Backyard Aquaponics
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First let me say that I've been searching for a solution to my issue for a few days and can't find anything specific. This site keeps coming up in my Google searches so I thought I'd post a topic. Thanks ahead of time for any help you may be able to provide.

I have a water feature in my yard which is a simple rock waterfall running into a concrete/stone lined brook which empties into a concrete box set in the ground. The box houses the pump (Beckett 600 gallon/hour, non-adjustable flow) which is connected to a PVC pipe that pumps the water back up to the waterfall. The whole system is about 30 ft long.

The problem is the water drains faster than it fills and the box with the pump will run dry after about 3 hours.
Is the pump the issue? Is it pumping too fast or too slow?

Is it possible there's a leak somewhere in the line transferring water from the pump back to the waterfall?
My initial thought is I need to reduce the flow of the pump and slow down the rate of draining but wouldn't this in turn slow down the rate of fill as well?

The previous homeowner placed some cinder blocks in the box with the pump. I'm assuming they did this to offset the water volume.

Again, thanks for any help on this.

Leaks do come to mind. When you turn off the pump, does the box fill back up to it's original level? If it does, than the problem is more likely not enough water in the box. I would remove the cinder blocks to allow that much more water in it.

The pump speed should have nothing to do with what's happening. More likely a leak or water volume issue as Ron suggested.

Have any pics to give us a sense of scale?

Thanks for the replies. I'll take a couple pics today and remove the cinder blocks as well.

i would first check to see if the volume of water is falling which would sugest a leak if not the pumping volume is to high which means you need to either slow down the amount of water pumped or increase the volume of the concrete box to hold more water. Hope this helps

In order to slow down the amount of water pumped, do I need to get an adjustable pump and basically restrict the flow until the feed and the drain balance out?

Here are a few pics:

What you can do is modify the line from the pump by adding a t with a valve that will send part of the water pump back into the concrete box with the pump. This is used to adjust flow and aerate water on fish tanks, search "aeration bar" here for pictures.

How much a water a pump can move depends on vertical height lifting the water. For example my tiny pump is- 291 gallon per hour at 0' lift or 26 gallon per hour at 6' lift. Can you give us an idea of vertical distance between pump and water fall?

I'd estimate it to be about five feet.

Pumping too much doesn't seem like it's the answer to me. If you pump more then more should return, we're talking about a three hour period that it takes to run dry.

Places where you could lose water -

Held in plumbing - 30ft of whatever size pipe will hold water until the pump stops.
Evaporation - Direct sunlight and heat can make this happen fast
Held in rocks along the fall - If the system hasn't been run for awhile I would expect moisture to be wicked into the rocks and soil along the stream bed. Much of this won't return to the box any time soon if at all.

And of course water leak.

I suppose you could pump so fast that the water pooling is wider than the liner under the stream bed, that seems unlikely if the previous owner didn't have problems.

How big is the box with the pump?

What have your temps been like?

Thanks for all the tips/help. The box is about 2'x2' and about 2' deep.
The weather had been very mild - mid to upper 60's.

Tomorrow I'll see if I can run a hose from the pump up to the falls and see how it works that way.

I see the problem, you have yet to line the sides with grow beds...

Well there's that too Ron

Sounds like the box holds about 60 gallons. That doesn't seem like very much for a water feature this size. Pump should be pumping about 440 gph at 5 feet of head. Assuming that's accurate, all the water that was in the box is pumped out every 8 minutes (and is replaced by water coming into the box). If it was At 8 ft of head it would be closer to 280 gph and would take around 12 - 13 minutes to pump all the water.



Sounds like a good way to troubleshoot the piping up to the fall.

Probably not lots of evaporation at these temps.