New pond questions?

[Rebgen]

First of all, when it comes to ponds I'm as green as they get. I'm starting to do some research while I consider building an outdoor pond for some koi in my backyard. My initial challenge will be the location. My backyard faces south so I'll need to devise a tree/shading option to control sunlight exposure. My next problem I learned will be raccoons. I live in suburban Des Moines, IA adjacent to a heavily wooded park/greenbelt area and raccoons are frequent visitors at night. I've been told they will make a snack of any fish in my pond ASAP.

Anyone else deal with this kind of threat and what solutions have worked? Unless I can figure out how to prevent this, it'll be a show stopper and I'll have to shelf my pond plans.

Thanks for any advice you can share.

 

[sivic]

My mom has an outdoor pond and we loose alot of goldfish to raccoon's and my neighbor's stupid cats. Just leave a plate of antifreeze outside to take care of pesky animals. lol. no but seriously they have electronic boxes that put off a high pitched sound to scare animals away that approach the pond.

With a quick search of google here are a few things i found.

http://www.raccoon-x.com/pondprotection.htm
http://www.raccoon-x.com/watersprayers.htm
http://www.raccoon-x.com/utrasonics.htm
http://www.raccoon-x.com/repellant.htm

 

[Rebgen]

Thank you very much for the links. I briefly checked them out and will save them in my file for later reference before building the pond. I like the electric fence option but hopefully could hard wire it for AC.

Thanks again and I'll check in when I get a little closer to putting plans into motion.