The Dirty Truth about "Pad-&-Media-Bag" Style Waterfall Filters
All the following photos are of actual "Pad-&-Media-Bag" style waterfall filters that are in the process of their manufacturer's recommended "annual" cleaning. The manufacturers of these types of filters state: "The filter only needs to be cleaned once per year." You can see by the photos here that their "annual cleaning instructions" aren't quite sufficient for the health of your pond and fish.
Look at these photos of "once-per-year-cleaned-filters"....how healthy do YOU think this muck building up inside the filter will be for YOUR fish?
When the filter is full of all the fish waste, muck and detritus it can hold - what do you think it does with what it no longer has room for?
If you guessed ...."Pass it back to the pond." - You're right!
These "clean-only-once-per-year-pad-&-media-bag" style, waterfall filters could be compared to a toilet that only gets flushed once per year. Just because the marketing and sales literature says it ....would you only flush the toilet once per year? Of course not ....especially when it was full! A full toilet would simply overflow onto the floor and create a huge, disgusting, smelly mess that you would then have to clean up.
That's what happens with "Pad-&-Media-Bag" style waterfall filters. They get full of fish waste, detritus, and muck - then overflow into the pond or water feature. According to the marketing and sales literature provided by the various manufacturers of these types of filters you must then catch and remove all your fish, drain the pond, pressure wash everything, pump out all the muck, then re-fill the entire pond, put your fish back in, and start the whole ecosystem over again from scratch. Every single year!
