Water Gardening: Building stream/waterfal - need your input, 1 by randbponder

randbponder wrote:
The gravel in the stream will give the good bacteria a home.
All the little nooks and crannies in the gravel will collect what isn't taken out before hand and the bacteria will digest most of it. If you have a pool or two with some plants that will also help.
1800 gph isn't that much more and should still be good. If it is too narrow the water will just run a little faster, provided you got all the slope needed.
The formula to use for sizing of the pump is to figure how many gallons in the pond and that number of gallons should be changed out by the pump at a minimum of once every hour.
You find the gallons by takeing the width x length x average depth x7.5 = gallons. But don,t worry too much your doing fine
I have seen ponds with little or no flow. another factor is how much cover you have. Floating plants and or lilies or lotus. the more area covered the less water you need to move. But keeping the pond clean is a must. don't let leaves lay in the pond and rot. all the excess debris that lies in the water and rots. harbors parisites and fungus and a hoard of nasty stuff when it comes to the health of the fish. The pond is your own little ecosystem and needs a good balance.
Happy ponding Russ.
PS I'm not an expert. I've just picked up a lot of stuff mostly by trial and error. Then pick up a book and read about my mistakes ((*-*))