@WaughheadRex @Jean_Philippe_Micheaux @sickburnbro I never use any kind of kind of chemical or mechanical filtration to be honest, save for the junk that sticks to the biomedia (k1 and mattenfilters to be specific).
In particular, I've had great success with the information at aquariumscience.org/ using what would be considered 10-20x oversized filters for tilapia and discus and cycling with all manner of soil and pond water (treated with prazipro for the discus's sake).
Whether or not you want to apply any of this, I can't recommend that site enough, since it's a trove of well researched and tested information.