New Pool Easy Set 8' leveled by magazines

[asxetos]

Got the pool filled some more today, fish are doing fine, it took the big ones three days to get the courage to come to the surface to feed, that is, with me being in the pool. The little ones are feeding like crazy from day one.

Water temperature is OK during very hot weather here in Athens, Greece. Pump temperature checked, being two days under the insulation, felt so cold like it was not running at all, although it runs 24/7.

Decided to support the hose feeding the pump, it gets real heavy when full of water and stresses the pool wall at the connection point, used some old homemade saltwater protein skimmer I had lying around in the area, here are some pics.

 

[asxetos]

Here is an update on the fish situation.

 

[imrodee]

:lol: Wow.. I amazed at the fish. Are they like.. "pets" or ?

Editied to add I just read page 1 of your thread to see these are pets. I think it's really cool that you have them in the pool. I can't say that I could swim with them... but I don't like lakes either. If one touched me I'd shoot out of the water like a rocket.

What you've created is pretty cool.

 

[CraigMW]

Just curious? How do you keep the water from turning green? Can the fish tolerate chlorine, or is there some other approach used to minimize outgrowth of bacteria and algae? Is it filled with Ouzo?

 

[asxetos]

The pool is run without any chemicals. There is a biological filter and the pump included with the pool running 24/7, nothing else beyond that. There is no cartridge in the cartridge filter. I do have to clean the biological filter every couple weeks, when water flow diminishes significantly.

The water will not turn green or otherwise cloudy if the system is balanced, but algae will cover eventually all available surfaces, this is consumed by algae eating fish such as koi, it is part of their diet. If there were no algae eating fish in there then algae growth would be visible everywhere, so chemicals (like chlorine) would be required to kill algae and keep it from growing again.

 

[poolgranny]

I still think this a beautiful pool.

How many hours a week does it take to maintain?

 

[asxetos]

The main maintenance job is cleaning the biological filter, this is an improvised filter consisting of a simple 3' long, 4" diameter pvc tube with screw on caps at the ends.

The tube has numerous small holes in the middle part and two half inch pipes connected at the ends leading to the pump input. The tube is full with plastic biocubes up to the ends where a couple of coarse sponges separate the biocubes from the exit pipes.

None of these connections is watertight, because this thing was designed to operate inside the pool, however it could be watertight if needed to operate outside the pool.

I need to clean this thing regularly, taking it out of the water, dismantling it and rinsing the biocubes and the sponges in a bucket of water as they both act as a mechanical filter trapping all sorts of things from the pool water. This takes about half an hour without being in any hurry whatsoever. I do this every two weeks, it could be every week at the most.

I also top up pool water with a garden hose once a week, as there is some evaporation, sometimes while doing that I scoop water out of the pool using a small bucket and use it on the adjacent plants, this kind of (biologically filtered) pool water is an excellent plant fertilizer, also water from filter rinsing goes to the same plants, they are one foot away from the pool so they get to benefit.

This is all I do with this system, besides being in there for many hours each day playing with my fish.

 

[MoreSparkle]

Wow! Talk about "outside the box". ... Or pool as it may be... Good for you! I too use a biological filter on my goldfish pond which keeps it clear to the bottom, about 40" deep. The pond is green on the sides, which feeds the tadpoles and goldfish... I consider it our payback to nature and the 'hood to keep a "nursery" for all the toads that "spring forth" from it.... Several cycles in the spring and summer... Great insect control... My biological filter was last year's consternation/summer water project.....I use nylon netting, instead of the bio-balls, for my good guys to grow on, and keep a Louisana iris and papyrus in the top to absorb more nutrients, and keep the pump running 24/7 to avoid the night time o2 depletion. I manage the elodea growth when it gets too thick.. Put it on the rosebushes, and skim the redbud and oak leaves and acorns in the fall from trees that hang over it... It doesn't take any maintenance now that it is balanced except for skimming a few leaves every now and then (after a big rain) and rinsing the netting, so far just once this summer. The waste settles to the bottom of a concrete urn where it is converted by the good guys, the clean water exits through a venturi, which also helps with aeration. We also have lily pads that consume nutrients.

So I totally get what you are doing. Also, I love snorkeling for scallops in Port St. Joe which has such clear water you can feel like you are swimming in an aquarium! Sometimes I wish there was something colorful in our pool to watch while swimming. Instead I just snorkle around looking at the pretty refracted light and pick up malformed acorns or grapes, both overhang the pool, not sure which they are, both are now starting to drop.

