Building a HUGE Pond Filter - A Few Changes

Hello guys, welcome back. In this video you were supposed to be seeing the shower filters and what I was doing there, but this is a kind of a 0.5 sort of a video. There was a few little niggling things and a few little improvements that needed to be made to this system. So I've made them and I'm quickly going to show you what they are. Next video will be the shower part and that will complete the filter. Now I've turned the water off so everything's deathly silent, still running it with the 12,000 litre an hour Blagdon Amphibious IQ pump, which is a cracking pump, I mean it's still shifting water, it's still lifting it up to about seven feet tall through about 25 meters of pipe, it's doing an absolutely amazing job, but I need a bigger pump, so I will be getting a bigger pump at some point somewhere between 20 to 30,000 liters an hour. Apart from that, I think I've got all the equipment in place. The shower bit needs finishing, and that's about it. I've moved some big wooden tops from my big aquarium that's behind me here. I've put them on this middle container here, and I've stacked all the Alpha Grog up there, so it's handy for me just to lift and start filling up underneath where all the showers are going to be. So... This is coming together really really well and already the pond is clearing a little bit. When everything's in place I've got every hope that the pond will be beautifully clear. Now what I've replaced that wooden top with on the aquarium is plastic filter grids. These are from Cockney Koi, I'll put the link to them in the video description. I've cable tied three of them together at a time and they make a really nice lightweight lid. Do a cracking job. It still allows the light to get through because some light in here may be important at some point. But I'm not going into that yet. And on the subject of cable ties, I just want to give a big thanks to a guy called Phil. Phil sent me three packs of really good, strong cable ties because he heard me saying that I didn't have any. I did actually buy some. Mine were nowhere near as good as his. So thank you very much, Phil. I'll put a link to Phil's channel in the video description because he's banging into his koi and he's banging into his fishing as well. Okay, and on the subject of lids, I've made lids for the vortex filters as well. So now nothing can get in the top of there. They're not the neatest things in the world but they do a job and because they're perforated they allow everything to breathe which is going to be very important in this filter. And a big long pipe that goes all the way along here to the brush chamber from the vortex chambers is supported with paracord. This has got a breaking strain of 100 kilos so with all those supports even if this pipe is full of water that is going nowhere. And obviously paracord doesn't rot, so that's there for years. And that saved me a hell of a lot of money. It isn't the prettiest, but if I had proper stainless steel fittings, like you tend to get for suspending pipe, I would have probably had to take out a mortgage. I actually forgot to say that I've bought another 200 litres of the moving bed media. And I did make a mistake in the moving bed part of this series, because I said I had 400 litres of the moving bed media. Each one of these sacks is actually 100 litres. I thought it was 200. I had two sacks so therefore I said I had 400 litres. That was wrong. I've got another 200 litres on top of my existing 200 litres so now I do have 400 litres. Once that gets filled up again this is going in, air pump's going on, hopefully in time. It will start to move. I've no doubts when I get the big pump and the water's crashing in there, dragging air in, really blasting this media around, it will move. Because if it doesn't, it's going to take something nuclear to get it moving. Here is some more crates. That will enable me to finish off the shower part because in the big container that I've got the showers supported over the top of, I'm actually going to fill that container full of alpha grog. The showers are going to be full of a better media but in total there's going to be something like a ton of alpha grog which is absolutely incredible. That is a mega filter plus there's going to be maybe half a ton of sintered glass media and pumice in the showers so I don't think we're going to be short of biological activity. I've put a light up here, a light up here And a big old light above the aquarium. So, there is now light under here which enables me to work at night. Normally when I'm finished work, I go to sleep and I fall asleep on the floor. But if I do get half an hour and I do still have a little bit of energy left, I can come in here and do a little bit of filter work. So, that is a bonus. Okay guys, the first area that I've done something different is in here. This is the moving bed. And it's looking all milky because I put a load of Montmorillonite clay in here. In the hope that it would help the media to start moving better. It seemed to have some effect, but there's a bit of a sludge on the bottom