This is my little project I’ve been messing with over the past couple years. A little different than most. Still have to turn a couple 250gallon tanks into bogs and hide all the filters. I tinker on it between raising 2 boys as a single dad and work. My boys really enjoy it and feeding the koi.

Posted a few weeks ago about the pond build and at the time we had just introduced eastern mosquitofish. Since then we introduced native grass shrimp (ghost shrimp) which are quite hard to find and photograph. We recently found out we had native acute bladder snails hitch a ride on one or more of our plants and have spotted a few adults along with some babies. We also got two new residents that came from the drainage ditch that runs through the backyard. The native green frogs moved out of their ditch in and have kept an upper and lower territory in the pond thus far.

All aquatic life and plants were chosen to hopefully establish an all native NC ecosystem that hopefully mimics the Walstad method in aquarium keeping. Really haven't had time for the plants to grow in yet nor have aquatic insects or larva been able to establish since it wasn't really done until close to the end of summer.

Emergent plants are common rush, horsetail rush, southern blue flag iris, lizard's tail, fern moss, southern lady fern, fringed sedge and a pitcher plant.

Outside plants are highbush blueberry, rabbiteye blueberry, american beautyberry, creeping juniper, swamp milkweed, ironweed, moss phlox, slender leaf coreopsis, pink muhly grass, red tridens, switch grass, river oats and buffalo clover.

Hi all,

I'm in the UK (North Yorkshire). I've just dug out a wildlife pond roughly 12msq. With sloping edges, shelves and a deep spot of approx 55cm.

It's almost kidney shaped and the plan is to have two shallow gravel beaches for entry/exit.

I heard it was good to build a pond in Autumn, so that it will establish ahead of spring next year. I haven't filled it yet, but I've only just realised that pond plant selection in garden centres is minimal at the moment.

Of those more experienced than me, what would you do in my situation? Would you fill the pond, add in some oxygenators such as water starwort, hornwort etc and leave it until spring? Or are there any other hardy plants I can add in now?

I would like the shelves to be lined with reed eventually but woudlnt know where to start or when is the best time to plant.

I have some subsoil on the beaches, deepest area and on some of the shelves. I will be adding some more gravel in before filling too.

Any advice is appreciated!

Thanks

Hi everyone! I have a small porch pond that's about 40 gallons. It has a King Tut papyrus and a trailing bacopa plant, as well as a little waterfall made of slate with water flowing through it from a pump and tubing.

I had everything set up really nicely, but we recently had some strong winds, and the King Tut fell over, knocked all the slate out of place, and ruined the setup.

I'm wondering what the best way is to secure everything outdoors. Should I use twine, glue, or something else? I'm just not sure how to make everything sturdy enough to withstand the wind.

I do have baskets underneath that the pots are sitting on, but that doesn't seem to be secure enough.

I'm curious how other people handle this. Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated!

Hole is done.
Shed almost done.
Next is finishing the patio runoff drain and the bank around the pond.
Then measure/cut/setup filtration.
Then lay liner.
….
I should take a week off work to finish 😂

My pond is about 10’x10’ and 3’ deep. I just spent 30 minutes trying to catch one of 2 fish that look like they may have some sort of fungus- they are juvenile koi one about 2-3” the other a little smaller
They are both mostly black so seeing them in the pond isn’t easy - colors haven’t popped out yet so the white I’m seeing on their heads and fins may just be their color coming in but I wanted to be sure.
I gave up and treated the pond as a just in case but I would have rather caught, examined and quarantined if needed.
Now I just pissed them all off and they will hate me for a week

Pretty much as title. I've got a ~450-500 gallon pond (6 feet by 8 feet oval, 3 feet at the deepest, probably average depth of 20-24 inches). Central Texas, USA.

It's stocked with:

- 3x Juvenile sunfish (bluegill and longear)

- 4x blacktstripe topminnow

- 20-30 mosquitofish (their population had exploded, but it's stabilized since I added the sunfish)

All caught from a local stream.

For plants, I've got a semi-bog filter (2 feet x 4 feet x 12 inches) filled with pea gravel and bacopa caroliniana, then in the main pond is a dying lily, a struggling pickerelweed, an almost dead pygmy chain sword, and almost dead American eelgrass.

I was wondering if it was just growing in issues (the pond is ~4 months old), but I did a nitrate test today with my aquarium kit and there are 0 nitrates. Obviously, in the northern hemisphere, we're close to winter so I'll just have to ride it out, but for spring, should I look into stocking and/or feeding more, or should I be adding fertilizer?

