Getting started

[Deuem]

Excuse my ignorance but what is a four tier bog/spillway system? Sounds intriguing. On the run cycles some people run them 24/7. I would think the daytime would be enough and let them sit empty at night. Give everything time to grow with the available O2. maybe 1 cycle per hour or 2. This is one choice that everyone has their own opinion on. How hot is it there and will evaporation dry them out first. Some roots need a lot of air time, some can sit in water. Depending on what you plant. Reference the DWC plants vs some trees. I have had some/more problems with drowning plants and had to step back with water. Especially seeds. If it turns to mush, then there was too much water and not enough air time. IMO you will need to figure out what is best for you. I am still testing in the small nursery. If I don't give them water the tap roots grow deeper looking for it. Eventually they will die from no water but it takes awhile. With too much water I can kill them overnight. With no light, it takes about 3 days and they wither up and die. I grow all our plants from seed and I want to know what goes wrong. This batch all got planted in net cups and half got transplanted. The other half had the light turned off to see how long it would take. This is inside with no available sunlight. 2 days and they went past recovery. I had thought they would go longer.

[oldSarge]

Thanks for the info. Looking at some YouTube videos with people demonstrating their different autosiphons it looked as if their fill took about five minutes and drained in about one minute. That means they would cycle about ten times an hour but I'm not sure if that was just a test system and the fill/drain cycle time would be increased by a larger bed.

Excuse my ignorance but what is a four tier bog/spillway system?. Sounds intriguing.

Maybe I have ortechnicalized that description. What I am trying to say that this pond "system" we inherited in the property we bought consists of four tiers graduating from smaller to larger plastic pond tubs. The third tier just before the main pond is filled with gravel and I believe umbrella palms. This is supposed to be a bog filtration system but according to my research having the water just flow over the gravel and down into the pond greatly reduces it's effectiveness. I plan to remedy this sometime soon by pulling the plants and graval out to put a slotted PVC grid along the bottom and replacing the plants and gravel to have water flow up through the gravel and root system.

How hot is it there and will evaporation dry them out first.

It gets real warm in July and August, high 90's with rare once or twice a season breaking 100. The humidity is the killer though, running 94% to even 100% at times. I bet inside a greenhouse the temp will have to be monitored or I might even install auto vents.

[Deuem]

Your temps are pretty much the same as mine. Hot and sticky in the summer.

reduces it's effectiveness

meaning what? cleaning or speed? Changing to a wicker set up?
What are you after to do with this top level? got a photo to share?

I am losing about 1 inch of water a day right now outside.

[oldSarge]

Your temps are pretty much the same as mine. Hot and sticky in the summer.

Gnats too? We are plagued with hoardes of gnats from early June to early September. Not to mention the mosquitos but they even avoid the areas the gnats gather, back as soon as the gnats move on though.

I said: "reduces it's effectiveness" pertaining to our bog filter . . .

meaning what? cleaning or speed? Changing to a wicker set up?
What are you after to do with this top level? got a photo to share?

In the four tiers the bog filter is the third tier (mini pond) in the system just before the main pond. The water is spilled into it from the second tier and just runs through the bog filter. The water level in the bog is at least two inches above the gravel in which the plants are rooted so a majority of the water just flows over the top and spills out into the main pond. I'm sure there is some filtering effect but a SWAG would be that it's at best 25% effective.

What I want to do is add another pump from the main pond to run into a grid of slotted PVC below the bog gravel to be forced up through the roots. I believe this would enhance the bog's effectiveness greatly.

I am losing about 1 inch of water a day right now outside.

I can imagine we're experiencing about the same. We curently have a problem with a leak in the uppermost tier so as we turn on the pump to run water through the system it has to fill it with about three or four gallons before it spills into the second tier. We have a mechanical timer on a faucet so we slowly run the water into the top tier for about five minutes to keep the water level up. Most of the chlorine in the tap water dissipates before it reaches the main fish pond. An automated water level sustainer is in the plans.

The other day we sighted a water moccasin and over time we've had to shoo blue herons away. What kind of predators do you endure?