How to Build a Koi Pond - Part 2 by Pondguru

Hello, I'm Richard from Tyne Valley Aquatics and this is part two of how to build a koi pond. In the first video you saw more or less all the processes involved so this really is just to show how it's all come together and also explain a bit about the filtration as well. The filter is located behind the new shed which we've just put in today so I'll take you around and show you how it works. The water comes in from the bottom drain up here into this vortex arrangement here so the water's going Very slowly around here, settling all the heavy solids out into the bottom. It then goes through this central bit here, if I can get it off. Ah, it's screwed on. But there's a load of K1 inside of here, which acts to strain out the heavy solids. The water then drops down here and into the outer ring around here. There's only 50 litres of K1 in here at the minute, but it will take up to 150 litres. See how it's starting to brown off now? It's starting to mature. It does take a while. So basically, water comes in, heavy muck settles out in the vortex, the lighter muck gets strained out in the K1, drops down the center into the outer ring, which contains the K1, which is all your biological cleaning, basically converts the fish's waste, i.e. ammonia, to nitrite, and then to nitrate, then goes through a screen here, and up this pipe, and down the pipe, which leads to the pump. I'll shift that out of the way. The pump's actually under this little bit of deck and you can lift it out if you take the screws out. Fairly easy to clean this filter. The good thing is, the instructions are actually on the top, so even an idiot like me can manage to do it. But basically, you've got a couple of valves down here, one's for the outer ring, one's for the inner ring, and you open those, it drains the sludge out. There's also taps here. This one is for the inner ring of K1. That would normally be shut off, there'd be no air going to that, and when you clean it, You shut the outer ring off, see that's stopped and you open up the inner ring. What that does, it agitates the K1 in there, releases all the muck and then the muck comes out of your drain. This is a four inch slide valve which is actually fitted to the inlet so if ever there was a problem with a filter, say it developed a hole or you had a cracked pipe or whatever down here and you had uncontrollable leaking, all you do is switch your pump off, shut this down and that Stops the water coming out of your pond. Once you've fixed your problem, lift that back up and the water starts flowing in here again. This is the UV, it's an Evolution Aqua, same people that make the big filter which is a Nexus 210, so it's their UV. It's a 55 watt UV and it has a touchscreen panel just here, so when you put a new bulb in you press this and it resets the life indicator which is basically that there. When that starts to flash or it goes out you know that it's time to replace the bulb. So water comes in from the pipe which is fed by the pump which sucks out the filter into a UV which kills algae, bacteria, parasites and so on. It then goes into this which feed either the bottom pond or the top pond. At the minute it's feeding the top pond. But we can make it feed the bottom pond for example if we were using it in winter and we didn't want to to chill the water by dropping all of that lot into it all you do shut that off and now there's nothing going to the top pond you'd open that and the water would go to the bottom pond it would literally just fire in scoot along the bottom and straight out the bottom drain meaning that the majority of your water in the big pond would be kept stable and not chilled. This is the three switch box that we added. We took a feed from the socket on the house up there, brought armoured cable down the back of here, up into here, and it's a three switch box so we've got one for the pump, one for the UV filter, and one for the air pump, which at the minute sits behind the filter, but it is going to be housed inside the shed to keep it dry. This little fella here is an Oase Swimskim 25. it was put in by the guy who did the pond for and it basically sucks any manky bubbles leaves that fall in, uneaten food goes into there and it's quite easy to clean you just switch it off lift this out and all your muck's in there under ordinary circumstances it would just be left to swim around the pond but with this being a square-sided pond this fella tends to get stuck in the corner so it's just anchored here it cannot move around that sucks the water into here into your drain and collect all the muck also sucks air in and it blasts it out the back helps with aeration this path that i'm walking on now was put in by us just to kind of match in with the existing patio and also tie the bottom end of the garden with the new decking to the top end of the garden it's put in over hardcore and cemented down we built this step up as well again just to match in with the existing patio since we did this the Patio up here has actually been relayed so it looks nice and neat now. In total the bottom pond plus the top pond plus whatever's in the filter adds up to roughly 4,000 gallons. We know that because when we started to fill it we used the flow meter which basically just fits on the end of a hose pipe and as the water is going through A little counter spins round and there's a series of dials which count up and by taking the reading before you set the water away to when you switch it off you can work out how many litres are in the pond. It's pretty useful especially for a koi pond so you know exactly how much treatment you're putting in so roughly 4000 gallons. Whenever you treat for anything in the pond you're treating for 4000 gallons. Hope you've enjoyed these couple of videos showing how this lot was made. If you check the playlists down the right hand side here, you'll find loads more pond videos of all sorts, wildlife ponds, koi ponds, fish ponds, formal features, everything. So you can watch your heart's content. Thanks for watching.