Can I use river water?

[John Sankus]

Hi.
Currently digging a pond. A river backs onto the garden - would it be okay to use the water from there to fill the pond?

 

[Waterbug]

Depends on your definition of OK. Along with the water you also get whatever is in the water, good and bad. People with expensive Koi would probably not risk it, but then those expensive Koi were probably recently flown from a grower's pond that was filled with river or stream water.

 

[John Sankus]

No prob. There will be no fish in the pond, unless any get sucked up by the pump or dropped in it by a passing heron The river is fairly clean (well, without chemical analysis I can't be sure - but the water is crystal clear as it runs past)
Thanks for the advice

 

[Craig58]

Just a side note. Depending on where you live, and how you intend to fill the pond, you can run into problems with local authorities. Diverting any significant amounts of water, or creating small man-made ponds that get filled by natural stream usually will violate many local laws. Simply pumping a few thousand gallons out once to fill a pond probably won't be noticed.

Craig

 

[Julia]

Have a friend who uses river water to fill his aquarium. The fishes seem so much healthier.

 

[John Sankus]

Thanks guys. The river itself is man-made - the house sits on the site of an old mill and the course at the back is a mill-stream (leat/lade - depending on where you are from) so I wonder if there will be any issues. I may ask. All of the water in this area (three rivers flow through the town) was managed carefully once upon a time as there were many mills that used water as their power source, although these are all now long gone