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4,000 Gallon Koi Pond- PIPE BURST :(

11K views 86 replies 19 participants last post by  Little Soprano 
#1 · (Edited)
Well I lied. Opened it last night. But we have fish!

Uv... check


Filter.... check. There's 6 foam pads in there, and 6 bags with 500 bio balls in them. Though by the sound of the pump, it's going to be replaced this year. It's whining and not from low water levels.




Barley balls are in. Haven't sunk yet, but they help a LOT when it comes to keeping algae from growing and also in a few weeks should help clear up the water dramatically. Started to fish out most of the leaves, but once the weather and the water warms up will start to work on the pond more.

And hey look fish. No food yet though. Water is a chilly 50 degrees. Once it consistently stays above 55, they start to get fed. Still getting pretty cold at night, so should be another 2 weeks or so until they get food. We have 7 full grown Koi and added 3 babies in last summer. Also got lots of Pool Comets, some have bred with Koi, so we have Koi colored Comets, and there's a goldfish in there too.



And the whole pond. It's 5.5 feet deep to help with the Michigan winters. No idea on the gallonage. Haven't done the math in a long time.


As the plants grow back in, vines cover the waterfall's black sides, and the Bamboo goes nuts. It's like vietnam, but can't control the bamboo for the most part. Started with 3 plants a few years ago. We have a handful of plants sitting inside that survived the winter, waiting to go into the pond when the water temperature stabilizes.

This year we are going to use old liner we have, and extend the pond on the bottom left side to start growing more plants local to Michigan so they can survive outdoors. We do have two shelfs on opposite sides of the pond that we want to start utilizing as well. Still have the bubbler and heater in (keeps a ventilation hole in the ice during the winter), though we will be removing that later today. Will be updating this as the pond clears up and the plants around it come back in. We are working on a new bridge that goes across the middle. Our old one I wouldn't trust a cat to stand on.

Anyway, there ya go..... Ponds been established for 8 years this summer. Much better at ponds then planted fish tanks lol.
 
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#3 ·
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC2NvFoDUEo&list=UUX0XjNJyBL-A3KRpXB6erCw

There's a silly old youtube video my BF took of the pond. I don't have any pictures that I can find right now. Thats a few years ago though.

Ours got put in when the pool was put in. So he just asked the guy with the excavator to help him out and take out 4-5 scoops. Made fast work. He said it was a lot of work, but worth it. Lots of plumbing and we had to run electricity up to the pond too. It's totally worth it though. Very peaceful to just sit out there and watch it. And ours will literally slide right up on to your hand and take food from you, if I put my hand in they'll "suck" on it. Very personable fish. Totally worth it.
 
#5 ·
What do you do to open up your pond? Or do you mean it's that time of year to get the pumps going. I have lots of netting on mine to keep the leaves out, but I can see in it as long as there's no ice on the top. Sometimes I can see fish on the bottom in January if the lighting is just right. The fish have only recently come up from the bottom and starting being active.
My water fall/filter pump is a probably a month away from being turned on. It's not consistently warm enough yet.
 
#6 ·
Mostly get all the pumps out and get them going. We put a net on during the fall but we take it off in the winter. We have a sassafras tree above the pond, so it turns the water into tea. We remove all the leaves we can before we close up, to the point this year it broke my net LOL. It's insane. Our pond is so deep and with the black liner, unless the pond is SPOTLESS you can't see to the bottom. Didn't put the barley balls in soon enough and already have string algae lol. But yeah opening up=getting everything running again, seeing what broke over the winter, etc. Hoping to get the new bridge built over the next week. Haven't quite figured out how we are getting it back on the pond though. Most likely drawing straws to see who is jumping in.

Ours is staying around 50 degrees which is when the waterfall normally gets hooked up, though we normally base it on how active the fish are. They've been swimming about quite a lot so we turned it on. We've always removed the net for some reason lol.
 
#7 ·
Nice! I'm in MI also but haven't fired up the pond pump yet. I want to do a good cleaning and pump out the bottom of mine this spring. Will be done soon, but I don't usually disturb things until the water temp is stable above 50. I like the shape of your pond how many gallons? Mine is around 2400g I only have 2 koi, a few shubunkin, and some very large comets. Hope to move over to shubunkin more but the comets keep breeding lol.
 
#8 ·
I have no idea how large ours is to be honest. We did the math last year when we did a big cleaning and emptied the entire thing, but I can't remember off the top of my head. It's been staying over 50 for the most part, but it was getting so mucky we just went ahead and did it. They are such hardy fish its unbelievable.
 
