There are many good options available for filtration on the market to suit different kinds of ponds, but if you are good at making things, then you might consider having a go at making your own.
In an ideal world, where money was no object, we would have a drum filter on every tank on the farm to provide mechanical filtration, but drum filters are expensive so Mark, resourceful as ever, has come up with his own solution to provide the best filtration possible for our Koi and he believes his design is the next best thing to a drum filter for efficiently removing waste from the pond system. Apart from one system in our quarantine building, all of the filtration on the farm has been designed and constructed by Mark to suit the needs of the systems that we have running here. It’s not just a cost effective way for us to provide filtration for each of our tanks but it also means that Mark has been able to incorporate his own modifications that have helped to improve the way the water is treated and made the systems themselves easier to keep clean. With rising energy costs always a concern, he has also been looking at ways to make our filtration systems more energy efficient and has converted several existing filters to run using airlift. This has worked so well that all new filtration systems that he adds on the farm are now built in this way and the older ones he is slowly converting where possible. The techniques he has used have been of great interest to a great many visitors to the farm and he is often asked to explain how he has constructed his filtration systems, so in order to share this information with as many interested Koi keepers as possible, he has done a couple of sketches to illustrate the methods he has used. You are welcome to use these designs to build your own mechanical filtration system or air lift pump and to share a link to this page (but you do not have permission to copy or reproduce these sketches either electronically, on another website or in print.)
