The gate is done!

I finished the gate. Finally. I'm still undecided about putting a handle on the left side as well but other than that I'm very pleased.
It's made of cedar and has copper pipe set in the top. I'm curious to see how square it stays over time. It's all bolted together from the sides and the boards in the middle are 1" thick and have been glued with tongues and grooves.

Osprey dives for koi

So ... I went out to feed the fish the other day and noticed a bird circling above the back yard.  We often have hawks up there but this one looked different and was a lot lower.  It perched on a tree and so I grabbed the camera and caught it doing this:

Adding a UV filter

This is the AQUA 57Watt UV filter I added to the system. After adding a bypass, it has about 2000GPH flowing through it.



Here's the pond before we turned it on.



We went away on a 3 day holiday and were pleasantly surprised to find our pond all clear to the bottom!

Matala filter in action

Do It Yourself Matala filter

Here are the parts for my new mechanical filter. 4 sheets of matala filter, a rubbermaid truck box and various fittings. It took a day to put together and get working. This filter is now the first after the pump. It drains into a 40gal brute can full of plastic scrubbies and left-over matala bits. This filter will work for the next year, until I build some fiberglass boxes.

On the left (inside the box), you see a flex hose. That's the water input. I put the hose on there so I can easily clean the filters with pond water and back flush the box by moving the end of the hose to the other side. If I need to drain the box to work on it, I just stick the end of the hose into the drain pipe on the right and open the drain plug. That way I can keep the rest of the filtration system running.

All tucked away under the stairs. Next year, when we build the deck this will be hidden away.