#10 ·
Thank you! It's much clearer today. The UV stabilizer helps out so much when it comes to clearing up the water. Hoping to get some better pictures tomorrow. Finished cutting all the pieces for the new bridge too, so just have to put it all together, and then figure out how on earth we are getting it in place lol. Deep pond+heavy bridge=someone goes into 50 degree water, and holds it up while the other guides it into place. I'm conveniently too short to go into the pond hehe ;)
 
#11 ·
Well the water has cleaned up substantially. Can see right to the bottom. A lot of work needs to be done, especially as far as getting all the leaves out. Broke my net getting the majority out before we closed it last fall.




Picked up a beautiful baby butterfly koi at my LFS yesterday. He's really a beautiful white and silver-blue color, but he's still too nervous about his new place, so I took a picture from a distance. He also ate the shrimp pellets I had that were supposed to be feeding my filter, so I take that as a good sign. Other then being scared of me and still hiding some, he's doing well, and happy! Had no place other then my newly cycled 10 gallon, so that will be his home until the pond gets warm enough! He did eat this morning though. And moved around my Anubias a bit, but other wise he seems fine.
 
#13 ·
Got new goodies! Big new skimmer teehee:


Replacing:

It's 48" long, don't know the rest of the dimensions, but it's at least double what I have now.
Also got new Easy Pro 1/2hp pump:

Current pump you can hear whining from the house.

Finished our bridge! Started with 18 pieces of 2x4s 8 feet long, turned into a bridge.

Bamboo hasn't come back yet, but we got flowers!

Some fishies: I have a video, but no youtube account so pictures it is!

 
#17 ·
Empty space really. That's where I have my pump in my old one. There's brushes that go in between the two sections, and a mesh leaf collection thing that goes in the right. I also put the auto-shut off float thing on the left. My old one didn't have any room for it, and I know that caused the death of 3 pumps (eeek). For the most part I went for a bigger one as the pond sits under a tree and the amount of leaves that drop into the pond, even with a net over it during the fall, can get pretty bad. In general I hope it makes it so there's less maintenance. Our weir (the little flap that blocks the fish) broke off the other one and it was over 100 bucks for a new one, and the new skimmer was around 900 with the extension tube, so it was like oh why not lol. A new toy. I also like the fact there will be that much more water in the system. More water never hurts, especially since according to the fish guy there (fish biologist, works with fisheries too), we are pretty much at the fully stocked point. The rule with ponds is .01 pounds of fish per gallon, which means 40 pounds of fish for us. When the baby koi in there grow up, we are going to be right at that mark, any more so and we need to start giving them away.....

I don't have any true filter stuff in the skimmer though. I'm sure the brushes probably get some BB on them, but the waterfall container is where all the filtration stuff is as far as fine mechanical filtration and bio balls.
 
#19 ·
Run a water line up to it. Having an auto fill valve/float would have saved us in about 1600 dollars worth of pumps. Otherwise it's been easier then trying to get plants to live. My BF built it about 10 years ago when the pool was going in, so he asked the guy working the excavator to give him a hand.... But yeah I think having a waterline running up to it so it could autofill would be the biggest one.

Oooo ooo ooo, and the other one, a bottom drain! Our pond sits up on a hill-ish area, so I can get a siphon out (I use a pool hose, started with a shop vac), but I think having a bottom drain built in, would've been spectacular.

I think most of the things that could've been done better are purely for convenience. In general the pond has been running pretty well since it was built, not a single fish death nor failures other then pumps dying-all due to human error. I do agree with him that if we ever built a bigger one, we'd put more priority in making the skimmer bigger initially. We also have ours sitting under a tree, so while it can be a pain with the leaves, it sitting out of direct sunlight, along with the barley and UV (another good thing to get IMO), keep it algae free. The UV, in my eyes, is the one thing I don't think I could live without, keeps the pond pretty clear, and combined with the barley released H2O2 constantly, you can see right to the bottom.
 
#20 ·
Great points to ponder...

My pond won't be nearly as large; I've been debating the whole bottom drain issue. I wish my location were closer to plumbing, but jacking up my driveway to run pond plumbing underneath isn't an option. One of the reasons I've been considering a bottom drain though is to try and make sure the pump doesn't run dry.

Have you considered drilling a small hole or two in the bottom of your skimmer box (if that's still where you're going to house the pump) just as a safety feature?

I don't know if that's a good idea or not, but I've been considering doing that with my own skimmer/filter combo. I don't have a lot of confidence in the floating weir design on the opening to the skimmer portion of mine. Looks like it could get stuck too easily and block water from the pump.
 
#21 ·
I don't quite understand the bottom hole thing, if you could explain that to me lol. We've spent so much money on pumps, it's like oh crap there goes another 500 bucks down the drain, all because of low water levels.

