Filter media filtration can effectively reduce the content of suspended solids and other harmful substances in fish culture tailwater and is often used as a primary treatment technology for aquaculture tailwater. In order to investigate the effect of filter media filtration for pond captive tailwater treatment， this study used volcanic rock， activated carbon and zeolite as the filter media materials， and carried out pond captive tailwater treatment experiments with filter media type， filter media size and filter media thickness as the test factors， and total suspended solid （TSS） removal efficiency， ammonia nitrogen （NH₄⁺-N） removal efficiency and chemical oxygen demand （COD） removal efficiency as the test indexes. The results showed that all three filter media could remove TSS and COD in the tailwater， and all could reduce the concentration of NH₄⁺-N in the tailwater to a certain extent， and among the three filter media， the treatment effect of activated carbon was better than the other two， and the smaller the particle size or the larger the thickness of the filter media， the better the effect of the activated carbon in treating the tailwater. The results of the orthogonal test based on the single-factor test showed that the best overall treatment effect of the filtration device was achieved when the filter media was activated carbon， the particle size was 0.5-2 mm， and the thickness of the filter media was 80 cm. Under these conditions， the removal efficiencys of TSS， COD and NH₄⁺-N were 83.86%， 49.78% and 29.89%， respectively. The study showed that the filter media filtration has good effect on the removal of TSS and COD， but the NH₄⁺-N removal effect is not satisfactory. Therefore， in the treatment of captive tailwater， media filtration can be used as a primary treatment process for captive tailwater， but further purification of tailwater is needed for ammonia nitrogen by means of biofilter， artificial wetland or bioreactor.