Your Garden Grows

A Clean Environment for Less Money: Building a Pond Filter

What type of a filter do you need for your water garden pond? What size does it need to be, and how clean does your miniature water world need to be kept? These are questions to ask yourself when you build a water garden in your yard. It isn’t just a matter of putting in a liner and a pump, and sitting back to look at your little pond. You want green plants and probably fish to live in the little habitat you’re establishing to make it both lovely and appealing. Do not think of what you’re building as only a hole in your back yard, but realize 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 nearly as much as it would to purchase commercial filters.

You will want to begin by measuring the size of the pond. You can make use of a rope for this purpose. You need to know how much area you have to filter so that you relax knowing your filter will be able to take care of the job. One way you can lessen the need 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 force it through the filters. A water garden is definitely a delicately-balanced system that needs all of its component parts in order to provide for the health of the plants and animals living there. You need a way to filter out the impurities that can damage the environment and encourage the generation of good bacteria that rid the pond of fish waste and organic materials.

There are a couple of kinds of filters you can employ to help you develop the most optimum pond environment. A mechanical filter will rid the water of debris and contaminants. A bacterial filter, on the other hand, will break contaminants down into materials that the plants and fish can use. To build your own filter, you can start with nothing but a large plastic pot, mesh bags, large lava rocks, and a submersible pond pump. Fill the mesh bags with lava rocks, making sure not to over stuff. Put the pump in the bottom of your plastic container, run the tubing and cords, place the lava rocks in the container, and you’ll have a simple but effective pond filter.