Topic: The Pond Filter That Grows as Needed
Optimised Modular Design Solves Every Problem

Dates:
March to September, main season. April/May

Summary:
Each Spring, garden pond owners complain about algae and murky water. One of the main reasons is that the water in the ponds starts to warm up. This causes leaves and debris blown into the water to decompose quickly and thus generate large amounts of nutrients. In the cold water, underwater plants grow far too slow and are only capable of binding a small amount of this natural fertiliser.

At the same time the fish begin to wake up during this time of year. They tend to stir up the sediment on the ground of the pond.
This leads to even more nutrients entering the water. Add to this the onset of fish feeding and the results in April/May shall be obvious: the water is either brown from stirred up sediment or green from algae growth.

To change this, the nutrients have to be extracted from the water.

There are two ways of doing this: Firstly, algae and particles of sediment have to be filtered out with an optimally adapted filtration system. Foam inserts with fine pores and even more effective mats with organic fibres  can filter out nearly 100% of particles.

Secondly, all nutrients that are dissolved in the water can be bound by underwater plants and are thus effectively removed from the water.

Only both measures combined, mechanical filtering and the use of underwater plants, will give optimal results.

NaturaGart, a company headquartered in Ibbenbüren which is specialised in large pond installations has developed an intelligent, systematic solution:

A modular filter stack mechanically cleanses the water and a filtering trench with underwater plants does the rest.

This combination does away with algae and with the need to constantly clean and add chemical products.

This system is especially effective  for swimming ponds and fish ponds where these problems tend to be worst in springtime.

Expansion:
An adaptable filtration system is necessary in garden ponds because the particles that have to be removed change size during the course of the year. In Spring sediment tends to be coarser, while in Summer removal tends to make particles finer. The same is true for algae: During Spring relatively large, about 10mm, mini-thread algae swim on the surface, and later in the year most algae are microscopic.

The NaturaGart filtration system is easily adapted. Foam inserts can be supplied with different pore sizes. If the fine filter mats clog up too quickly, a new module can be inexpensively added.

An interesting new development are the mats of organic fibre. When they fill up with debris, they are simply composted. The pores of comparable foam inserts are so fine that they are nearly impossible to wash clean.

The biological filtering unit can also be adapted easily: If there are too many fish in the pond, the water has to be passed over as large a surface of bacteria as possible. For this purpose, NaturaGart has developed special OXI-foams that can be inserted into the modules.

The system has another advantage: The filtration system can grow as required. When fish are added or the pond is enlarged, the NaturaGart filters can simply be expanded. Splitting the load up is possible, too: The pump then sends the water to two separate streams at whose springs sits a separate filter module.

Images:
Please contact us if you require more images.

Image rights:
Images are royalty free if the source is acknowledged close to the image as
Photo: NaturaGart 

Typical springtime problem: The grown up fish search for food in the sediment and stir up the sludge.	The nutrients that are released are fertilisers for the algae. They usually begin appearing around April/May.
	Good visibility is no illusion. This 1m long sturgeon lives in clear water.	Crystal clear like a mountain lake. The new filtration system was developed in the ponds of the NaturaGart Park in Ibbenbüren. The largest sturgeons there are 1.5m long.
Many ponds suffer from overly dense fish populations. In these cases filtration systems are indispensable.	This is how nature regulates things: Vegetable debris decomposes on the ground of the pond and underwater plants immediately absorb the nutrients.	The underwater plants absorb the dissolved nutrients with the help of sunlight. Larger particles are removed in the filters.
The dissolved nutrients are elegantly removed in the NaturaGart filtering trench.	The NaturaGart filtering trench integrates nicely into the pond landscape. Often this will create an attractive island situation for chairs or hammocks.	Even the fine filtering media have pores wider than the size of the algae they are supposed to remove.
The mini-filter works fine in basins of up to 3m³.	The NaturaGart small ponds filter is sufficient for ponds up to 20m³.	By adding vertical modules the small ponds filter is converted to a standard filter, good for ponds up to 50m³.
For large bodies of water the long-term filter helps to expand service intervals. The principle is always the same: Only the modules are loaded with different inserts and stacked differently.	The Oxi-Plus filter was especially developed for ponds with dense fish populations.	The drawing shows how water flows though the filter.