Ok, forget the fish. Are you saying I can use a pump with the clay liner. (we have lots and lots of clay, won't have to haul it in) Darren can you give me more details on the pump you built. We currently have 27 ducklings. Once they are big enough will put some in freezer but still expect to have at least 1/2 so we could dig deeper if needed. Thanks for all your help

-- Lesa in Va (Lemaradd@aol.com), March 23, 2002

Answers

Lesa, it's early AM and I posted my answer under your original question. Guess I need another cup of coffee.

-- JJ Grandits (JJGBDF@aol.com), March 23, 2002.

I didn't build the pump. We used a Little Giant submersible pump. I did build the biological filter out of a 70 gal Rubbermaid stock tank.

The tanks have a series of integral ledges in the side. I used a piece of PVC sheet cut to fit the tank and rest on the lowest ledge to support 5 to 6" of lightweight aggregate. To allow water to pass through the piece of PVC, I drilled about 3,000 1/8" holes after laying out a grid.

I also cut a 4" hole in the center of the PVC sheet to allow a 5' tall plastic tube to rest on the bottom of the tank and pass up through the sheet. That was the aeration column. The water was pumped from the pond through a hose to the top of the column and allowed to spray downwards to pickup oxygen.

When the water rose in the tank it filled the bottom and eventually rose high enough to pass through the PVC sheet and then the gravel on top. Because of the horizontal cross section area of the tank, the velocity of the water was slow enough for suspended particles to either settle out in the bottom chamber or collect on the gravel.

At the top of the tank, I used bulkhead fittings to attach two 2" drain pipes which which went to a T fitting and then into a larger pipe which drained the water back to the pond through a small waterfall set in the side of a rock wall along one side of the pond.

I used more than one drain in case one became blocked the tank would still drain rather overflow. Eventually the pump would have drained the pond if no one was around and the tank overflowed long enough.

To clean the setup the pump was shut off and the drain in the bottom of the tank was opened. After all the water drained out, a water hose was used to force water down through the gravel to backflush the deposits into the bottom chamber and then out the drain.

The only change after running the setup through a summer was to add a screen on top of the tank to keep leaves and bugs out. A couple of shrubs were also planted to screen the filter from view.

-- Darren (df1@infi.net), March 24, 2002.

Darren, you need to include the http:// in the link code. This one should work:

Little Giant Pump Co.

-- Hank in Oklahoma (hbaker@ipa.net), March 25, 2002.

Thanks Hank. I should know that by now.

-- Darren (df1@infi.net), March 25, 2002.