What pond pump to choose can be difficult due to the amount of choices that are available. Well in this article we hope to narrow your choices to the best suited pond pump your pond would need. First off you need to calculate your pond size, there are plenty of online calculators for this just simply enter your ponds dimensions. Don’t worry if your pond is irregular shaped just take the largest points as your sizes.
Once you have your size your set, for ease we will use 1000 gallons which is approximately 4500 litres. The idea is to get your pond water turned over once every hour so the pond pump you would need is a 4500 Lh pump as a minimum, so it’s easier than you think to calculate your pond pump size, great!. But wait there are some moe things to think about first the first is what your pond is stocked with goldfish, koi or no fish. As goldfish like Shubunkins, comets etc the above calculations for a pond pump are ideal and as a rule of thumb will work well, if you have particularly a lot of goldfish you could add an extra fountain pump and filter combo just to give your pond a boost but-to be honest it would be more for the look and extra oxygen the fountain ads rather than the pond pump, but the filtration side of things is for a different day.
Most of you reading this will probably have Koi in your pond especially as they thrive in our climate and conditions. Koi create around 4 x the amount of waste as other pond fish so your pond pump will need to handle this and you will also need to take in to account of your pond pumps head height, this is the amount of flow it can offer at a certain pumping height as the higher you go the more you have to fight gravity. Your pond pump box should give you this information as different manufacturers of the pond pump will have different specs. Generally you get what you pay for with pumps but anything from £70-£150 will get you a decent pond pump but you can pay over £500 if you wanted but as with most things it comes to budget.
A pond pump for koi will need to have at least 6mm waste handling to cope with extra waste koi give. A pond pump will also need to be a little oversized for koi for the same reason as before so a koi pond of 4500 litres a pond pump of at least 5500lh would be ideal, as for pond pump manufacturers you can’t really go wrong with established brands like Evolution Aqua, Kockney Koi/Yamitsu, Aquaforte, Blagdon, Superfish, Oase etc all proven reliable and efficient.
One last thing that gets over looked when it comes to the humble pond pump is the piping you use to connect it to your filter. The best flow given would be from solid PVC piping but this is not always practical for most pond owners and a flexi pipe would be a better and let’s face it far easier to install for most. If you go the flexi route then remember you will need stepped flexi pipe connectors, these will need cutting to size to suit your flexi pipe size, a hacksaw will be needed for this part. Hopefully this little article has helped you select your pond pump? If you need anymore help or info leave a comment below or drop us a message here.