Fish Pond Filters

Natural ponds provide natural filtration and fish can survive just fine in them, but your pond is man made and needs a little help to keep the water from becoming toxic to your fish. Fish produce waste and this waste in turn produces bacteria and toxins that are harmful to your fish. As time goes on, more and more toxins build up which make your fish sick and eventually will kill them.

Fish pond filters work to remove the toxins and keep your fish happy and healthy. The more fish you want to keep, the better your filtration system should be. Koi, especially need good filtration since they are quite large and messy (but beautiful) fish.

In order to have proper water filtration, your fish pond filters should provide both biological and mechanical filtration. The biological filter will allow a bed of "good" bacteria to grow and these bacteria will consume the toxins produced by the fish waste. The mechanical filtration will remove stuff floating around in the water. Both are necessary. You may also want to consider an ultraviolet sterilizer which will kill algae, bacteria and parasites suspended in your water and help your pond become clearer.

Fish pond filters should work to filter ½ of the ponds water each hour. Obviously, the bigger the pond, the bigger the filter you will need. You should get one that sits outside the pond so that you can easily maintain it and change the filter cartridges. Some need to sit higher than the pond, but most can be higher or lower and some can even be hidden underground. Most only require cleaning once a year and can last up to 5 years. Price can run from hundreds of dollars into the thousands.