Reply With QuoteA very interesting read, excellent work!
I’ve tried to keep this short and sweet but I appreciate it’s quite wordy and picture heavy. Apologies.
We’ve had ponds of varying sizes since we bought the house 30 years ago. It started small with a pre-formed liner then they have gradually grown. In 2008 I made the pond much larger. I favour the more formal pond and as I live in an area which has herons, the sheer sided pond is best for preventing them raiding your livestock as they can’t wade in. However, in setting up the new pond I made two mistakes. I used a wooden frame around the pond to attach the liner and I bought the cheapest liner (to save money...)
Fast forward to the start of this year and I noticed that the water level had dropped to around a third, you always loose water through evaporation but during the winter months, I usually have to take water out if we’ve had periods of heavy rain. Checking around the liner at the level it had dropped to, I noticed that a seam had pulled away. I found no satisfactory way of sealing it as it was made of a woven fabric and none of the glue I used would take. I also noticed that the pond edging was starting to slope down into the pond and many of the paving stones had loose motar. I’d also lost quite a few fish that I’d put in over the years, I figured that the bought-piecemeal-off-eBay cobbled-together filters just weren’t up to the job.
I was sad to see it in such decline and so I decided to bite the bullet and over the summer months, totally empty the pond and all the plants around it as it was very overgrown and access to the pond on one side was very difficult. I started in May as I had a week off.
I bought an IBC from eBay and put the few fish I had left in there and set up an aerator and filter.
All of the bushes and a tree were removed from the left hand side and the pond was stripped back until it was just a hole in the ground. Whilst I was at it, I decided to make it deeper and straighten up the sides. Two skips later and the pond was roughly 4m long, 1.4m wide and 1m deep and I had severe tennis elbow!
The old wooden frame had rotted out and that was why the paving was falling into the pond. I put in a hard edge of breeze blocks around the pond, my wife and son got a crash course in mixing mortar, levelling soil and laying blocks. After that, the white pre-liner went in and then on one of the hottest days of this century, we put in the new black (ie super heat absorbing) rubber liner. The heat down in the hole was phenomenal! My long-time neighbor was more than happy to stand in the cool water while we filled up the pond and smoothed out the rubber liner.
I bought an all new pump, filter and UVC set, rated for the pond volume and this was set up on a solid concrete base with neat and tidy wiring pulled back in a loom to a switch box.
The last jobs were to put back the original edging stones and re-plant the border. The new filter was left running for two weeks before I put any of my fish back in, to help the filter bacteria get established.
As a final touch, I had a phone call from a friend. He knew a lady who was getting rid of her pond because she was finding it difficult to keep on top of the maintenance and would I like her fish? Suddenly I had four very nice koi (tancho sanke, butterfly, showa sanshoku and ghost), shubunkins, comets and goldfish, to compliment the rudd and tench which was all that had survived in my pond.
As you can see, there is a wooden arbor at the top of the pond. It’s a very relaxing place to sit with a beer on a warm night and to feed the fish.
Had I known it would take the best part of two months and £2K to do, I might have reconsidered but now the filter has bedded in and the plants are starting to bush out, it’s looking well worth the effort.
It would be great to see other members’ ponds big and small.
Apologies for the length of this post and thanks if you made it through to the end.
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Last edited by sish101; 4th September 2022 at 18:02.
A very interesting read, excellent work!
F.T.F.A.
Lovely, I'm really thinking about putting a small wildlife pond in, like one of those plastic tubs with plants but dug into the ground so the lip is just above the soil, obviously in the winter the plants will be gone but hopefully would attract wildlife throughout the year.
This is mk3 ,I made similar mistakes as op originally.Went for top quality butyl about thirty year back.I cover with greenhouse netting from end of Sept because of herons.
That looks amazing! Before I saw the pictures I was expecting something more gaudy. Although it’s formal, by using natural stone borders which are weathered and lots of planting it looks still looks very natural.
My pond is around 7ft square, 2.5 ft deep in the middle, the steam is around 20ft long and the water recirculates by pipe under the steam lining to a water rill that runs back into the stream.
Mines a wildlife pond. That means no fish. I do however have frogs, newts, dragonflies, water beetles, and countless other beneficial critters. The birds enjoy bathing, and drinking there. It's only about 3x3m but it adds so much to the garden.
We've had a pond in all our gardens - I love them, despite the upkeep. This is our current pond, about 3x5 metres and primarily for wildlife. I'd love some fish but they'd eat the frogspawn. As well as frogs, we have loads of newts and dragonflies. No filtration, just a pump and small fountain. The summerhouse is the perfect place to look and listen.
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^ superb
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Thanks - if I had a bigger garden I'd have a fish pond as well. The sight of your newly acquired koi enjoying their new home is food for thought.Originally Posted by sish101
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Lovely - can you advise the make or retailer of the summerhouse. I’m in the market for oneWe've had a pond in all our gardens - I love them, despite the upkeep. This is our current pond, about 3x5 metres and primarily for wildlife. I'd love some fish but they'd eat the frogspawn. As well as frogs, we have loads of newts and dragonflies. No filtration, just a pump and small fountain. The summerhouse is the perfect place to look and listen.
