Hi guys, I'm a furniture refinisher in NYS. As it's a home business of 27 years, and the back yard ain't all that far away, so last year I grabbed my shovel and started diggin.
Well, I did have a small prefab pond with two little waterfalls before that, and I decided to go a little bigger. Then, I figured maybe I should go as big as I could afford to go, instead of expanding down the road, so I ended up with a 15' x 25' foot pond. 4 ft deep at one end, 3' in the middle, and a foot deep at the other end (for the little critters).
I had quite a pile of dirt, so I moved it all back about 20' and created two different waterfalls. One waterfall has a fairly straight stream to the pond, but the other waterfall goes off at a 90 degree angle and I made a curved winding stream down to the pond for that one.
I've got 4 koi that wintered well, despite the cold up here (zone 4), they started at 4" and now have grown to about 12", they look like battleships. I also have 4 multicolored shebunkins and a fat little goldfish, but they all hang out together.
The plants I have are gracefull cattails, bullrush, yellow flag, hyacynthe, a corkscrew plant, 4 lillies, arrowroot plants, iris, a flowering rush, parrots feather so far. The parrots feather is really taking off, I had to cut some of that back.
Anyway, my pump pumps about 2500 gal per hour up to the two waterfalls, and I've got a uv light hooked into that. I'm glad I bought it, the water stays crystal clear right to the bottom, plus I have a bio filter hooked to my fountain.
Hey, the shallow end of the pond is frog city. I kind of let the grass grow up there and hang over the water, so the frogs like to hang out over there. Hmm, so do the koi, maybe that's why I never see any polywogs,
. There are a few baby frogs, but not many.
The only problem I have is water evaporation from the falls, about 2" per day. When the falls are off, the water level stays the same, so I know there's no leak in the pond. I've tried shutting down each waterfall individually, but I get the same evaporation rate, so I'm fairly certain it's just evaporation, not a waterfall/stream leak.
Let me tell ya, the birds are loving those streams. Later on, I'll tell you about the mourning dove and a pesky little chipmonk.
Steve
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