Pressure Filter and Shower Filter for a Koi Pond - A Match Made in Heaven?

Hello there, welcome back. In this video we're going to be taking a look at the three major components of a filter system that I'm going to install on my pond. Now this is not the big filter system that I'm doing, this is a standalone one and I'm making it because my huge pump, that great big massive 40,000 litre an hour thing, has died again. The impeller got all pushed out and it mangled itself up and it is dead. A new impeller trade price is about 300 quid and I'm not paying that again. Whoa! The size of that man weighs nearly 20 kilos monstrous pump 40 000 liters an hour 1.1 kilowatts or 1100 watts but it's dead. I'm going to set up a much cheaper to run system using two different pumps. The first pump will be the Blagdon Amphibious IQ it's their very newest pump. and this one is electronically adjustable so the flow rate on this particular pump is actually from 6 000 liters per hour to 12 000 liters per hour all you do you just move it up and down like that this little readout here tells you if there's a problem if the pump needs cleaning If the impeller is blocked. It's a very very intelligent pump and I really should have brought the box out just to remind you of the wattage of it. I think it's 85 watts when it's 12,000 liters per hour and when you knock it down to 6,000 liters per hour I think it reduces the wattage to about 40 watts. So it is very very economical to run. It's got a really good design, a nice open cage, it can draw water from all over the place. So I'm basically just going to put an inch and a half hose on here Throw it as far as I can into the middle of my pond, attach the other end of the hose to this, and believe it or not this is a pressure filter. And have you ever seen one as big as this? I hadn't either. But apparently this one has been around in one form or another for about seven or eight years. Now I thought I was pretty much up on what was available in the way of pumps and filters and so on. Especially for ponds, given the name Pond Guru, you know, you'd expect me to know about things like this, but I've never even seen a video or a write-up or anything about this, which is scandalous considering it's been out for so long. I'll open it up and show you what it's got inside and explain a little bit about how it works, but this is basically to act as a mechanical filter. Basically, the water's going to be pumped from our pump, sitting in the deepest, dirtiest part of my pond, into here. Then I'm going to go around inside of here. It's going to pass over 50 watts of UV light which I know is not big enough for the size of the pond I've got behind me here but every little helps. Once it's finished over the lights it then goes through a series of foams and out, hopefully clean, to a shower filter. And this shower filter is, it's such a beautifully tactile thing. It just feels lovely. It's made of like a high density plastic. It's got nothing in it at the moment. But I will be putting something in there with regard to filter media. It'll probably be a mixture of all sorts of filter media because when I pulled loads of DIY filters to bits, I've got pumice, I've got bio home in two or three different forms, I've got alpha grog, there's all sorts that could go in here. This pressure filter is going to be a real treat for my viewers in the US because I get messages all the time saying, why don't you show things that are available in the US? This one has actually been available in the US for many years so you can get this if you want it. I'll put links to it for the UK site and also the US site in the video description, as well as any other useful links you might want. Let's take a look inside of here because this is just monstrous. If I scrunched up I could probably fit inside of here. Okay we've got a clasp that keeps the top on and that should enable us to lift the top off. Obviously, it's going to be a lot easier when it's heavy with water. Hey, that's it, right. Okay, the world's biggest filter foams. Land a bleeding jumbo jet on there. Okay, so we've got one, two, three, four, and five coarse sponges, which are absolutely massive. This filter's got a really clever way of being cleaned because you actually turn this rod here. It's hard to see, but it locks out. This hard plastic plate here, and that sits above the foams. So under normal circumstances, it would be turned like that, and that would just sit on top of the foams. When you want to clean it, you turn the rod, it locks it out, and obviously it needs to lock it out on both sides. Let's just lock it. There, right. See, it's locked out now. And actually, I think I'm going to show you this when it's put together, because it's a lot easier to demonstrate then. Now although this hole might look like one of the entrances to hell or maybe it's even the hollow earth, this is actually what we're going to sit our filter in. Took me ages to dig through this because the ground is rock hard here. Now when I've ran this filter for a few months and