Yearly Maintance for Any Bead Filter

2 minutes read

All bead filters tend to cake in ponds that are overloaded with fish and/or plants. An overabundance of algae can literally glue the beads together after a season of use. If your bead filter is needing to be backwashed more than once a week it’s time for maintenance.


During winter many of us turn off the pump and the unit is left with standing water all winter long. Before cranking it up for the new season it’s imperative that a thorough power backwash be performed on the filter to loosen any gummed-up debris that has collected in the beads and flush out the system. If pond water coming through the filter smells “rotten” it is telling you that bad bacteria has built up in the filter over winter.


Here’s how to perform a yearly maintenance on your bead filter:


Put on the scrubbiest clothes you can find.


With the pump off drain all the water from the unit. (Open the bottom drain on the filter)


Take the unit apart. The valve can be taken off the top of the smaller units. The double canister styles can be split apart.


Stir the beads. Use the pole to your net or anything that can take a little pressure.


Scour down the inside walls of the tank with the pressure of a hose.


Make sure no bead clogs are left then reassemble the unit.


Perform a power backwash by opening the bottom drain on the unit and turning the pump on with the valve at the backwash position. You’ll see very dirty water come out the bottom. Keep doing it until it comes out clean.


Close the bottom drain then backwash as normal. Rinse for a minute or two then you’re ready to begin filtering for the new season. In fact, it will flow like the filter is brand new!


If this maintenance is performed before the filter seeds for the new season you can do a more thorough cleaning. You do not want to clean it too thoroughly when the bacteria is trying to grow.

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Whatsapp Pocket

Comments:

No comments

Related Posts:

Like the automobile, the very first bead biofilter was a breakthrough in technology. It offered pioneer pond keepers an alternative to archaic methods of filtering water. But like the Model T the very first model bead filter had its share of problems. As time ...
The thousands of beads in any brand of bead filter, no matter how well it’s constructed, will eventually cake up, especially in ponds that are overloaded with fish and plants. As odd as it seems, plants in a pond add more dirt and debris to the water than fish...
Bead filters clean pond water by pumping the water in through a plastic chamber filled with thousands of plastic beads packed together. The water is pressed under the pressure of a pump and dirt particles remain stuck in the beads. The bead filter traps organi...
There is a plethora of filter products designed for use in ornamental ponds. There are so many choices available that it can, in fact, make the job of choosing a filter more difficult for the consumer. We spend a great amount of time testing filters and determ...
Before you get all excited and start planning on which veggies you intend to plant in your vegetable filter I better tell you that a “vegetable filter” is a term used to describe a type of filtration where the water passes through a bog pond. The use of a vege...
Components of a pond system are ugly. You’ll get no argument from me about that. The filter is a very necessary part of a healthy pond and the only filters we’ve seen that are easily hidden within the landscape (submersed and the side-skimmer) are not consider...