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Thread: Veg filter substrate
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26-10-2019, 08:22 PM #1
Veg filter substrate
I have my veg filter all nicely linked into the koi pond and am building up the quantity of plants. This I will continue next year but in the winter I am thinking of putting in 50mm of gravel substrate.
I know the arguments are plus and minus, cleaning etc. However my reasons are it will enable me to have complete bottom coverage with eel grass and then all the wildlife will love it and leave my koi alone.
Yes i could use dozens of baskets but who lifts them all for cleaning.
Anyone else done this ?
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27-10-2019, 09:07 PM #2the slow pond build thread
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27-10-2019, 11:10 PM #3
There is a pond/aquarium plant with the common name of eel grass, can't remember the latin.
Grows up to 2 foot tall and gives good cover for wildlife.
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Ajm Thanked / Liked this Post
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28-10-2019, 01:22 AM #4
Just a thought.
If you are going down the substrate root (Don't think I would without baskets personally because it sounds messy and could be a maintenance chore), would the cat litter and laterite route be an option?
Could be 2 birds with one stone then. Plants grow well in it and it may help to reduce nitrates and phosphates.
There's a couple of YT videos where people have done this with tanks to create anoxic filtration. A 25mm layer of cat litter, followed by a thin layer of laterite and another 25mm of cat litter on top, then plant straight into it.
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28-10-2019, 06:02 PM #5
Hmm an anoxic bed, well there is a thought.... Trouble is I am not sure I could get hold of enough laterite its a big area to cover. I estimate a 25mm layer of anything is going to be half a bulk sand bag.
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28-10-2019, 06:23 PM #6
If you're going to use anoxic filtration methods for pond filtration, I would suggest that you do it as I describe in my article rather than try to adapt what you can do in an aquarium. Apart from the expense of trying to scale up the aquarium method to the size of a vegetable filter, the filtration in an aquarium works on a completely different principle to what you are trying to achieve.
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28-10-2019, 10:27 PM #7
Fair point Manky, let not re invent the wheel.
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28-10-2019, 10:36 PM #8
Fully agree with you here Syd.
My suggestion was along these lines because if he's simply looking for a substrate base, which offers the pond no benefit whatsoever, then I wondered if trying cat litter and laterite (5kg bags of aquabasis thinly spread between 2 layers of cat litter) as a substrate may (or may not) add a small level of anoxic filtration as an added bonus.
That said, having loose substrate wouldn't be my cup of tea anyway. Spent too many years cleaning gravel in the bottom of fish tanks and got so fed up with it I binned the lot and just leave a nice carpet of algae on the tank bottoms now, which actually looks ok. If growing plants in a substrate I'd find a way to stick with baskets of some description.... which is why I went down the anoxic route, and it's working great. Nearly 4 weeks since last water change, never gone that long before.
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29-10-2019, 08:37 AM #9
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29-10-2019, 10:33 AM #10
Saved about 3600 litres so far. Approx. £14 saving counting both supply and sewerage, in just 3 weeks.
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29-10-2019, 03:16 PM #11
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29-10-2019, 03:33 PM #12
Yep, it should add up nicely.
But think I need more baskets as nitrate is creeping up when I feed more. Or maybe its not fully mature yet due to lower temps so hasn't reached peak performance.
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29-10-2019, 06:11 PM #13
Best plants to remove Nitrate
pug has a very impressive veg filter on his pond, have a look at some of his his youtube videos....