Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait how to setup large filtration system

JohnK,

I think your best bet would be a large settling tank coming from the fish tank. Use the gravity drain from fish tank to settling tank like this.




You could remove virtually all your solids with the benefit of using the settling tank as a fry trap. Simply put a very large drain pipe at the top of your settling tank (twice the size or more of the inlet) and place a fine screen on it. You'll suck up your fry INTO the settling chamber and relative safety for easy removal while still removing large quantities of fish waste that you could "flush" daily via a bottom valve in your settling tank after removing any fry. You could then run the outlet of the settling tank to a bio filtration system and sump system. Place a high flow pump with float valve in your bio filter (a good basement sump pump that can handle solids would do) that will return water as needed and at a very high flow back to the fish tank. You can even get relatively inexpensive battery backups that use a car battery for sump pumps to protect you against power failure. You could take it a step further and add a third container with aquatic plants after your bio filter and prior to the pump to remove nitrites/nitrates. Basically, an aquaponic setup but using aquatic plants instead of garden veggies.

Since you have a non-syphoning gravity drain on your fish tank you don't have the risk of an overflow or total tank drain in your system in the event of a pump malfunction, which is obviously quite important.

This system works quite well, uses very little power and requires minimal maintenance. I've set several of them up this way and similar ways with excellent results.

I did this when I overwintered perch and trout a couple years ago. I filled two 4' planters with peastone and planted some rice in the gravel. The water came in one side and flowed out the other. The filter did a decent job (YP did well, but I did lose some trout), but the rice never took off which I blame on the cold temps.

I have been toying with the idea of making a bog-filter using 4" PVC Pipe filled with pea stone for my next RAS experiment. The std sizes would make plumbing easy and they could be suspended to keep them out of the way.

Sounds cool Thanks. I will let you know if I ever get to do any of this stuff. I had a series of events happen this weekend that may inhibit me from doing all that I wanted to this year. My only hope is that the water temps in my pond reach non lethal temps by May. I may need to put them in the pond and try the whole breeding and grow out thing next year. Thanks again for all your help, John

pretty new here but on the sand filter could you not use the sand in it and use some thing else like beads or bio balls
i have a set up just like this i am going to try along with
the other one shown here
this is my first post but i been on here days just reading
all the good stuff

Dang John. If there's anything I can do let me know man.

I have been using a bilge pump and then 2 fleece baby blankets from the .99 store that were sewn into bags. I have the water filter through a double bag fleece filter sitting in a small planter box. it works pretty good for me. One day i may build a stage 2. It was 100F here today and my bluegill about wanted to take my hand off. The water temp was almost 80 today, So im more concerned with cooling than filtration right now.