Photos of my pond - not your average garden pond

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Hello all,
I'm new here, but thought I'd share a few photos of my somewhat unusual garden pond.
There aren't fish in my pond, but there are ducks.


The duck pond with a few residents - it is THEIR pond - it was specifically built for them.
013 Duck Pond.jpg


The overflow channel runs into the garden bed when I flush out the pond.. this waters and feeds the plants ... a duck pond has a high "nutrient" load
Overflow channel.JPG


I put a small solar powered fountain in one corner to help circulate and aerate the water. I'm in the tropics, and it's a duck pond, so algae loves the rich pond water. Algae is also a good plant fertiliser, so it gets flushed out onto the bananas with the pond water (or as I like to call it - ducky water).
Pond 012.JPG
 
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Very nice. I had a few ducks visit my pond last year but they left pretty quickly.What keeps your ducks from flying away?
 
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And fresh water on a regular basis! Yep, I'd stay, too, if I was a duck. Neat idea, and since flushing it waters other plants, it gives you more incentive to flush it more often. Great set-up!
 
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Oh I love this! We built our pond earlier this spring with our ducks in mind, but after we learned how mucky they make the water we've been keeping them out. We added fish and decided we want to see them, plus the ducks kept eating our plants.

I think adding in a pond just for them is a great idea and I love the run off to water the garden. We have a kiddie pool for them and I use that to water our plants. We love the ducks, such great egg layers, bug eaters and plant fertilizers! We love watching them swim in deeper water so I think now that we have experience building our first we will have to tackle a second.
 
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Hello everyone,
@haver79, yes, they love their little pond.

@CometKeith, my ducks are Khaki Campbells and Indian Runner Ducks. Domestic ducks like Pekin, Campbells and Indian Runners cannot fly. They have been bred over the years for egg and/or meat production and their body weight is not proportional to their wing span. If mine get up a good run for take off, they can get about 30cm (12 inches) off the ground and may be able to stay airborne for up to a metre (a yard). Their wild ancestor is the Mallard, which can fly. My little ducks get excited when I bring them food and they will often jump into the air (all 12 inches off the ground), flap their wings madly, then come to a halt about 6 inches from where they started! Most of their wing flapping is done in the pond while bathing.
I keep them to clean up the garden and they do a wonderful job. They have a particular taste for some weeds, they will chase down any insect in sight, poke around in freshly turned soil picking out weeds I've missed, and clear the veggie patch for me at the end of a season - just open the gate. They also forage around my fruit trees fertilising them as they go.

@Ducky, lovely little ducks, what species are they? Little orangey feet and brownish-khaki bills - Campbells? Pekins? or one of the more exotic breeds? Ah, I remember when mine were that size.
If you do build another pond for your flock, it's not hard to clean the pond, just run the garden hose in it for a few hours and the water will be crystal clear again, - at least until the next bathing session. I find it stays reasonably clean for a few days. I have one hose going to the pond and another going to the baby baths at the back of the house - which is supposed to be their drinking water, but they climb in every chance they get. Both hoses run from the same tap with a two-hose connector attached, so the pond gets a short flush at least once a day when I change their drinking water. Then, when I want to give the pond a good flush out, I simply divert the tap to the pond hose only, turning off supply to their drinking water. Watch your ducks and you will see what plants they prefer and those that they don't like to eat, then landscape around the pond with non-edibles that they don't like. They need to be hardy as flat little ducky feet tend to trample delicate plants and they will enter and leave the pond by every path they can find, not just the one we make for them. One of mine was walking along the rim, slipped and fell in!

Major challenges for me in keeping the pond clean are cyclones which dump tree branches, leaves and all sorts of contaminated mud in the pond. After cyclone Yasi I was hauling out half a tree and the depth of the pond had halved.
 

addy1

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They are so cute! neat set up you have for them
 
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@Carol_af The ducklings in the photo are Welsh Harlequins. We also have a Runner and Saffron Queen. We were told the Welshies couldn't fly and to our surprise they took off one day. Flew right over the house and into our neighbors field before turning back around. They were terrible at landing. Completely crash landed, but had the sense to head back home. After that we have kept their wings clipped so they can't go on any more adventures.Wwe haven't had any issues with the Saffron and Runner, they just hover like you mentioned.

How deep is the pond you have for your ducks? Do you just have the fountain head for water circulation or is there any kind of filter running? Sounds like you have a really easy setup for flushing the pond and their pool. We aren't that sophisticated...yet!
 
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Hello @Ducky,

The pond is 30cm (12in) at its deepest point in the centre and towards the left wall. This wall is close to vertical at the duckhouse/greenhouse edge, with a small stepped ledge into the water. The right wall is also vertical at the duckhouse edge but less deep with a more gradual descent into the water. The entire floor gradually rises towards front right, becoming quite shallow, allowing for easy entry and exit from the pond. The rim of the pond on the duckhouse side rises higher than the front rim of the pond to ensure the pond doesn't overflow into the duckhouse during torrential monsoon rains - or if I forget to turn the hose off. I designed the pond and a friend's son, who trained as a fiberglass technician, built it using me as his labourer. I initially designed a 'ramp' into the floor at the centre of the duckhouse/greenhouse entry so they could easily climb in and out via the water. The principle being that predators frequently won't cross a water barrier. To either side of the ramp were ledges where the ducks can dabble and play. However, the smooth fibreglass ramp proved too slippery for the ducks so I added rocks to the ledges and rim to give them a bit more of a footing. The pond is roughly circular (more of a squashed circle to be accurate) and is 150cm in diameter.

I had only used the tiny fountain to date to stir the water slightly. It was just a little cheap solar fountain I bought on eBay to see if it would work. The algae and sediment frequently blocked it, so with a little thought I cut a kitchen sponge scourer in two and wrapped it around the tiny pump and held all in place with a wire loop that I could undo when I needed to change the sponge. I enclosed the wrapped pump inside a very short sock - the one's that don't rise above the instep but just cradle the foot, and used a cable tie to hold it all together. It didn't filter the pond, but it stirred the water and kept the fountain running a little longer between cleanings. The intent was to keep the algae and sediment out of the pump rather than filter the water.

The major way in which I 'filtered' the water was by running the garden hose and flushing the pond out with clean water. I'm in the wet tropics and we don't have water shortages as such. Our problem is frequently too much water in the wet season. There is nothing quite like watching the ducks float about in the grass!

I am looking at DIY filters and toying with the idea of a waterfall filter, hence, my finding this site. As I've been browsing pages here it has given me a few ideas to adapt and try out. I'll keep you posted.
 
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Hi @Ducky,
I forgot to mention that under local swimming pool safety laws here a pond of 30cm or less in depth does not require fencing. So just check out your local council laws.

Having said that, we don't have children and the perimeter of the entire property is fenced with cyclone fencing to shoulder height. I keep the gates closed at all times to protect the ducks from predators - dingoes, dogs, etc. If visitors bring children with them, they are usually more interested in the ducks than the pond, and we keep a close eye on them. The garden itself is fenced off to keep the ducks out of the front yard - so we don't run them down in the driveway and it keeps the pathway and front garden clean. The ducks have the run of the rest of the garden. We only have to lock the back door to prevent small children having access to the backyard without supervision. When we point out to any children who want to paddle in the pond, just what ducks do in the pond, birds being incontinent, the response is usually - eww! - and they keep well away.
 

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