Homemade Pond Filters - Build Your Own Pond Filter

The beauty of a landscape design is incomplete without the addition of a water feature. The same is with gardens, supplementing them with garden ponds or any other water structures always adds the visual appeal. Building a pond is not the issue, the concerning factor is its maintenance. Many of the gardening enthusiasts leave behind the idea of a garden pond, mainly because of the cost of buying the essential components like pond pump and pond filter. If such is the case, an affordable alternative is using homemade pond filters. You can build your own pond filter, provided that you understand the concept of a pond filter and its various parts.

Build Your Own Pond Filter

The basic principle of a pond filter is to create a healthy environment for the inhabitants, such as plants, fishes and other organisms in the pond. For providing such a condition, availability of adequate amount of oxygen is the key factor. Overall, the water chemistry of the garden pond keeps on changing due to environmental pollutants and fish wastes. A homemade pond filter does not remove the water contaminants physically, rather it acts as a biological substrate for the beneficial bacteria that convert the nitrites, nitrates and ammonia into usable forms for the plants and fish.

In order to build your own pond filter, you will require a large plastic container or grow pot (at least 3-4 gallon size), mesh bags, large rocks (preferably lava rocks with large surface area) and submersible pond pump. The size and amount of rocks depends upon the size of the container and pond. Hence larger the pond, the more you need lava rocks (20-30 pounds). Also, the rock surfaces may be dirty. Hence cleaning should be done prior to using them for making a homemade pond filter. If you are ready with all these required materials, you can proceed with the construction of a homemade pond filter.

First of all, fill the clean lava rocks in the mesh bags. Though they are lighter than other rocks, make sure that you add only the amount that a mesh bag can hold. The rocks will also become heavier after deposition of wastes and accumulation of bacteria. The weight of rocks in the mesh bag should be such that the bag can be lifted easily. For convenience, add the rocks in the mesh bag, dip it in water and check whether you can pick it up easily or not. Accordingly, you can make use of three or four mesh bags for adding the lava rocks. Once you have completed adding the lava rocks in the mesh bags, keep them aside.

The next step in building homemade fish pond filter is positioning the pump and tubing (if any). Put the pond pump at the bottom of the container, preferably on the side. Doing so will allow easy adjustment of the attached tubing and electrical cord, so that they stick out of the container. After correct fixation of the pump and tubing, gently place the mesh bags containing the lava rocks on the top of the pump. With this, you have completed building a homemade pond filter.

These are the easy steps on how to make pond filters. Place the homemade pond filter in the water and turn on the pump. The water drawn by the pump is filtered through the rock layers. Within a few weeks, bacterial layer will develop on the rock surfaces, which in turn maintains the nutrient and oxygen level of the pond. Thus, your homemade pond filter works as a perfect biofilter system and creates a better environmental condition for the plants, fishes and pond inhabitants.