Mickey, excellent thread
I have built a pile of bare minimum ponds and this is a good exercise for the "koi kichi" in that defining a koi pond as something different than any other type of pond is all about the bare minimums and entry level systems.
Luke and Bill are right on this one. I've been watching these threads on the boards with great interest because since the majority of my work is rebuilding poorly constructed, conceived and thought out ponds, I have successfully rebuilt a lot of smaller ponds and tried some things that I would never do as an "original design from scratch" koi pond build. Limited budget and no room are the basic scenarios that follow the customers initital complaint of not being able to successfully manage the cesspool in their backyard.
Mandatory minimum considerations;
A minimum of 3 ft of depth. Different regions could have different minimums and of course more is always better but as a bare minimum this would have to be it. We are talking minimums here and not optimums and I have rebuilt some at 2.5 ft because there was no way to go deeper and a raised pond was out of the budget.
I have built many successful ponds at 2000 to 3000 gallons that are still running perfectly fine several years later because the system that controls it is adequate enough to be maintained easily and the owners "do" it. The key here is building a "system" that is easily maintainable. Any pond of any size without proper maintenance will be a disaster.
Due diligence by the owner is a fundamental part of any pond. This discussion and explanation of an owners responsibility is a regularly left out part of all the ponds my customers have had installed by the original contractor.
3 ft minimum depth for a koi pond as per Steve Childers.
Say 2000 gallons bare minimum. Some of you are going to choke here but we're talking about entry level minimums in this thread and I have actually made this work for people with suffering backyard pond fish. Rememeber we're not talking about show quality fish here. This is entry level bare minimums which keeps getting forgotten through all these threads.
Try hard to remember "bare minimum" here because what you are doing with these threads might possibly help qualify the difference in some future argument or legal situation. This is actually much harder to do than might have been expected in the beginning.
Outflow must include bottom drain water removal and surface skimmer water removal with no loose rock or other debis on the bottom surface.
Bottom drain should never be direct suction to the pump. This creates too many maintenance issues. The skimmer is needed to prevent the majority of floating debris from saturating with water and sinking.
Turnover rate is one time per hour minimum so lets say 3000 gph. Split that up between bottom drain and skimmer and now you no longer need a 4 inch bottom drain you can go to 3 inch.
An aerated bottom drain is a luxury and not a bare minimum necessity so standard bottom drain only. There are lots of successful non aerated bottom drain ponds out there with show quality fish in them so not a "bare minimum necessity".
Mickey for your experiment I would plumb for air but not install it so after you're done playing you can have the airdome there without any additional construction These days even my smallest reconstructions get bottom drain aeration and I make my own 3 inch aerated bottom drain setup because I can't buy one comercially.
Settlement/prefiltration. At a minimum one settlement/prefiltration chamber. Many times the customer already has a submersible pump that I would never use as an original choice but they have it. Sometimes they have two submersible pumps. Sometimes they have an external pump and I have to use that even though there are much better pumps on the market.
At this minimum as has been discussed on every board for an eternity you could use a 55 gal drum sized settlement tank. My personal favorite is the Wave 24 but on jobs where there isn't the budget to spend on one I use a 55 gal drum with a three inch bottom drain and three inch vortex inlet placed about 1/4 the way up from the bottom. Yes larger is better but remember "bare minimums".
For submersible pump applications I build a plate half way up in the barrel and place the pump on that. I have actually placed several small pumps the customer had on a manifold in the settlement tank and had it work just fine. Try not to cringe here but you try and work with what they have, then complain. It's actually quite interesting!
If you have two sbmersibe pumps place the other in the skimmer.
If you have one submersible pump in the 2500 to 3000 gallon range add another inlet much higher in the barrel for the skimmer. Don't place the gravity flow skimmer line in low like the bottom drain line because it will speed up the rotation and verticle acceleration of the water too much for settlement from the bottom drain. Remember this is a minimum, Oh and it does work by the way.
These are the situations where I use a plant pond styled skimmer with filter pads in it. In a small pond you need the prefiltration the pads offer. In a larger pond I would gut the skimmer and add an extra basket (as I have posted before) or use a pool type skimmer.
My favorite way to use a single larger submersible pump is install it in the skimmer and gravity flow the settlement tank to the skimmer box behind the pads. This water should not go through the pads. The pads are for surface water only. Now you have room to add a static perefilter to the settlement tank and you have the prefiltration of the pads from the skimmer all protecting the pump.
Simple, effective and it works.
Are any of you having an aneurysm yet.
From there I like to split up my filtration into two tanks on a minimum pond. One static for bio and fines control and one aerated.
The static can be anything from mats or padding, chopped up chunks of scrap matala, floating media etc. or my favorite because of the low cost, high performance and ease of cleaning, PVC shavings. I don't use any brand of floating media for static control any more because of cost. Not to mention the PVC shavings actually do perform better for static fines filtering and are easier to clean and deal with. Bottom line make it out of whatever you have available at a low cost. Keep the flow rate down to 630 gph/sq ft of crossectional area in the static filter. I regularly use 55 gsl drums but have converted many off the shelf watergarden filters into an adequate filter because a filter is first and foremost just a container. It's what you do with it that makes it a filter that works.
The other filter I make an aerated bio filter. Moving beds are great but require electricity, expensive media and more than the entry level pond requires. I would go with either an aerated version of the static filter as long as it's not a sand and gravel filter (although a lightly aerated version of an upflow sand and gravel filter would probably work just fine).
The other option is a shower filter and this option doesn't require an air pump and virtually needs no maintenance.
If you have an external pump you can plumb it like we always do by pulling from both the skimmer and settlement or from just the settlement with the skimmer gravity flow to the settlement tank or from the skimmer with the settlement tank gravity flowing into that.
With an aerated filter no waterfall is necessary but without one a waterfall is a must.
I run one TPR gravity flow from the top of the static filter to circulate the water with the rest usually returning through a waterfall. This is as bare minimum as it gets and I have already built them with success.
Merry Christmas. Now you tear it up!
12-23-2007
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