got it really dirty and manky inside, I'll do a video of the cleaning so you can see just how much muck comes out, hopefully. But I'll just quickly demonstrate how you would clean it. So you've got your in pipe here, your out pipe here, both of them pointing towards the pond. You've got another one on the back here which is a drain pipe, so you'd attach a piece of hose to there and lead it away to a drain or somewhere in your garden, wherever you wanted to drain your dirty water to. There's a lever on the back here, at the minute it's pointing to filter, you can turn that to clean. And instead of the water going back out to the pond, or in this case back to our shower filter, it'll start to go down the drain. And then we lift the handle like that, we turn those to lock that plate in position, and then we press down like that. And you can press down with your hands or you can just slump over it and press it down with your belly or you can put a foot on it and press it down with your foot. But hopefully, that should be a lot easier than turning the handle, like on some of the newer ones, which are made pretty badly. It should be easier than the Oase ones as well, where you actually lift it and push it and lift it and push it and lift it and push it. I put a lot of those filter clear filters in from Oase. It was a... And the people now are getting on in years, and they're saying it's becoming increasingly difficult to lift the handle and squeeze the foams out. Hopefully one of these would be a good option. As I say, it's just a press down. I'd never seen anything like this until I stumbled across it online. I think all I need to do now is just connect the pipe work up, pump in, plug everything in, and then turn everything on. And we should have an operational filter system. And just a quick note on the hose tails, I've actually already cut those back to an inch and a half. And I've put a little bit of tape around them as well. Just so the pipe gets a good solid fit and then I'm going to tape over that and then I'm going to have a clip on so the water is not going to come out of there. Hello Angus, you gonna help? Now this is just electrician's tape, black electrician's tape and I'm stretching it on here because when you stretch it, it kind of grabs onto itself and gets a much better hold. We'll just put maybe five or six turns on there just to bulk it out a little bit, just to make our pipe fit very, very well. See, that's a nice tight fit on there now. But before we just put the clip on, we're going to go around with more tape just to make doubly sure. And again, we'll just stretch it on to make sure it's nice and tight. We'll put the clip on just to make sure that all stays there absolutely solid. It should be tight when it goes on. The hose should always be tight. You know, it should be a tussle to get it on. Okay, that's our innie and our outie on. And then we've got some of the horrible manky clay stuff that we dug out when we made the hole. That's going to be tipped in around the filter, just to totally secure it in place. Right, that's the pipe that comes into the filter. And the other end of that is just loose. It's going to be attached to the pump and thrown into the middle somewhere. And that's the pipe that goes out of the filter. So that goes out there. It's going to run into the pond and ultimately into our shower filter, which at the moment has got nothing in. And attaching the pump to the pipe is just exactly the same procedure as attaching the filter to the pipe. That's way too slack on there. Even if you put a clip on there, you wouldn't be able to clamp it down and stop the leaks. So we need to build this up with a bit of electrical tape. Just a quick note again I've chopped this hose tail down to the correct size because this one has options from inch and a half inch and a quarter to inch to three quarters so the hose tail is ordinarily about that long and if you just put the big pipe on and expect it to pump full bore when you've still got the full hose tail up, and you haven't cut it it's only pumping through a tiny little bit like the three quarter inch bit and it's going to really restrict it. Always cut your hose tails down. It's amazing how many people complain about the power of the pump and that they haven't cut the hose tail down. It's a simple mistake to make, but it's one people make all the time. That's a lovely tight fit on there now, but it still needs a clip. I always use stainless steel clips as well because I find the zinc-coated, galvanised ones rust after a few years, so it's definitely worth spending a little bit more for a good stainless steel one. Okay, that's ready to be thrown into the pond as far as it'll go, but I don't want to throw the control box in, so I better make sure that the cable is well unravelled before I throw it in, and I might even put my foot on the control box just to make sure it doesn't end up in the pond. So I've mounted the control box underneath here on that post. It's very secure. Now all we need to do is put a plug on here. Then