First time pond owner & fish mate pump

Greetings
Just discovered this site and as i'm owning my first house with a garden
i think it may be invaluable.

Anyway i have bought a house with a pond, not a big pond. It has a fish
mate 2000 fountain and just discovered the pump round the back (a fish
mate 2500UV) which feeds a mini waterfall.

I've just emptied out the pond as it was filthy, full of leaves and muck
and thought i better find out what this equipment actually does. Now as
i say i'm a complete novice with ponds so please be patient!

What does the pump do (apart from feeding a flow of water to the mini
waterfall) does it clean the water? is it just for keeping fish. We've
not had the pump on since moving in would this have stopped the pond
becoming so mucky.
I don't know if i should open up the pump and replace or clean anything
before i fill the pond for summer.

Appreciate any guidance on this!
phil




--
sorethumbs

On Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:53:05 +0000, sorethumbs wrote:

Anyway i have bought a house with a pond, not a big pond. It has a fish
mate 2000 fountain and just discovered the pump round the back (a fish
mate 2500UV) which feeds a mini waterfall.

The Fishmate 2000 will be the pump and there should be a pipe going
from it to the Fishmate 2500UV, unless there was another pump, which is
the filter and also contains an Ultra Violet bulb.

I think this is the filter you have:
http://www.pondkeeper.co.uk/prodpage.asp?ProdID=1165

You should remove the sponge and filter media and clean. Assuming you
don't have fish it's ok to clean them in tapwater since you are
starting the pond up from scratch, the chlorine/chloramine in tapwater
will kill any bacteria.

The UV is to keep the algae down in the water. Only the minute type
that make the water green is affected by the UV, if you get blanket
weed it isn't affected since it doesn't go through the filter. The
bulbs only last about a year and then their output drops off. You may
not need it though and there is no point in replacing the bulb if you
don't have green water.

--
Regards - Rodney Pont
The from address exists but is mostly dumped,
please send any emails to the address below
e-mail rpont (at) gmail (dot) com

In article . uk,
Rodney Pont wrote:
On Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:53:05 +0000, sorethumbs wrote:

Anyway i have bought a house with a pond, not a big pond. It has a fish
mate 2000 fountain and just discovered the pump round the back (a fish
mate 2500UV) which feeds a mini waterfall.

The Fishmate 2000 will be the pump and there should be a pipe going
from it to the Fishmate 2500UV, unless there was another pump, which is
the filter and also contains an Ultra Violet bulb.

I think this is the filter you have:
http://www.pondkeeper.co.uk/prodpage.asp?ProdID=1165

You should remove the sponge and filter media and clean. Assuming you
don't have fish it's ok to clean them in tapwater since you are
starting the pond up from scratch, the chlorine/chloramine in tapwater
will kill any bacteria.

The UV is to keep the algae down in the water. Only the minute type
that make the water green is affected by the UV, if you get blanket
weed it isn't affected since it doesn't go through the filter. The
bulbs only last about a year and then their output drops off. You may
not need it though and there is no point in replacing the bulb if you
don't have green water.



Just a note to update and let you know the majority of "ponders" have
moved to a moderated venue at Google groups to avoid the childish
trolls like this moron " who's
been widely killfiled.

The link for the pond group is:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.p...derated/topics

See you there!



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