If I could though I would defintely have made a divot somewhere in the middle to focus the water into for a full clean out. Last year we got string algae BAD (before we learned of the barley magic), and ended up having to drain the entire thing, and having to get out the last few inches with a shop vac turned into a 3-4 hour ordeal. And then on top of it, another 4 hours or so of sitting there with spray bottles of bleach and scrub brushes getting rid of all of it (yes it was THAT bad, you couldn't pull it off the liner). The bottom drain would've made it easy as hell lol.

If we ever put one in, I'd probably just run the line to the street like our pool line, and let it run to one of the storm drains. No pump, just gravity fed, but that would be the convenience of our pond sitting near the top of property, and our house being situated on a hill. Would make it easy, just open a valve, even if it meant getting in the pond or something (like a bathtub drain).

Ours, well I have no idea how it broke, but I do know it's never gotten stuck. It's a pretty solid one on this skimmer, as it has gaps around the outside and bottom to allow for water to pass by, it just keeps the fish from going in. You could always drill small holes or something near the bottom in case you are worried about it, just for a peace of mind.

http://www.123ponds.com/599211.html...UI9mBhmOTo95kATQmHjCNTKM5i-EfvP21u96qgFvD_BwE

I do have one of these, in which you plug the pump plug into the back of it's plug and it shuts off the pump when the water gets low, but just never had enough room in the old skimmer, everything just barely fit.
 
#22 ·
This is my skimmer/filter combo (I already have it lol) http://www.lagunaponds.com/lagunaeng/filters/pfloskimfilt5000.php?link=150

I've been debating modifying the design by drilling a hole at the bottom of the filter and installing a bulkhead that's plumbed back into the pond to to make sure the filter- and therefore the pump- stays wet even if the water level ever drops below the weir opening. My pool water drops 4-6" a week this time of year, I can barely imagine how much more evaporation I'll get with a shallower volume of water over top a black liner. :/

It would probably make more sense to just install a bottom drain, though.

Or the cheap and easy route, just plumb the pump also to a standard bottom filter Amazon.com: Danner 02211 PM1000 12-Inch by 12-Inch Mechanical Pond Filter: Patio, Lawn & Garden

Would that last possibly help in your application?
 
#23 ·
Oooo yeah see mine doesn't have a door like that. Mine's a flap type door, here's a picture I snagged off line:



It's kind of a cheap-o design but it works, keeps out stupid fish who chase the food in, and the gap at the bottom is enough to allow water in too. Just a simple hinge design.

I don't get too much evaporation. The amount of rain I get tends to counter whatever evaporates off, though theres been times its gotten bad and I only spot feed my fish when I go up there (probably 2-3 times a week, rest of the time they eat plant and bugs), and I've gone up to dead pumps and a tripped circuit breaker. I feel like I could but it would probably be too much work to plumb anything new. I currently have to do rearrangement of the pipes for the filter to the waterfall (this one is way bigger then the old one). Old PS1: 28" long x 18" wide x 20" tall, new PS2: 42" long x 20" wide x 30" tall, plus a 16" mouth versus the 8" mouth eeek. Gotta cut the liner for this one lol....

Having it like that would probably help, but I think it would be too much work lol. Pond sits in clay basically, I'm dreading when we start digging to get the new skimmer in, let alone get the old one out lol.
 
#25 ·
From what I understand was it was over long vacations, and the water was only trickling into the skimmer. The pump pretty much sucked the entire vault dry. (I wasn't here when pumps were being killed.) This last one we think has something wrong with the impeller. It whines BIG time. So we are just going to get it repaired and have it as a back up. I don't know how my BF let the water level get that low. :icon_roll LOL.
 
#26 ·
Oh ok. Now I follow LOL

My thinking is that if I have the pump pulling water from both that bottom filter AND from the filter/skimmer box, as long as there's water in the bottom of the pond, the filter shouldn't run dry?

I'm nervous about poking a hole in pond liner for a bottom drain. Plus I plan on keeping smaller fish and all the grates that come with the drains I've seen would not keep small fish out.

So I'm hoping just tossing that bottom filter in and plumbing up up the side of the pond to the pump will work?
 
#27 ·
http://www.stoneycreekequip.com/form/bottomdrain.htm
I like those ones with the diffusers in it, (thats my pond place), and the design looks like it would keep most small fish out, and by the look of their picture, it goes right into the bottom of the skimmer, like you said. I like the air diffuser just for the sheer fact of keeping the water more circulated, and the fact it would just run off the pump I have in the skimmer box, almost like how you suggested, though the UV pump does a pretty good job. I do like your idea of having one of those boxes at the bottom of the pond though, makes it simple. I hate cutting into the liner too lol, I'm not looking forward to making the hole wider for the new skimmer. The guy gave me the glue, double sided liner tape, and the tape that goes on top of it all, and explained it to me and all I could do was say :help: LOL.

