How To Choose A Simple Circulating Fish Pond Pump

If all you want to do is keep the water in your pond flowing and you decide you don't need a waterfall pump nor a fountain pump then pond pump selection is easy because you can ignore anything to do with pump head that complicates matters significantly. Remember if you keep fish you still need to keep the bio filter supplied with oxygenated water so your pond pump must still run 24/7

The basic principle attached to circulating pump selection is to circulate the volume of the pond every 2 to 3 hours. In other words the pond pump's flow rate should be between half the pond's volume per hour and one third the pond's volume per hour

The table below makes pond pump selection for this situation quite simple

Choosing a basic pond circulating pump:

Just find out your pond's volume or make a good approximation since accuracy is not critical. Like anything else in pond keeping bigger is normally better.
Volume of pond ... (gallons). Figure in second row is flow for needed for selected pump corresponding to the pond volume above it
300 galls 500 galls 1000 galls 1500 galls 2000 galls 2500 galls
350 gph 350 gph 500 gph 700 gph 1200 gph 1200 gph

 

Example of pond pump choice using above selection table ...

  • Pond volume is 1500 gallons

  • Then a good pump choice is a pump that will deliver 700 gph  (pink in above table)

  • An example of such a pump is Danner Supreme Mag Drive 700 gph

  • IMPORTANT TIP: always go for one size larger if in any doubt ...

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