Using Mussels to filter duck pond

[Jmpeters]

Well ill give a try this sumer. I know a pond the kids can pull a hundred or so out of easy. Im making my pond bigger yhus spring so ill throw them in when I first fill it and see if the make survive and help keep it clean.

I also read awhile back about some sort of crustacean or shrimp that eat 10x their weight in crap a day. Ive looked for it since but couldnt find the name of it. There was even a video on utube of 1 eating crap. It sped the time up and over like an hour time it ate a pile twice its size.

 

[lilmizscareall]

OMG! I LOVE this idea!

 

[lilmizscareall]

All good ideas, was not aware of how sensitive mussels were to natural water environment outside of the metals etc in tapwater.  How about this for an idea..I guess its' kinda along the lines of a skippy filter but I can get a 35-40 gallon tub ( premold) for about 30 bucks.. What if I have water pumping out one side of the aquarium to the seperate tub which can hold the reeds/ duckweed or whatever and also the mussels, it passes through the secondary tub hitting the plant and mussel  " Filter" and then pumps back out and around to the pond.. actually a pretty simple concept and for all I know it may be common.. I am new to this so this is all just off the top of my head kinda stuff.  Clear water is nice but I am more looking to keep the duck waste under control .. I have researched and as far as I can see mussels and good bacteria are the way to go.

To tack onto this comment I would also ask how many times the volume of the pond should my pumps gph be.. I currently have 2 Mareinland Maxi- Jet 900 which on circulation pump mode pull 1000 gph apiece.. they are leftovers from a river tank project which failed to take off  lol

I read, either on here or somewhere else, this exact idea. They had a bathtub with all the plants that "waterfalled" into the duck pond, there was a filter that pumped the water back between the two ponds.

 

[CraigT]

Yeah I think the biggest threat to them is tap water.. too hard. Oddly enough I want to do this despite have a half acre or bigger pond about 100 yds from the pen.. this ducks I have right now are still so afraid of everything that I am afraid if I let them go down there they will never come back lol. plus I think the pond just looks nice and I get a real kick out of succesfully creating a ecosystem of sorts lol.


I would not be surprised if somebody else thought of it also .. very few original ideas in reality.
I am not optimistic about free roaming crustaceans on the pond bottom .. I would think once the ducks figured them out they would by dinner .. lol I think for mussels etc you can use a chicken wire cage on the pond floor to hold them in and let them attach .. this way the ducks cannot get to them.

 

[maxdecphoenix]

As far as the reeds in a bed, you can do that, but I think that's getting into hydroponics/aquaculture. There are hundreds of videos on youtube about 'semi-closed' symbiotic systems with tilapia and some kinda asian crab/shrimp thing. the tilapia water is then either mechanically filtered or pumped directly into growing beds and returned clean to the tilapia tank via gravity. I imagine a similar system could be employed for the duck wastes water. Some systems even just cycle the water through the liquid equivalent of a thien baffle/cyclone separator and holds the solidish wastes in a separate chamber with a tap to dispense it for just pouring on growing beds.

The reason I brought up the reeds though is that they are easy. A quick first step that doesn't don't require a bunch of money, pumps or ebb and flow chambers or swirl filters or bell siphons or do hickies or whatchamacallits. Just put them in the pond, walk away and prune out some stalks every couple months. Depending on your breed of ducks they love dabbling and nibbling on that stuff and I can't see 6 ducks producing *that* much waste to justify a bunch of expenses. I have 13 and though they swim daily (regardless how cold it is), but they spend more time nestled in the woodline than in their pond.

I mean reeds are used extensivly in California to filter out the entire water supply for Orange County which is delivered by neighboring counties greywater.