What would you do differently?

[Lisak1]

Hi @Margo! I'm in Northern Illinois too - welcome from another frozen ponder!

I can honestly say I would change nothing about my pond. If I could go back even further, I would choose a different HOUSE! Haha! We are in a typical suburban neighborhood with a .25 acre lot, so we're pretty landlocked. We put in the biggest pond we could with our available space, but if I had more yard...

The pond itself is exactly what we planned for - it's easy to maintain and gives us lots of hours of pleasure. The "work" that we do around or in the pond is of our choosing - I love to garden, so adding water gardening to the mix was perfect for me. We have a bog filter where we experiment with different types of plants and we're working on naturalizing all of our marginals and eliminating as many pots as possible. The plants handle the harsh winter much better when they are planted in the pond, we find, versus in pots that need to be brought up from the bottom every spring. Less work for us, and the plants start growing earlier than they did when we had to wait for the weather to warm up enough to get the pots pulled up. So it's a win-win.

Good luck on your pond move! Are you literally pulling the pond up, liner and all?

@poconojoe - start another thread and tell us about your liner issues. It sounds like you've got something strange going on there. A liner should give you lots of years of service. I'd hate to see you lose your pond due to frustration... although I do understand!

 

[Sunshine]

I've been jinxed with punctures and mysterious leaks. I'm fighting one right now in this very cold winter in northeast Pennsylvania. I'm losing about 100 gallons every two days. So, when the weather warms up, I will be replacing yet another liner. It's been very frustrating, but I'm going to give it one more try before I give up this hobby! This time I plan on dividing my 1500 gallon pond so that it appears as one on the surface, yet has a wall in the middle at half the depth. This way if there's another leak, at least one side will still hold water (I hope). I can then let the fish swim to the good side while the other side leaks down until I can make a repair. In effect two ponds in one. By the way, this liner was new this past summer. Very frustrating.

That is exactly what we did. Only my reason was to put the fish on one side while cleaning the other. That's when we had a thick layer of rocks on bottom. Now that I have a thin layer, I don't do a clean out anymore.

 

[slick]

I have a plumbed in water line with water filters, surface skimmer bottom drain no shelves no plant, as as soon as I put them in the koj rip them to small pieces but I do so wish I had put in an aerated bottom drain instead of the standard type as one they look fantastic
two far better aeration through the water
three they help so much in clearing the pond bottom,
I could retro fit one but that means getting very wet
so for now im relying on air stones and a venturi fitted to the pond inlet

 

[slick]

Dave 54 didn't you fit a bottom drain or am I thinking of someone completely different??

 

[slick]

When I built my pond he block work went all the way top to bottom to prevent wroots from puncturing the linner and because of its depth I went mega over bord with underlay and I mean over bord,
before the underlay went in a put a layer of play ground sand down to a depth of 60 mm touch wood its holding up

 

[snoozer]

A wider stream and a bog. The bog is this summers project. The stream I need to stare at for a while to figure out.

 

[addy1]

Nothing, my ponds are perfect for us. Easy to care for, no stress. We can walk away from them without issues. The birds love to bath in the bog, the bees sip water from the small ponds. The critters make it their home along with the fish.
I do need to do a shut down and start up, pull the external pump every winter and reinstall in the spring. About 15 minutes of work.

 

[Margo]

This has been fun to read. As to what I'm planning on changing with the new set up, I'm planning on building a larger waterfall and really love the idea of a bog. I have no experience with that however but the ideas are starting to come together in my mind. I'm planning better planting shelves. The ones on my pond now were done really haphazard and they never really did what I wanted them to do (they are narrow and slant down a bit - wasn't as careful as I should have been). My second pond tier needs to be higher also - it's around 36 inches now and is most of the pond. I always had to put bricks under all my plants to get them at the correct planting depth and I don't want to do that this time. And since I'm going to make my second pond tier higher, I want larger deep area so I guess I'm making this pond a little bigger.

The only thing I'm planning on moving is the fish and plants from the old pond to the new pond and probably my underwater lights as they are still working just fine. I'm going to purchase everything new and start over. I have an Easy Pro TH series pump but it's going on seven years now so I'll replace it and keep that one around as a backup. But I'll move everything from the old location - then the hole is being filled in. It's at my parents house and they don't want the hassles anymore.

Margo