[Ponds-Koi] Priming external pond pump
A check valve is a one way valve allowing water to flow in one direction only. I do not use them as they tend to clog and fail. I use gate valves or ball valves and I would suggest you put them on both sides of the pump. Your pond is about 5400 gallons, how many gallons do you have in filtration? What is the GPM of your pump? Usually a Koi pond has about 10%+ of its volume in filtration and you should have a pump capable of about 5,000 GPH. Large Koi (over 24″) need somewhere near 500 gallons per fish and its possible to push it to 300 gallons per fish if you have massive filtration and water movement. My pond is 2300 gallons and I have about 200 gallons of filtration ( 3-55 gallon barrel filters and 3 smaller pressure filters) and I move between 2500 to 5000 GPH (winter - summer). A single pond master filter will be able to handle 2 large fish or about 8 koi under 14″ and thats only if the filter is kept clean and the pond as a whole is ballanced. The filter you have can only take so many GPH and if pushed further, the bacteria will not have enough contact time to convert the amonia/nitrite as the water is moving to fast through the filter.
Category: Philippines Internet Koi Society
