| It sounds like you've already started improperly. A pond of that size needs to flow between 7000 and 10,000 gph. Your first job is to adequately remove that much water from the pond and prefilter it. You can do this in a diy fashion but you must understand it first. Your choices for water removal are bottom drains, skimmers and midwater drains. Your pond needs at least one 4 inch bottom drain or two 3 inch bottom drains leading to a settlement/seperation chamber or seive of some type which will give you between 3000 and 4000 gph. The rest should come from the skimmer and or midwater drain. These should be prefiltered also. I personally like to gravity flow all pond outlets to prefiltration before the pump/bio for less maintenance and better water quality. Once you've determined how your going to solve your outflow demand you can then decide on bio. First things first.
Direct suction from the pond to pump is a very high maintenance and inadequate way to go. Protect your pump and bio from solids first then return it through your choices of bio conversion. Those choices are static bio for fines control, aerated static bio, aerated shower or aerated moving beds. These are all easily built in diy fashion also once you understand your demand. I also shy away from any type of pressurized filtration on a new pond because of the extra pressure and waste of electricity involved over time. |