Pond Filter News

Who Needs a Bilogical Pond Filter

Full sun is the perfect environment for a beautiful pond, but also for algea blooms. You have a natural looking fishpond, with shallow ends that do not recieve too much circulation. But then after a while your pond looks like pea soup. It could be that your pump or pond filter is too small. It could be that your pond has not reached its ecological balance yet. But in any case a chemical war is not recommended. It seems nature is against us, but the oposite is happening. This is where we can let nature help us. And we can help nature with a biological pond filter. Your pond plants will look vibrant, and your fish will be happy.

A Healthy Pond means a Biological Filter

It may seem strange that a few straws of barley can be used as a remedy to your green fish pond, but if you allow the ecological balance back,  you will have much less work on the overall, and your fish pond will look good. You can look at fishponds as living organisms. And just like a human who takes too much medicine will always be on the brink of sickness, so the chemical and mechanical submersible pond filters are prone to bring trouble. Just like a healthy humans, a healthy fishpond will look like it feels. It shows. And you will get the healthy undercurrent feeling, whenever you are around a healthy pond. 

Biological Filter Benefits

Of all pond filters, a biological pond filter is the easiest and  as explained above the most healthy for your pond. The price range for such filters is low, and the biological filter itself looks good, as part of the pond setting, so no need for a submersible pond filter.

So What is a Biological Filter

A biological filter is a filter in which bacteria - living creatures too small to be seen - live. These bacteria eat the muck and give your pond the nitrates it needs. The plants and the fish need these nitrates, in what is called the natural "nitrate cycle". You are turning dirt into gold. Instead of fighting the filth, you use it for the benefit of your living pond, because your pond - fish, plants, pond filters and all - IS a living organism. In simple words, the biological filter is actually a filter with plants and bacteria, silently doing their job.

Using Nature Naturally

For an almost negligible investment, your pond, in which typically thousands of dollars have been invested, will become a natural reserve of self sustaining beauty, and all because of this small detail: a biological filter. If you would be using a mechanical filter, even a submersible pond filter, you would have to maintain it, and constantly check on your pond seeing to it that is is clean.
Typically the biological pond filter is kept above water, and looks natural adding its plants to the pond view, and - as opposed to mechanical submersible pond filters - is immediately accessable if anything goes wrong,  is easy to fix, and costs little.

Biological Filters in the Movies

Aquarium filters and pond filters are the exact same technology being deployed at a different scale. In the movie "Finding Nemo" a fantastic and funny animated movie well appreciated by anyone who visited Australia, Nemo, a fish who is taken away from his father off a beautiful reef, to a Sydney dentist's aquarium. A central theme of the movie is a plot by the fish to help Nemo escape. They are able to stop the submersible filter's action, and then make as much filth as possible, until one of the fish says: "Do you realize we are swimming in our own sh...?" - his words are cut off of course, it’s a family movie. But next morning they wake to a fantastically clean fish tank, due to a new automatic scanning filter cleaning the tank every five minutes.
The greatness of biological filters is that they work just as well, but at a much larger scale, and are able to keep a complete pond clean, without “lazers”.

Healthy Plants and Healthy Fish with a healthy Biological Pond Filter

The bottom line is that a healthy pond is a well-balanced pond, and that means a clear pond with healthy fish and plants, showing their appreciasion of the health you provided them with. They show it in their color and shape, and by giving off that feeling to you and your visitors, even reminding us humans that we ourselves could make the world a healthy place to live in with only a small effort.

For more information about pond filters, please visit us at www.macarthurwatergardens.com  

Enjoy your pond!

Brett Fogle, Owner
Macarthur Water Gardens