Super excited. There are two more buds coming!

This is my first winter with my 150gal container pond. I was wondering if anyone had any specific tips about how to properly overwinter this so my goldfish and rice fish have the best chance at surviving the winter.

My current plan is to remove the bog filter and plant pots from the tank and get a livestock tank heater that’s made for the brute plastic tubs. Anything else I should know about/consider? My dad keeps saying that the tank is going to crack and I want to prove him wrong.

Edit: I’m located in the USA

My neighborhood was impacted by a severe wildfire a number of weeks ago. Luckily our family, neighbors, animals, and house are all safe, but the fire did get into some bushes around our pond and burnt some holes in the liner where it us under rocks in areas at the edge of the pond.

They're probably between 6-10 inches across with 1-1.5inches of melted area on the edges.

My thought is to cut those melted areas away, clean and dry the edges, then seal and patch with large pieces of a smaller liner than I will probably just order as a big sheet.

A few questions:

• Any suggestions on a fully fish safe sealant? These holes are right at the water edge in places, and I won't risk uncured sealant that will hurt my fish. I'll be careful but this will be an awkwared job. Something that comes in a good size bottle would be ideal.

• Is buying a (relatively) small liner and cutting pieces from that to patch probably the easiest option here? I have small patch kits I've never actually needed, but they're for holes like 2-4 inches.

Any other suggestions or advice for how best to handle this? It's getting closer to freezing temps here and I need to get this resolved before we get ice on the pond.

Thanks in advance!

Dug it shallow on one side with a 5 ft deep end for fish to hide from herons. We have a net on it too, but that’s only temporary to catch autumn leaves. The birds enjoyed it very much this year. They were using it as their community pool all summer. Hoping it attracts more wildlife as time goes on. Maybe next year we’ll see some amphibians.

I’ve got a small pond in a creek I dammed up. I stocked it with fish I caught in a local lake several months ago. I’ve noticed recently several fish that look like this. Does anyone know what this is? Is there anything I can do or will this clear up on its own? I’m in Georgia if that helps.

hes around 60lbs, looks small in the video with no frame of reference lol

just a place for my turtles to get some natural sun during the day.

It’s supposed to freeze this weekend where I live so it’s time to winterize my pond. This is my first year with lilies. Right now I have three lilies in pots that are not below the freeze line. My two options are:

1. Pull the pots. I have 100 gallon aquarium in my garage that will drop below 50° in the winter. Remove all living foliage off and put in the tank.

2. Pull the pots, cut the foliage off, and drop to the bottom of the 4 foot section of my pond, which is below the freeze line.

Neither of these addresses repotting them. Should that be done before I store them for the winter or in the spring? These are cold Hardy lilies.

Picture for attention.

i'm trying to pump about a gallon an hour up a 6 foot height. the pumps i've found are either 600+ gph or don't have enough pressure. what would you recommend?

The previous homeowner had used a pool as the liner. It hadn’t been years since it was cleaned. We removed all the muck and debris, then old blue went. We busted out the rocks that had been concreted in. Laid EPDM liner then rocked our edges in a more natural looking way. We added a place for a turtle to sun and get out of the pond.

I started by digging into the clay soil about up to my knees, then we laid some sand down and a pond liner.

It is now filled with water but it just looks awful! Any advice would be great! I really want to fix it

This year has been amazing, our adopted red ear slider made it through her first brumation. About ten fish also survived the winter. I think a few of them are about 3-4 years old. A frog decided to join our eco system, and we have baby fish for the first time!

In the past I had ducks so I was never able to keep many plants or fish alive. It was a tradeoff to watch them enjoy it but it was a muddy mess. We did chickens this year but they just use it for yummy drinks.

It has been lovely to enjoy it this year and I can say I have never spent as much time in my backyard as I did this year. Oh and we even had some water skippers and dragon flies come!

So i'll try to keep this condensed but I know it's going to be long. I've had an outdoor pond 5-6 Years, threw a handfull of feeders/shubunkin in there, Clean the pond out once a year and otherwise just ignore it. Learning now just how many things I was completely ignorant too. Too many fish, not enough cleaning, usually the lillies cover 50% of the pond but its end of season in Indiana but needs more pond plants for sure. The Fish never seemed unhealthy and continue to breed but I know now that goldfish get MUCH bigger and this is overcrowded with 15-20 fish 2-3 inches (most likely stunted).