we can either plug it into here, which is like an Oase outdoor switch box, or just plug it in under here straight into a socket. Okay, that's the pump on because I can hear water going through the pipe. And it's on full power there, so that's 12,000 litres per hour. I knock it down, it reduces the power consumption, and it also reduces the amount of water that comes out as well. I want it on max though, I want the full 12,000 litres an hour. Sounds like it's coming out the shower filter, so that's good. Now's the time to see if this thing here is a shut-off valve or just a... Yeah, god damn. Thought that might be the case. This has actually got a cap for here. I'm going to have to put the cap on because although that is on filter, so no water should be coming out of here, this is actually a flow regulator. It's not a shut-off valve. I'll have to get a cap put on there. So now only most of the water is coming out of the filter and up into our shower. It'll be interesting to see... Just what sort of a spray pattern it's got here, for 12,000 litres, and that looks okay, it needs to be straightened up though, that's it, much better like that, and by the looks of it, I just haven't got the fitting on straight enough, I need to adjust that a little bit. Okay, so a simple adjustment here has resulted in a much better spray pattern, it's even on both sides there, that's much better. it also comes out the bottom of here as well just in case you're wondering about the coverage on the media that we're going to put in here it's time to put the media in here now so i'm going to turn the pump off i'll put a cap on the back of the pressure filter and then we'll fill that with media then we'll put the pump back on again here we go this is just some of the stuff that's going to go into the shower filter we've got some unused pumice here because there was a broken bag that got delivered to me so i couldn't really sell it as a full bag that's never been used That's a volcanic rock, very porous, pretty good for koi ponds as well because it mineralizes the water. This one is Alpha Grog. That is a ceramic media. A lot of the surface area is external on that, but it does work well in very dirty pond filters. I'm not quite sure where I've had this because it looks pretty clean. But there's about 20 litres of that anyway, so that can go in. It's a pretty good media. It's not perfect for shower filters, but we're not looking to get a full cycle out of this shower filter because look at the size of the pond. It hasn't got a cat's chance in hell. It's just there to do a bit of a cleaning job and also keep the water a bit healthier. That's what was in our stainless steel shower filter from last year, and that is pumice that's been used on pretty black. But it'll still have a lot of good usefulness. I've got about eight of these buckets of that, and each bucket's about 25 litres, I think, so there's going to be a hell of a lot of stuff goes in. And in here, this is my little wheelie bin shower filter that I made in another video. It had been working pretty well, but I decommissioned it for the winter and never turned it back on again. And in here, we've got some of the new BioHome shower media. That's a sintered glass media, which is pretty awesome. We've also got some scoria, which is another sort of volcanic rock. Guys in the US will be familiar with that. That's basically what you guys call volcanic rock. Although that and the pumice are both volcanic rocks. Very similar, but the pumice is a lot lighter. Actually, the pumice is a lot more used than this stuff. This stuff's good, but a lot of its surface area is external. It's got quite a dense internal structure. Oh, we've got a bit of pumice in there as well, so there are all sorts. Oh, I'll tip it out and we'll see what we've got in there. But basically, all of this different stuff is good stuff. It's all going in. Because I've got loads of buckets of pumice left, and I think a little bit more bio-home left out of another filter as well, I'm not going to use the grog. I'm going to save that for a static, more dirty environment, like a standard koi filter or something, because it does work well in really mucky conditions. It will work well in the shower, but I want to use something with a little bit more porosity. Okay, that's it. Full up, three trays with a lot of filter media. and just in case anybody's skipped to this particular part of the video the difference between the dark media and the light media those rocks that i was putting in is that they're both pumice but the white one hasn't been used and the dark one has been used it was used in a previous shower filter that's the only difference and the reason i'm not using it all for the bio home is I'm not looking to get a full cycle on this huge pond I'd be stupid to think that I could get that so I would be really wasting a lot of money using bio home in here if I had a smaller pond and I was looking for the full cycle which is zero ammonia zero nitrite zero nitrate Which is the big one for koi keepers, I would go