A Green Environment at a Lower Price: Building a Pond Filter
What sort of a filter should you have for your water garden pond? How large does it need to be, and how clean does your miniature habitat need to be kept? These are questions to ask yourself when you install a water garden in your yard. It isn’t just a matter of installing a liner and a pump, and sitting back to relax by your little pond. You want water plants and probably fish to live in the little habitat you’re creating to make it both beautiful and appealing. Never think of what you’re building as nothing but a hole in your back yard, but understand it for what it is – an eco-system. Building a pond filter will assist you in keeping your system clean, and it isn’t going to cost you half as much as it would to buy commercial filters.
You will want to begin by measuring the size of the pond. You can use a rope for this purpose. You must know how much area you have to filter so that you be sure your filter will be able to do the job. One way you can decrease the necessity for filtering is by adding waterfalls and streams to your system. These will help move the water around naturally through the system as well as propel it into the filters. A water garden is in reality a delicately-balanced system that must have all of its component parts in order to provide for the health of the plants and animals inhabiting it. You need a way to eliminate the impurities that can destroy the environment and encourage the creation of good bacteria that rid the pond of fish waste and organic materials.
There are a couple of types of filters you can employ to help you develop the most optimum pond environment. A mechanical filter will collect debris and contaminants. A bacterial filter, on the other hand, will break contaminants down into substances that the plants and fish can use. To build your own filter, you can begin with only a good-sized plastic pot, mesh bags, large lava rocks, and an underwater pond pump. Fill the mesh bags with lava rocks, taking care not to over stuff. Sit the pump in the bottom of your plastic container, adjust the tubing and cords, stick the lava rocks in the container, and you’ll have a basic but effective pond filter.