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thalassic park
04-03-2003, 10:56 AM
Hi,
I thought I might start out on this forum by offering an idea on how I constructed my indoor ponds.
Firstly I built a rectangular wall with railway sleepers. 2 sleepers high. I then laid shade cloth inside the wall of the pond. The edges of the shade cloth were then pulled relatively tight & nailed to the bottom sleeper all around the outside of the pond wall.
Common Brickies plastic was used as a pond liner (costing about AUS$1.10/metre), was then laid over the shade cloth (allowing an overhang when measuring).
As the pond was filled the weight of the water in the plastic, weighted down on the shadecloth. The more full of water the pond the tighter the shadecloth could pull in on itself thus pulling the walls of the pond together. I find I can replace the pond liner easily & cheaply about once every 3 years.
Hope it was a helpful idea.

rjl420
04-03-2003, 11:58 AM
hmm, interesting idea. one question though, why wouldn't you use an EPDM liner rather than the shade cloth (not really familiar with that)? 45 mil EPDM liner run about 45¢ a square foot, seems it would be almost the same price and you wouldn't have to mess with it for 30+ years. is there an advantage other than price?

also, what do you stock in your indoor ponds? 3 years doesn't seem like that much time for your pond to be setup, do you tear it down and start over each time? i've wanted to do a brackish mangrove pond setup for a while now.

thalassic park
04-03-2003, 12:46 PM
Hi,
The pond liners in my local area are very costly. The brickies plastic covers the same area for about 1/4 of the cost of a liner, If care is taken it can last a lot longer than 3 years.

Generally I pull the pond apart every autumn to harvest the animals that have grown over summer. Although I tend to pull some fish out all year round.

Your not familar with shade cloth? It is cloth with many holes in, to let some light through, used for greenhouses in horticulture. I happened to pull apart the shade houses in my yard & recycled the cloth. The cloth also offers protection to the liner from jagged edges on the railways sleepers.

At the moment I'm using the ponds as growout for Australian Rainbow fish & Aquatic Plants.

Some Australian fish that would be good for a brackish setup are Barramundi, Mangrove Jack's, Rainbowfish & archer fish. I quess if its big enough you could even get a salty crocodile.

Iced Galaxy
04-03-2003, 9:01 PM
some picture of it will be nice~ i just want to see how it looks like

thalassic park
04-03-2003, 9:09 PM
I could try to get a digi picture soon.