Basic DIY pond Simple bog filter

This is how I made a very basic pond for some rainbow fish. I have quite a few ponds and this big one I like to get in. I have lots of fun chasing the rainbow fish around in the summer. Unfortunately because of all my ponds I've attracted many of the local predatory birds and this coumarin is my biggest problem. So I've created this simple pond in an old disused concrete stop trough to hopefully breed some rainbow fish. I don't like netting my garden ponds as it just ruins the natural look. Plus this large pond with all my native fish it's just too big anyway. This concrete trough sits down behind a large shed and it's sandwiched in between a plastic tank and my shade house. So it's quite an ugly area and I won't mind covering this pond to keep the fish safe. So that's the backstory and now let's have a look at how I put it together. Like most of my ponds I'll be running a bog filter on this. I just love bogs, they're so easy to DIY and you get better water quality and clarity than pretty much any filtration system that you can buy. To start with I drained and measured the tank. For a simple fish pond like this I want the bog filter to be 10% of the pond's volume. I calculated that the tank was 1500 litres so I needed at least 150 litres for the bog filter. Before I built the bog filter I wanted to add in some substrate for plants to increase the filtration and to create a more natural ecosystem for the fish. I created a false bottom using some old slotted drainage pipe and some filter media from an old aquaculture system. I also didn't quite fully drain the tank as it's been sitting here for years and will have all sorts of organisms living in it. These organisms should provide a good source of live food for the fish when they come. I then covered the tubes and pipe with 20 ml scoria that I had lying around. I didn't clean it, just threw it straight in. I covered about half the base with the scoria. It's about three inches thick. This should allow the plants plenty of root growth. The roots will also penetrate down into the tubes and pipes buried under the scoria. You might be wondering what's the point of the false bottom? And it's just a way to help the water move through the substrate. The substrate will act as a supplementary filter to the bog. It'll also trap nutrients that the plants can then use to grow. I've done it before on this shrimp tub and it works great. Anyway, you can also see I've left a piece of pipe sticking out. I may or may not add an air stone here to help pull water down through the substrate. I think it'll be unnecessary but it's there just in case. The fish might breed much better than I anticipate. I then collected some larger stones, some pebble, some wood and plants. I just scattered the stuff around hoping it would look nice from underwater that I can stick a camera in. It doesn't matter how it looks from the surface as it'll be covered anyway to keep the cormorant and the herons out. I made a couple of little caves and scattered the smaller decorative pebbles around. The plants I'm using in the substrate are bacopa and eelgrass. I think I'll add some ilfoil stems in as well. Then I filled it up and I also added in some flocculent to force the mud particles to clump together. Now I could start on the bog filter. This is a repurposed tub from the old goldfish pond I had under our living room window. Last year I made it bigger and added a stream that makes it appear connected to the larger pond where I swim with the rainbow fish. Anyway, it already had a couple of holes drilled in it but I needed to make some modifications. I'm using uniseals to create a watertight seal around the holes in the container. Uniseals are perfect for rounded containers although trying to hold a camera and push one in with one hand is impossible. The barrel already had a hole in the base so this was perfect for a flush out port. You can see I've added a valve down there. The existing hole up the top was too small for the pump I'd be using but I kept it as an extra overflow seeing it was already there. I added a two inch overflow. The inflow from the pump is one inch. It's always a good idea to have the overflow substantially bigger than the inflow. I'm using some of that slotted pipe to create a void in the bottom. The pipe going down into the base will be connected to the pump. The water is pumped into the base of the bog. The water flows up through different sized rock and pebble and the clean water returns to the pond. I start by layering larger rock over the top of the slotted pipe. I've even thrown in some old bricks. I then try and get some smaller ones to plug in the gaps and then some of the smaller scoria over the top. You can pretty much use any type of rock or pebble that you have available. Then I connected the pump. Here I have a one inch flexible hose. To test everything I just connected the flexible hose directly into the rigid pipe that goes to the base of the bog. I then back flush the filter and this is how it'll be clean in the future. I'm just washing the scoria off from the surface. The valve is open at the base and the dirty water is popping out down there. Once the water coming out is pretty clean you're good to go. Then I fired it up again. Here you can see the breather pipe. This is to prevent a siphon. Without it if the pump shuts off the bog would siphon empty back into the pond via the pump. This hole sucks in air and prevents that from happening. This is why I bring the pipe work in over the top of the bog. If you come in at the base preventing a siphon is very difficult. You need to rely on a check valve and in these low flow applications they tend to be useless. You could also just drill a small hole if you like. I use plumbing fittings because it allows me to connect a valve or another piece of pipe if needed. So here you can see a small amount of water is exiting through the breather pipe. If I add an elbow fitting I can stop that from happening. I could also add a valve if I wanted. Bog filters like a slow flow but sometimes our pumps are too big. But we can allow the excess water to flow out through the breather hole, run over the surface of the bog and return to the pond without affecting the function of the bog filter. Once I was happy with how it was running I used a couple of elbows and a barbed fitting that would accept the flexible hose. I added more scoria to the top so there was no visible water and I planted some bacopa in the bog. It didn't take long for the water to start clearing up. Now of course the filter here looks pretty crap but it works. Eventually the bacopa will spill down the sides so it won't be such an eyesore. You can easily do a better job hiding it. This pond is running the exact same filter but it's better hidden. You just need to get creative. After a few days the water had cleared right up and I decided to try adding a few plants onto the wood. I used some zip ties. I'm trying some spider plant and sweet flag. We'll see what happens. Both of these will go okay with the light frosts that I get here. I just want to mention too that large pipe is the overflow from one of the tanks that's connected to the shed. It has nothing to do with the filter if you're wondering. I still need to wait till October for the rainbow fish but I just wanted to have it set up and get the plants growing before they arrive. If you like this kind of thing and you want to see the updates feel free to subscribe and check out my website osponds.com There's plenty of info there to help people build and maintain the pond without spending a fortune. Anyway, I hope this was a helpful video. If it was feel free to tickle the thumbs up button. Thanks for watching. See ya.