Helix Settlement Prefilter for Dual 3" Bottom Drain

The Helix Settlement Tank is designed specifically for Koi ponds with a bottom drain, as well as for cleaning heavy debris (leaves, sticks, stones, muck) from your water before it ever enters your pump and filtration system to help prevent damaging your pump. In a pond with a bottom drain, the worst debris in the pond (the settled sludge at the bottom of the pond) goes through the bottom drain, merges with the water coming out of the skimmer and goes straight into the pump unfiltered. Installing the Helix Settlement Tank acts as a pre-filter for the bottom drain, providing an effective and economical way to protect your pump, improve pump efficiency, extend pump life and make cleaning your pond much easier.

The Settlement Tank is set up to be easy to disassemble for easy access for vacuuming, pumping, siphoning or draining larger debris. The debris filter still allows small particles to pass through, which is why the Settlement Tank is specifically intended for a bottom drain pre-filter (not substitute for a mechanical pond filter). The Helix Settlement Tank is meant to be part of an extensive filtration system.

Without a Settlement Tank, it is typical to merge the bottom drain and skimmer outlets and send that straight into the pump. With a Helix Settlement Tank, you can do one of two things. First, you can merge the skimmer output and bottom drain output into a settlement tank, then take the water from the settlement tank to an external pump. Second, you can run the bottom drain output into the settlement tank, then merge the settlement tank output with the skimmer output, sending that into the pump. In either setup, you will still want to run water from the pump into a finer mechanical filter (like a bog or waterfall filter) or a filter combination (like a bead filter and a strictly biological filter such as the Helix Moving Bed Waterfall Filter).