The Pond project

I had a next chapter in the pond project today. We can see nearly to the bottom, plant life is flourishing and we are discovering there are a plethora of lil black fish (rietvoorns) in there. Quite useless since we cant see those buggers.t

Time had come to clean the filters though and when I opened the thing, it seemed that time might even have passed..

So I took out the big stuf filter brushes and hosed those down over the grass. There really was A LOT of junk & it took a while before it had all oozed out. I put those back when I was done.

Next I got the filter pad sheets out. First the top 2; they were FILTHY and then the bottom one – filthy filthy! By this time though, I realised that there was somehting awfully wrong. the filter was spewing out green stuffs & a lot of them.

All the dirt left in the filter just streamed out into the pond. (that was actually to be expected) so I cut the power to the pump;figuring that d solve it. I still saw some of the junk (GREEEEN JUNK) flowing out, but .. I though that was ok. :s

After cleaning all the pads, I went to put them back in and noticed the filter was half empty. So a lot of the gunk in the filter had flowed back into the pond.

I put it back together & plugged the pump in.

The filter is clean now; but the pond isnt as clean as it was before I started. So yeah a succes, but there s a lesson in here..

The Pond Cleaning Procedure!

1. Take out the pump & cut down the water supply to the filter. (I can do that easilly, it rules!) Do Not Cut The Power to the Pump. That means that the water wont flow back into the pond and that the water wont pump into the filter; making unfiltered water flow out into the pump.
2. WAIT untill the water has stopped flowing out, and push out some more water while the filters are still in.
3. Take out the big stuff filter brushes & hose them down thoroughly.
4. Take out the filter mats with as much junk as possible. be careful to get as much junk out as possible 🙂 Then hose them all down.
5. Put them back carefully respecting the order. Big holes at the bottom, fine grained filter on top.
6. Open the water supply on the pump to the filter & wait a while till the water starts flowing again 🙂

Repeat when necessary; check regularly!

There. That list should make stuff A LOT easier next time 🙂