I figure with the one above, I could probably put in a second pipe in the skimmer box and have a gate valve I could open, and that pipe would run down to the street or something like that.... But that would be a lot of work lol.
 
#28 ·
I've gone back and forth and forth and back again about the bottom drain for mine. lol It would be below street level for me, so wouldn't help me during pond maintanance. I talked with a few guys on Koiphen, and they basically told me that they wouldn't bother on a pond my size since I'm not planning on stocking high bioload fish (definitely not Koi, may go with FL natives...)

If you wanted to put one in for your pond, though, would it be that much more work to do it now, since you already have to dig out the existing skimmer?

Especially if you went with soft plumbing rather than hard?

Plumbing in general makes me go :help::help::help: lol
 
#29 ·
I think the problem would lie in getting the liner up to put the drain in lol. That stuff is heavy. My BF did all the plumbing work, and TBH we have no idea what it's going to be like when it comes time to switch out the new skimmer. The place gave us 5' of the tubing just in case we were short, but still no idea, we have to move the electrical stuff over too by the looks of it. The other problem is too much money spent on the new pump/skimmer, and that I'm lazy when it comes to that stuff lol.

If you aren't going to be dealing with messy carp I wouldn't worry too much. TBH my shop vac does a pretty good job with getting out the muck during big clean ups, I don't know how good it is for it, but what works, works lol. Our current system is pretty simple ATM. Just the skimmer with the brushes, the pump pumps the water up to the waterfall where all of the filterpads and bioballs are located, and then on the same side of the pond as the waterfall I have a pump thats held together with duct tape (ghetto pump) that pumps to a UV filter. I do have my pump on a timer though. 6 hours on, 6 off, 6 on, 6 off, otherwise the electric bills are crazy with the pool too, though the new pump is supposed to be way more efficient then the old one, uses 1/4 of the power, with the same flow rate.
 
#30 ·
Well did the first half of spring maintenance today! Took out about 1000 gallons, and cleared all of the muck out of the bottom of the pond. We have hair algae, so we decided instead of bleach this year and having to deal with removing all the fish, to go raid Meijer's of all their Hydrogen Peroxide. Dumped bottles on the exposed stuff and it was dead about 5 minutes later, with koi happily eating the bits of dead algae :hihi: We are filling it back up and letting the pond run for a day or two to clear up (with the old pump), and then we plan on emptying it lower to about 1/2 full, and then doing the skimmer. It's filling up as I speak (probably will be until dark).

Looks better where I was able to scrub off the algae, though I plan on using the rest of the hydrogen peroxide tomorrow and letting it bake in the sun as well to kill the rest of it. Barley is starting to decompose too which means it should start releasing trace amounts of hydrogen peroxide as well.


Silly question, but I have what I believe are ramshorn snails (idk on the spl lol) or pond snails in my ten gallon, butt loads with eggs galore too... Would it be bad to throw them into the pond? We have trapdoors in there, but I think they could use some help... Would they survive?
 
#32 ·
LOL well it is a pretty good idea.... I just didn't know how tolerant they would be of the pretty frigid water is all. Still pretty cold lol. It's actually filled right now and running again, but it's so cloudy, its not very picturesque. Just got the old pump running for now. Tomorrow is when the digging begins for the new skimmer.


Plan to get the old pump fixed despite having a replacement. Would be nice to have a backup :)
 
#36 ·
Well I haven't really felt them, though I can tomorrow when the lights turn back on. I do suspect they are ramshorn snails. Since this tank seems to be my first introduction in my life to pests galore (flatworms, copepods-well not really pest but still, and now hydra), I do remember briefly reading about how Pond Snails eat hydra. Yeah nope I got little green things on my tank wall I thought was some weird poop, but alas it has those tentacle thingies.

I am tempted to just throw the ones I see in and see what happens. I'm 90% sure my piggys will eat them before they can even hit the bottom, but can't hurt to try LOL.
 
#37 · (Edited)
Well I'm starting to THINK they are pond snails, saw one run over a hydra, and it was gone when it moved along :bounce:

Koi are also finally starting to eat right out of my hand again. The big boys in there slide right up onto my hand and take the food. Suck on finger too. They are such wonderfully curious fish. The baby I put in is starting to get bigger already, and finally came up for some food. He's been hanging with the smaller comets, but it's nice to see him finally come up to the surface to grab food!
 
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