of here, which is good because it will do the water some good. It's very mineralized and so on, you know. You know? This here is a leaky hose pipe, like you would use for irrigation. I've basically cable tied it to the big bottom drain. Click the hose pipe onto it, which leads out and away underneath these containers here. And on the other end of that pipe, I've attached a Haier air compressor. This one is model ACO-388D, which means absolutely nothing to me. I will put the link to it in the video description, because it is good, and it does produce quite a lot of air at a high pressure, which is very important. So the idea behind that is, it will produce a big ring of air in here, which will help this to move. And I've also made an improvement to these downcomers. Now it was pointed out to me at the time when I put the moving bed video out that the angles I cut on the inside of this pipe was actually facing the wrong way. It was facing into the flow and it should have been facing away from the flow in an area of low pressure which makes perfect sense because then it would pull more air in. It does still work the other way but I've actually changed them. Now that's how I had it when I showed you the moving bed video but I have actually changed it because that, although it still works, is wrong because there is a more efficient way to do it. See if you can notice the difference. Okay that's what it's been changed to and this again is looking up the bottom of the pipe so the water will be coming from that distant point there rushing towards the camera. You can see that that is going to create an area of low pressure, which in turn will drag a lot more air in through these little pipes. That was a great tip, and it was pointed out to me by more than two or three people. So I'm not going to name them, but thank you very much. If I do name you, I'll probably miss somebody out, so thanks very much. That's the benefit of having really great viewers. Now, in effect, that's our moving bed filter complete, although there's only half the amount of media that there was in here, because I did dig quite a lot of it out in order to fit this, and that was the beauty of not having this permanently fixed. I literally just unplugged that, took it out, attached all of that with a nation of cable ties, and then slotted it back into position. Well, we've got the big pump going. There you go. Look how oxygenated that water is. It's absolutely fizzing, but unfortunately This is, I don't know, two foot deep, two foot six deep with moving bed media. It could take us six months to start moving properly. I don't know. You cannot really see it because the blimmin' media's that thick, but basically we have a ring of air going round here. It's a little bit easier to see round here. There you go. You can see the air ring. It is doing something, but as I say, the media in here is so damn deep. It's going to take a long time to start moving that. Plastic media takes absolutely ages to get mature and start moving properly, especially when there's so much of it like that. But it will move, it definitely will move. As it gets mature, it will start to move through the water column a lot easier than it is now. When I put my hand in, I can actually feel bits of media hitting it, so there is some sort of movement going on there, but we do have like a crust. of media on the top that just isn't moving yet you know as you can see. So there you go there's a few upgrades or improvements that I've either recognized myself needed to be done or have been pointed out to me by you eagle-eyed viewers. Hopefully that will ensure that this system works at a hundred percent. Pretty much the worst time of the year now for setting anything up with bacteria because the water's so cold, the fish aren't as active, but at least it's all running, ready for the spring so it can just kick into action. That moving bed might not start to move properly for another two or three months because plastic media is awful to set up with bacteria. With bacteria. You know, plastic isn't a natural material for bacteria to colonise. You know, So it relies on the bacteria colonizing dying off colonizing again dying off and creating like a skin and that skin is like an organic slime and that allows the media to start moving properly through the water. It adds a little bit of weight to it as well because at the minute it's very buoyant. So hopefully in two to three months that will be moving very fluidly and certainly for the spring it'll be moving really, really nicely and it'll be fully operational. It'll be mature with bacteria and everything will be firing on all cylinders. So next video is about the shower filters and then the video after that is going to be about the big pump. I'm going to run through that because I do have the big pump. As you can see it is running. I haven't showed it in this video but I do have it. It's in the pond and I'm going to go through that and I'll just basically give an overview of the whole system and hopefully show you an improvement in the clarity of the water. Thanks for watching. See you next time.