I have a new pond and i have 3 55gal barrels with a 2in input at the top and 1 1/2in qutput at the bottom that flows into a stream. Inside the barrels are milk creats then mesh bag filled with lava rock then mesh bag with straw. Is this a good filter becuse i'm tring to learn as I go and this is what a local suggested to me, and put bio booster in it.

My pond is 22ft long and 15ft wide and 5.5 ft deep i also have 8 koi and lillies in the pond

thx for your help

jack

Okay, 15,200 gallons plus 160 in your filters. About 15,400 gallons.

That's a lot of volume. It's great, but you are seriously underusing you filter space. Both the lava rock and straw are *very* bad choices of media. The lava rock is inefficient, will foul almost immediately and will be impossible to clean. The straw will break down and contaminate your pond with dissolved organics. You'll have a mess on your hands, and it will be hard to clean up.

Empty all three barrels. re-pipe barrel #1 so that the water enters the barrel about 1/3 of the way down, and put a 90-degree elbow inside the barrel so the water swirls around. Place a drain at the bottom to get rid of the crud that falls to the bottom and send the outflow from the top to both of the remaining barrels in parallel. You can do a bunch of different things with the two remaining barrels. You could run the flow from your home-made vortex to the top of a 4-inch PVC pipe in the middle of the barrels and let it splash down to the bottom, then upflow through tabs cut in the bottom end of the 4-inch pipe. You'll need to fill the filter with something that *works*, and I'd recommend Bio-Fil; PVC tape which gives you 125 sq.ft. of surface for each cu.ft.of media you put in. It will not foul, will not break down and is light and easy to clean ( A quick shake in a tub of pond water does it. You can even do the shaking in the filter vessel itself if you have a bottom drain on the barrel and backwash with pond water as you do it.). You can put a sheet of filter mat at the top to catch the small stuff.

If you feel like spending a little more, you could convert your barrels into bioreactors by getting enough Kaldenes media (available from Aquatic Ecosystems (www.aquaticeco.com)) to fill both barrels about 3/4 of the way up, four big airstones for each barrel and a high-capacity Alitta air pump. Rig the airstones in gangs of four at the bottom of the barrel, fill the barrel with the media, run the water in so that it exits the barrel about 1/4 of the way down from the top, remembering that you'll need to rig a screen over the openings to prevent the media from escaping (it is free-floating). Connect the air pump and run it full-blast into both barrels as the water circulates. Best biofilter ever. You'll need to put some mat into the top of your vortex, since this system does not provide any mechanical filtration. Remember that you will also need screened bottom drains on both barrels.

Get a book on filtration, or read Mike White's articles on the website. "Learning as you go" kills fish.

(Answer courtesy Bob Passovoy)