember we started with the idea of no filters at all).
We’re not going to build another tower - there’s no place to hide it, plus more solar etc.
And we don’t think we need more lava rock to play host to the bacteria - the 4 bins are enough, plus the entire bottom of the pond itself is covered in lava.
So we’re going to build a quickie filter on the same principles, but foam filters only.
We needed another set anyway to rotate with what’s in the bins now.
We’ll put a return bulkhead and pipe in the bottom of a plastic garbage can, just like the green tower.
Then fill it with old scrubbies and the new filter media. No rocks.
We’ll use the electric (gasp) sump pump (cause it can run at night) that we used to originally drain the swimming pool.
Since it pumps way too much water, we’ll split the output and have some go through the filter and the rest aimed directly back into the pond.
Simple, easy, no plumbing, just garden hoses. And easily movable.
We’ll clean the filters a lot until this is under control. Then we’ll decommission it.
We netted 3 of the mystery fish and put them in the fish tank.
Two are this size. One is much smaller.
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