I have two retro (through the side) bottom drains that lead to a diy mechanic filter (a 50 gallon tub) with five upright filter pads. The first pad is rinsed out daily, since it collects the most debris. The other four are rinsed out once a week. There is also a skimmer with a prefilter pad that I usually keep wrapped in quilt batting in the spring and summer. The skimmer pump leads to the waterfall box, which has five large bags of scrubbie bio filter media. There is also a mini bog fed by a mini skimmer. Water is crystal clear. I never do a yearly cleanout because I don't have rocks in my pond. Well, except the pebbles that are knocked out of the lily pots by the koi.

I have a small 160 gal pond. I have a pre filter that I rinse off when the water flow lessens and I use a net to check if the bottom has anything on it. I use Microblift which seems to do a great job of breaking down any plant material since I seldom find anything on the bottom of the pond.

I have algae in the water. I just put in a skippy filter and am hoping that will help clear up the algae. If it doesn't I'm going to get a UV light.

Hope this answers your question.
Anne

I have a 100 gallon Skippy topped with quilt batting. There is a prefilter for the pump made from a well filter that does a good job. I used to run a small UV filter that did a good job. The fish liked it a lot. There were no serious problems with the water until the raccoons dropped lots of potted plants in the pond. It took all year and then some to clear it up. I lost track of how many water changes I made. The pump died because of the small rocks that got through the prefilter. I finally discovered there were two more large clay filled pots that had continued spilling out clay. The water is clear again this summer. I have a new UV light to play with and the replacement pump is doing well. The prefilter will be higher up in the pond so it will suck dirty water rather than thick mud and rocks. Pots of taro will be sunk in very large pots filled with river bed stones. It will be very, very hard for the raccoons to move them. They might be able to rip out the plants but the rock will hold on to the pots. I'll stick to the more common plants for now. I lost too many expensive plants the past two years to the little monsters. That should take care of most of the cleaning. I will net the pond in the fall. There are just too many trees not to.

My pond is 1100 gallons. I have a home made upflow bio-filter made with a 45 gallon plastic barrel, a pre-filter which is a large plastic flower pot into which the submersible pump goes and then I stuff the top with dryer bags filled with nylon scrubbies. About once a month I clean the pre-filter and use a fine mesh net to scoop out any debris at the bottom of the pond. About once a week you need to remove leaves and any floating debris or else they sink. That is pretty much all I do. In the fall when I am getting it ready for the deep freeze, I pull all the plant pots out and really use the net to scoop our everything then I sink the pots in the deep part and wait till spring. In spring I do another cleaning with the net and then set up the filter and put the pots where I want them.

I have a piece of 1/4 inch plastic poultry fencing clipped with an ACCO binder clip in front of my skimmer intake. I'll unclip that and shake it off if it gets yuck on it. Then inside the skimmer box there's a metal frame that came with the skimmer box that had netting in it. The netting got torn in the pump, so I attached the same 1/4 inch plastic poultry fencing to it and put quilt batting or that inch thick sheets of filter media on there. I'll rinse the quilt batting out or bang the filter media against a tree to clean it off. My pond 1,000 gallons, and crystal clear, 3 years and no fish deaths. I have no fancy drains or skippy filters. The water fall box also has 2 squares of the filter media, but on top of that are elephant ears and fig ivy that grow in that filter media. I clean that out once a year, in winter when the plants die. (I'm in Texas so it takes a while for a freeze.) There's generally no need to net out the bottom, not much usually comes up. I can pretty much see the liner on the bottom which is 3 and a half feet deep.

okay so we have a lot more professional pond keeper here :) good to know that. May i know what exactly UV light is used for?
Thanks for all the information

A UV light kills the algae.

I am on the minimalist end here (no skimmer, bottom drain, uv light, cloth etc). I have a 700-800 gal pond with a 24' stream. The water is clear. I haven't tested the water even though I am a chemist. The live fish, plants, frogs, snails etc are my diagnostic agents. I leave some string algae in the pond and stream for the fish to eat. I have 2/3 lilly coverage and plenty of whatever that aquarium (invasive if escaped) plant is called and plenty of water cress and other plants in the stream. I have a 20 gal skippy (mini-me), but I suspect that this is not doing anything because after 2 years use it was completely clean when I briefly removed it to repair a small leak.

I believe my cleaning every few days only consists of removing a few gobs of algae from the pond and stream and pulling up some water cress and pond plants with crud attached. This stirs up the stream and pond but the crud then gets attached to downstram algae and cress roots that gets removed later. The stream becomes clear in a few minutes and the pond completely clears in 30 minutes unless I stir up the bottom with a hose.

The first 1.5 years I only had plants, then 3 comets last year and I have just found 8 more goldfish, so who knows if this method will hold up.

Rose, a uv is a tube encasing an ultra-violet light. As the water passes through it, the light renders the suspended algae unable to reproduce itself, thereby preventing a pea soup algae bloom. They are a very useful tool in keeping a pond clean.

I have an 800 gallon goldfish pond and rinse out the filters weekly. I also vacuum the pond bottom using a Pond-O-Vac every week or two.

oh great thats helpful. thanks to alll of you for such a detailed response. i am grateful