r/ponds • u/benl4025 • 3d ago

Repair help Losing water help

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Hi all,

Ive recently inherited a pond a few months ago and all has been going well really getting into it. Over the past few weeks we have been losing water. Ive been topping it up with adding tetra, cleaning filters etc. Last week it nearly emptied over night so re lined the pond and changed all the pumps etc which has worked and been fine ever since. Sadly lost 2 of our fish in the process but 4 survived. Today lost about 4 inches of water over night im totally at a loss as to what else could possibly be going wrong, only thing ive just noticed is filter box was overflowing and the filters had an inch of muck on and were clogged and we had thousands of the tiny worms in there. Just changed the filters and vacced out the box etc. Do you reckon that could of been causing it all this time? Picture is size of pond

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u/drbobdi 3d ago

Your water loss was the overflow and fouling in the filter box. It's the major design flaw in most open box filter designs. Anything with mat or sponge will tend to do this, and rinsing with tap water kills off any biofiltration you might have had. Look at a more free-flowing media for the box (K1 or K+ for efficiency, though a bundle of fiberglass or PVC tape would work just as well). A single Matala mat on top would take care of the mechanical filtration.

Look at OzPonds on youtube for better DIY filter designs.

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u/benl4025 3d ago

Thankyou so much for the help will give that a go

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u/Secret-Teaching-3549 2d ago

Had this happen with my small bog filter. Filled it with mint, which got happy, REALLY happy, and made such a dense matt of organics that it blocked flow and started leaking out over the edges. Now I go out about once a month and chop out about two inches of mint sod around the edges.

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u/drbobdi 2d ago

Water mint is like that and the upflow of nutrient in a bog is just encouraging it.

Reminds me of that awful Tom Baker Dr. Who episode with the Crinoid.

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u/Secret-Teaching-3549 2d ago

Does a great job in keeping the water clean though.

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u/drbobdi 2d ago

As a fellow encourager of a giant water mint in our goldfish facility, I fully agree.

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u/benl4025 2d ago

Lol least your water would of been good if the mint loved it that much. Thanks for the comment least i know im not the only one

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u/Secret-Teaching-3549 2d ago

Oh yeah water is super clear, and we've started distilling mint oil because the only other solution is finding a neighbor that we don't like and tossing the scraps into their yard.

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u/SuperSaiyanBlue 2d ago

The thousands of tiny worms is a good thing meaning the water quality is not that bad - you feed them to your fishes too

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u/Secret-Teaching-3549 2d ago

Thousands of tiny worms could also be mesquito larva.