Couple months ago I upgraded to the vivo pump and filter. Where I MAY have made a mistake was I put in everything about my pond to AI to ask for advice and what to do to try to improve the situation for the existing fish. Don't get me wrong I know AI is a very mixed bag but most things they suggested made sense on SOME level.

Thats how I ended up with the Heater, 4 Disc Aerator, and skimmer. Think im gonna return the heater for a cheaper one because 160 seems wild. I MIGHT return the skimmer because it is pretty large for the pond i'm on the fence (not in currently). The Aerator with all 4 discs going even though thats what was suggested looks like too much so i've since unplugged 2 of the discs until I can get some advice and pivot. So theres 4 running in the pic but its just 2 now.

I mean my plan was to use all this to improve their environment until they could go 5-6 inches then give them away on marketplace until i was down to 6-8 larger fish.

I just want to know what your thoughts are. I REALLY don't want to start getting rid of fish even though I'm sure thats my biggest thing working against me. We're in the middle of redesigning the rock setup around it.

At the end of the day I don't think i'll ever be the ideal fish keeper. But i'd like to at least be better than a negligent fish keeper. I doubt i'll ever be the person checking the water conditions weekly etc. I still need it to be fairly hands off. But i wanna see what some actual fish keepers will say to this setup instead of just AI.

P.S. the picture of the goldfish it has some slight discoloration, I couldn't tell you if it's always looked that way or not I just wanted to send a pic incase someone thought it was a disease or fungus.

The pond was left alone after the last koi died. Since then it has developed this crust of dried algae and calcium?

I was hoping to just peel it off but its brittle and really stuck there.

How should i best remove it?

Or could i just leave it? I was thinking of adding water lettuce, red floaters, hornwort and java moss, and some platy/swordtail after cleaning it

I'm making a pond for the first time and I knew if I planned meticulously then I'd never start so kinda just did the bare minimum thinking and got to work. I've finally dug the desired size and shape but the next step is putting me into decision paralysis so I came here hoping for some guidance.

While digging I found some dumped rubble, no doubt from when the house was built, and it means there's some jagged edges that could cause issues. I'm not sure the best way about dealing with them. I've seen people use concrete but we don't want to use that. There's a lot of conflicting info about best practices but the current thought is sand. Not sure how exactly to have the sand up the sides cleanly though for when we place the liner. I've seen a suggestion of sharp sand and get it wet to hold form but some have said that shape sand destroys pond liners over time?

I'm expecting to get a rubber liner rather than PVC in the hopes it is less susceptible to UV and weather damage. Seen people say a fabric liner between the sand and rubber is needed and others say it's useless.

I'm planning on having the water get pumped into a small shallow connected pond that the fish can't get to as a safe place for amphibians to spawn (the fish have eaten every frogspawn in the inherited pond for the last 4 years) and to work as a biofilter. Currently the biofilter section is dug to about 11cm below the lip. Would that be deep enough or is that too shallow?

Current dimensions if it changes advice given:

Purple (deepest section) 110cm each direction (average)

Red (main body of pond length) 185cm

Yellow (max width of pond) 189cm

Green (max length of entire pond footprint) 230cm

Depths: Deep 65cm, main body ledge 40cm, shallow 12cm. All those depths are from the very top lip of the lowest part of the pond (I'm on a slight hill) so actual water depth will be shallower and even more so after the sand/advised padding has been added. I'm expecting the deepest to have a true depth of 50-55cm from the water surface as that's slightly deeper than the inherited raised pond so we know the fish are fine with that depth in the winter.

Hi guys. I got 3 little shubunkins in the spring and this will be my first autumn/ winter and I’m not sure what sort of aerator or pump I need. At the moment I have a double ended bubbler and a little fountain, but both are solar powered and today was really gloomy and they just weren’t working.

The pond is small. Maybe about a foot deep and about 80cm long. It’s also on my allotment so no mains to plug into! What should I get?

(FYI this photo was before the fish)

I’m trying to make an outdoor aquarium I guess? The water has only been added but still very cloudy. I’ve added some Algaefree Australia blocks but am wondering if there is something else I could add to clear up the water. I filled the tub two days ago so assume the debris has settled since filling. I’ve added plants and have a solar water aerator. Am I just being impatient. Haven’t clad the top yet because I still have driftwood to add to it.