I say good for you! Esp with all that is going on in Greece these days, it's nice you have something you enjoy and obviously care about.

Continued good luck....

Btw,

I guess my only concern would be for the fish if your pool springs an air leak and you are not around. Do you have a back up tank? Or an alarm system? A neighbor who would be able to rescue them?

Also, I get the ick factor.... One of my first work study jobs in college was in the zoology dept. I got to clean out the collection of fish in jars.... Took weeks.... Nothing like opening jar after jar of formaldehyde-cured fish and separating the liquids from the solids.... Yum.... They always save the best jobs for the broke students, don't they???

 

[asxetos]

This is my backup holding place for the fish, the big ones have been living there for a decade and the biological filter in the pool came from there, and can easily go back along with the fish if the need arises.

 

[poolgranny]

I remember as a child my aunt and uncle had a large round stock tank (metal) out by the barn. As kids we begged to go out and see the fish. They were called "goldfish" and they would come to the top when you touched the top of the water. I loved that tank!! I remember begging my mom and dad for us to have one like it and was told we couldn't since we lived in town.

I wish I knew more about their tank. I know that they aerated the tank at all times. Since we can get hard freezes here, my uncle would go out and chop the ice in the winter (or so we were told). Maybe the water flowing from the aeration would keep it from freezing?

I remember the algae in the tank. I would love to try to recreate something similar.

 

[asxetos]

During freezing weather coldwater fish (like goldfish or koi) can survive because of the thermo-gradient created inside the container, whereas slightly warmer water goes to the bottom, where the fish stay during winter anyway.

If there is water movement at the surface, either by water going upwards or by water returning to the container from above then ice cannot cover the container completely, also the submerged pump radiates a bit of heat in the container.

 

[poolgranny]

Are these pictures in Greece? Reason I ask is I didn't know it had seasons. I thought it was more tropical (it has been a long time since I had geography and my memory isn't what it used to be).

Is that just a 55 gallon drum? That is what it appears to be.

I wish my brother had kept his old stock tank (he sold it for scrap -- it didn't leak and we used it as a "pool" for a couple of summers but the bottom had rust, etc. and not good on the feet. I would be tempted to try it.

 

[asxetos]

Yes, this is Athens, Greece. It is not downtown Athens though. We have hot summers and sometimes snow in winter. Definitively have seasons.

The container I used is an almost square plastic tank made of PE (polyethylene), holds more than 100 gallons of water. This is enough volume for thermal stability and is more than two feet deep so a vertical thermo-gradient exists during freezing weather, this is absolutely necessary if fish are to remain in there all year round.

I originally bought this thing to help me move a reef aquarium, this served as a temporary holding space to keep everything alive until the aquarium was setup again, this takes considerable time with this kind of aquarium.

After using it for its intended purpose, I was thinking about what to do with it, so I came up with building this fenced thing under the window there, half of the fenced space is used by this plastic fish tank and the other half is occupied by two levels of rectangular plastic planters with all sorts of plants to create this overgrown look you see in the pics.

For outdoors coldwater fish keeping any type of plastic container will do, it does not need to have a lid, I did a quick search and found these.

http://www.snyderplasticsolutions.com/m ... tanks.html


EDIT: Just realized that you meant the other container, the round one, this is a terracotta pot, the tallest I could find for the same thermo-gradient reasons, occupied by a couple goldfish most of the time. Less than 50 gallons I think, this one uses a different technology utilizing sediment oxygen gradients, it has about 8" of clay based dirt on the bottom.

 

[Vette]

I think its pretty awesome! You seem to have thought this out really well! Hope it works out, I've never had experience with those inflatable pools.

Fish are pretty cool, and smart! When Lake Erie freezes on top all the fish go live deeper down in the water, so it sounds like that's exactly what Koi do. Beautiful fish, BTW! What is the pool going to do in the winter, I'm not sure how the inflatable part would survive? With the colder, denser air, do you just need to inflate it more to keep it buoyant, or is there something else you're going to do?

 

[asxetos]

If this pool lasts until October I will dismantle it and move everything (fish and biological filter) to the plastic tank for winter keeping.

That is if a cat or anything else does not destroy it as we speak. I already had to use a manually operated cat deflector a couple times, it did the job, so I am looking at the bright side of this at the moment.