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This is it - we bought it just over 4 years ago - it was about 8K at the time
https://www.johnlewis.com/crane-gard...edwood/p312578
Please remember wildlife that needs to get out of it if they stumble into it.Lovely, I'm really thinking about putting a small wildlife pond in, like one of those plastic tubs with plants but dug into the ground so the lip is just above the soil, obviously in the winter the plants will be gone but hopefully would attract wildlife throughout the year.
Hedgehogs as a good example.Or you will have to remove the drowned animals in the mornings.
There are some nice ponds in here! I often think about putting a small one ~10x10 in my side yard.
Do it. A great project to get involved with. Just consider if there may be small children around whether it needs access to the area restricted.
YouTube has a lot of videos with different types of ponds if you're not sure what style to go for.
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+1, that’s turned out wonderfully well. Superb!
I was 17 and working in the garden when a little child drowned in the neighbour’s garden. Basically, I was only a few meters away when it happened. There was a large hedge between us and it was a windy day; trees and leafs made a lot of noise.
It is one of those moments that always stay with you.
Every house I’ve owned had a (small) pond when we bought the house. My fear of a small child drowing in my pond was so big that I removed or drained the pool on the day we got the keys for the house.
Our current house has a pond as well. And a large one. It’s in fact a watering hole for deer and other animals that live in our forest. There are no small children living in our hamlet, so’ll keep it ‘as is’ for now.
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I did add ramps in the past for other small ponds but many people don’t, poor hedgehogs are normally the ones that suffer..
Meant to include this with the original post. The arbor gives a lovely feature point at the top of the garden and you can shelter in it if the rain is in a particular direction and you want to enjoy the fish in inclement weather. It also has a storage area under the seat for tools, seat cushions and fish food (and spiders).
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Would be interested in your filter set up and what the maintenance is like.
I've got an Oase pressurised one and it's a right PITA to clean the filters.
I had quite a mishmash of filters with the previous set up, two small UVCs going to an Oase pressurised filter, feeding into a Kockney Koi 'clone' then another black box with filter material. They were a total pain to keep on top of but I had built it up piecemeal so there was no real plan to it.
One of my aims for the new pond was easier maintenance and an end to having cables just draped over the soil. So I bought an Oase Biosmart 24000 set, which has the UVC connected into the main filter housing. All of the cables are run through fence mounted ducting which keeps them tidy and up off the soil.
The beauty of the Biosmart is that it just has three sets of sponges for the water to pass through. No K1 media to try and keep clean. It is so simple to keep on top of the cleaning and I can do a complete strip down, sponge and filter case wash (with pond water) and return to use in 30 minutes with the very minimum of faffing around. It's almost a pleasure now.
As an added bonus, I cleaned up all of the old kit and sold it on eBay when they had a reduced selling fee offer on. I got a few hundred back which offset the pond cost.
For anyone in the North East I would thoroughly recommend Pond Planet (no affiliation, just a happy customer)
https://www.pond-planet.co.uk/pond-c...24000-set-p762
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Last edited by sish101; 24th September 2022 at 10:23.
Many thanks for the very comprehensive reply!
First chance I've had to check on the fish, the water was either murky or the fish were too far down in the water for me to see them. The sun was briefly out this morning which let me see right to the bottom of the pond. Looks like I have only lost one small goldfish over the winter. The fish are all feeding well and I've changed from wheatgerm to regular fish food.
As I've been running the UV since the start of the month, I took the filter apart and gave the sponges a clean, there was a lot of algae build up which proves the bulb is still effective.
I'm considering adding another koi to the pond but as with everything else, the price of livestock has risen noticeably so I'll need to be sure of what I am buying.
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A small update. I'd noticed some 'activity' in the pond a few weeks ago, it was spawning season. Both the koi and the goldfish were at it.
The next day, the blanket weed that grows on the side was covered in eggs and, ahem, male secretions.
After about a week, I took some scoops with a fine aquarium net and captured some fry. I wasn't intent on gathering masses as I don't have the facilities to grow them on and I don't really want or need another hundred small fish.
I put them in a pond planter with a very fine mesh in and suspended it near to the water return for maximum water flow.
Just had a check today, there are around a dozen. Some black, some multicoloured, one very orange and one with an amazing fan tail. I have a butterfly koi so presume this was one of the offspring. Hopefully they continue to do well, not sure if I'll risk overwintering them in the pond or bring them indoor but I don't have a tank or suitable pump, so might have a trawl on eBay for a cheap and unloved setup.
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Almost a month since the last pictures.
The fry have been growing well and I ended up with around 10 little fish. They are quite flighty and disappear under the weed as soon as I get near but a bit of patience and I took this photo showing three of them with their colouration developing nicely. You can see the fancy tail on one of them.
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Re the earlier pictures in this threat, I have brought the junior pond fish into the house for the winter. Ended up with eight, four black and gold and four multicoloured patches.
I'll put them back into the pond in May once any threat of ice is gone.
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