all new shower media, the bio home shower media in here, beyond a shadow of a doubt, and you can get about 50 kilos in each one of these sections, that would do an incredible job, on this pond, that would be wasted, so I'm going with the cheaper media, it isn't as effective, but it will still do a valuable job in here, and we do have a little bit of the bio home shower media in here, as well as some scoria, as well as some, In fact, I think we've got three or four different types of media in here. It's all there just to do a job, which is just to make the water a little bit healthier and also help with the clarity as well. I think before I put the top on here, I'll turn it back on just so you can see the water actually showering through the media. There's going to be some muck coming out the bottom of here, I can guarantee it, because a lot of that media was filthy. But you can see it's getting a good coverage there. And because each one of these sections has got a grid on the bottom, The media doesn't track, you know, sorry, the water doesn't track. It doesn't all just go down one side. I'm not sure if you can see that next one down there, but the water is right to the side. It might be easier to see on the bottom. You can maybe just see it there. Hopefully you can see that, but the water is covering all the media. And it's providing a lovely little waterfall there. There you go. It's operating beautifully. Now this shower filter is one of those cases where you could just make your own out of wheelie bins or a series of containers on top of each other, but if you're the sort of person who has really nice gear and wants something to look very nice, that looks very nice. It's called an Evolve shower filter and it's part of a range of filters which are quite innovative. I hope to be taking a look at the big multi-bay koi filters with the drums on and all that at some point. and this filter is only one part of what that company does so i'll put direct links to their website in the video description if you're after really good koi filters check them out that's our filters installed there obviously we've got the pump which is sitting about here in approximately 15 foot of water very very deep and the water is very very mucky as well it's starting to go green in the sunlight I'm not sure whether the filter will do anything about that, but it may help. I'm just after a little bit of better clarity in here and better water health. And bear in mind that this filter system is only going to be part of what I'll be installing over the next few months. It's hard to see, but when I look down these little holes here, I can see both UVs are on. So I'm going to leave them on. Now just a quick correction here. When I explained how this thing works, I said that the water comes over the UV light first, then through the foams, then out to the pond. It actually works the other way around. I've had a look at the instructions online because the box and the enclosed instructions didn't really explain it very well, but basically the water comes in, it goes through the foams, and then it exits over the UV light. It doesn't really matter which way around that happens. I personally prefer to see it UV, then foams. But ultimately, it's being cleaned in here. And then the water's heading to our shower filter. Okay, that's the end of the video on setting this filter system up. Obviously, on my pond, it's not going to do much good. But what I'm hoping is that there's a lot of koi keepers watching this video now who are thinking to themselves, that's a pretty good pump you put in there. Very economical, handles solids, and I can put it right down in power for the winter, keep the filter alive but not shift too much water. It's worth considering. Pressure filter, nice big pressure filter. It's got 50 watts of UV in there and it does a good job on the mechanical filtration. When our pressure filter is married to a shower filter, and the shower filter would Would be filled with really really good media. You've got a beautiful setup there. So you've got pumping water, UV, mechanical, biological and with the right media in there you've got not only aerobic bacteria acting on the water but you'll get anaerobic bacteria as well. With a shower filter like that you put something like the BioHome shower media in there that has a structure that allows for colonisation of aerobic and anaerobic bacteria in any flow. You get ammonia to nitrite, nitrite to nitrate and you get the nitrate consumed and processed by the anaerobic bacteria and it just bubbles off soluble. Nitrogen is the end product, that just disappears or gets taken up by your plants. That is a way to get a full cycle and really these three things combined would cost a fraction of the filter systems that I see in some people's koi ponds but would do a job that is 10 times better. If you've liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're on forums or groups or whatever, share it if you think anybody might benefit from watching it. And I shall see you next time. Awesome.