How To Understand Biomedia and Save Good Money On The Best Pond Filter
Biofiltration capacity in any system can be enormously increased by replacing
traditional plastic tubes by more efficient biomedia.
Alfagrog is such a biomedia.
Why? because it is extremely porous, full of tiny tubes if you like into which
bacteria find their way and do their job. To keep the Alfagrog efficient it is
best to keep as much solids as possible away from the surface.
If you suspect that your filter is not working well enough then add a few litres
of Alfagrog for a big improvement in biological and probably mechanical
filtration. A single litre of Alfagrog will cater for a pond of 1,000 litres
from a biological point of view.
The challenge in creating good effective bio filters is to get as much surface
area inside your black box as you can. A secondary benefit of using Alfagrog is
that the black box can be made smaller making it easier to install in the pond
environment.
The important point to remember for the garden pond keeper is that it is NOT the
size of the box that determines the capacity of a biofilter. The capacity is
determined by the amount of biomedia surface area in the box.
In my opinion and also by independent testing the best run-of-the-mill garden
pond filters contain Alfagrog. The best koi pond filters used to contain Japanese
matting inside vortex filters for sound technical reasons to be discussed later.
Today the most modern and efficient koi pond filters contain Kaldnes and this
has recently been incorporated into a new Hozelock biofilter system called the
Trinamic.
The following points are important to consider when choosing a basic black box
gravity type
biofilter:
-
Good solids removal capability as evidenced by the use of open cell foam that
fits into the chamber or box without leaving gaps around the edges.
-
Ideally there should be at least two layers of foams with different sized
cells making the removal of solids progressively more efficient.
-
The coarse foam should always be on top.
-
Water should ideally be distributed evenly onto the foam surfaces to get
better distribution of water across the surface of the foams . Not easy to
achieve in practice.
The box type filters are all gravity devices. In other words the water is pumped
into the box but it flows out under gravity and not pressure. Consequently the
filter is normally at the highest point in the circuit - i.e. above the
waterfall.
If you have a waterfall and it is not convenient to install the filter above the
waterfall then distribute the water from the pump so that part goes to the
filter that is at pond level and part goes to the waterfall using a separate
pipe.
You will need a 2 way valve arrangement or at least a
Y
piece.
In this way the water from the filter can go straight back into the pond -
obviously the outlet from the filter must be slightly above the water surface in
the pond. This mechanism will normally require a slightly larger pump or better
still install a separate small pump to run the biofilter on its own circuit as
discussed earlier.
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