Building Contract

A Green Environment for Less Money: Building a Pond Filter

What sort of a filter should you have for your water garden pond? How big does it need to be, and how clean does your small water world need to be kept? These are questions to ask yourself when you install a water garden in your yard. It isn’t just a matter of installing a liner and a pump, and sitting back to look at your little pond. You want water plants and most likely fish to make their homes in the little habitat you’re establishing to make it both lovely and inviting. Do not think of what you’re building as only a hole in your back yard, but accept it for what it is – an eco-system. Putting in a pond filter will help you keep your system clean, and it won’t cost you nearly as much as it would to buy commercial filters.

You need to initiate the project by measuring the area of the pond. You can use a rope for this purpose. You have to know how much area you will be required to filter so that you make sure your filter will be able to take care of the job. One way you can lower the requirement for filtering is by adding waterfalls and streams to your system. These will assist in moving the water around naturally through the system as well as force it into the filters. A water garden is actually a delicately-balanced system that needs all of its separate parts in order to provide for the health of the plants and animals inhabiting it. You have to have a way to clean out the impurities that can damage the environment and encourage the creation of good bacteria that rid the pond of fish waste and organic matter.

There are a couple of types of filters you can employ to establish the best pond environment. A mechanical filter will remove debris and contaminants. A bacterial filter, on the other hand, will break contaminants down into materials that the plants and fish can use. To build your own filter, you can start out with just a good-sized plastic pot, mesh bags, large lava rocks, and an underwater pond pump. Fill the mesh bags with lava rocks, making sure not to fill them too full. Position the pump in the bottom of your plastic container, run the tubing and cords, stick the lava rocks in the container, and you’ll have a simple but effective pond filter.