Pond construction, from dreams to reality!

Mini update! Might be moving the pond, just away from the house a bit because I really can't stand see the house in the reflection.

I found more 55g food grade barrels in spotswood NJ for $10 ea & he has 30g & 15g ones too. Anyone interested?
 
Since your dad is going to have some more digging to do, make that pond the filter for the next one.
 
We are only going to move it a couple feet out (as far as we can before hitting the drainage pipes).

I had a friend of my mother's come over today for a visit and we of course made our way to the pond in progress as she is an animal freak too (she has the 1000g pond with 7 koi and huge channel catfish). She shared a lot of ideas with me from her experience and the biggest one was "if I had it to do over I'd definitely put in a bottom drain!". How do you guys feel about bottom drains? I could easily route it right to the bottom of my skimmer box so no new pump would be needed.

Just wondering what you guys think too because she also says never put rocks in the bottom of the pond and we already know how you guys feel about that. :D

I put an aerator in the pond today to test how it will do with keeping a hole in the ice. So far I am happy with it, cleared up the ice that was there in 2 hours! I brought my tub into the basement to get it ready for QTing some 50% off babies & I also bought 4 55g barrels.
 
Well didn't take much research to remember why I decided against a bottom drain in the first place (I forget easily!). Bottom drains tend to leak, not always but it does happen AND no way I would take that high of a risk that ALL that water could leak RIGHT next to the house. Easy choice to make! :)
 
As far as the no rocks, bottom drain vs. the rocks, no drain...

In general, those who plant their ponds heavily and have a water garden with fish, go for the rocks. From what I have read, those who have a pond primarily for fish prefer the no rocks and drains as it does make for easy cleaning of fish waste. The also tend to have no or very few plants actually IN the pond, as the fish eat them, or dig them up and make a big mess. With plants, especially like Muske's where they are directly planted into the rock, the wastes are broken down and used by the plants, so the cleaning is not so much of an issue.

Depends on what you are after...water garden with fish, or primarily fish...which works best for you.

Don't worry, you have all winter to change your mind a hundred times again before spring gets here :)
Jen
 
BD's have ther place. I would def. use one if I had a 10K+ Koi only pond. They work best in gravelless ponds or pools that are in a more formal setting. Think concrete pool with flagstone coping. Running them to a vortex and then on to other parts of the filtration makes for good water quality and turnover.

There are after market kits that allow you to run a BD to the skimmer. It is plumbed so you do not need to cut the liner in order to install them. I have never used/installed on of these, but they look awesome.
 
Thanks for your input guys & gals!

I went to my mom's friend's house today and took some pictures thought I'd share. The deep end where they are resting is about 3ft with 2 shelves bringing the low end to about 1ft deep 10x8 making it just under 1000g. Only filtration is the skimmer & biofalls which is turned off for the winter. She runs the aerator during the winter to keep a hole in ice. She only does 1 major Spring cleaning a year, scoops out whatever settles on the bottom when it accumulates & rinses the filter pads very regularly.

The channel cat is probably like 2.75ft, koi range from 18' to 24' & she did give one away to a friend so now she only has 6. She has had no issues for 2 years now BUT I think at this point with the occupants given size she will run into problems soon at least where oxygen is concerned.

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Moving along towards Spring! Got the tub setup finally, although I thought it held like 150g but it only holds like 80g. I put a valve on the drain line for future uses. I took a piece of plexiglass and siliconed it over the overflow/plug valve opening & there was a small hole in one of the arm rests that I just globbed some silicone into. The drain line did leak right where the drainage pipe connects to the PVC (you can see the small dark spot of the floor in the picture). For now I just slapped some more silicone in there. I like silicone! Plus I have a couple contractors packs worth so why not use it! :D

It is about 48 degrees in the basement right now and it will only get colder so when I do get the koi I will not be feeding them. When the weather starts getting warmer I will throw some heaters in just to bring the temp up to like 72 to make sure an inactive parasites are flushed out of hiding.

So I will throw in a couple air stones to keep the water moving & age it for a few days then add some seeded sponge filters and a few baby koi! The koi are going to be late Christmas presents, yay! I think I am more nervous than excited though. :) But for now I have to wait for the last addition of silicone to dry & clean it again because the hose was dirty! :silly:

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