Family Project - Roughly 8000+ Gallons - Pond

[Josh1289op]

Howdy Guys & Gals,
My name is Josh and I wanted to share my pond that my step brother and I have been working on for my mother over the last year.

We originally started with a pond about 1200-1800 gallons big, as seen in the first pictures. After about 8 months, we decided that our fish were far to big and to great in numbers to live there. The next day we decided to rent a dirt digger and dig a HUGGGGE HOLE! As you can see in the pictures of post two. The Pond now holds a little over 8000 gallons(Rough guess, timed how long it took to fill up 1 gallon of water and then filled the pond up. It was roughly 8040 gallons... I believe)
We are always playing out here and always feeding the fish as you can see in the videos!

We still aren't finished and find stuff to do to it every week. I have included a layout of the pond, the items used to keep the pond running, some of the plants our pond has, tons of pictures, and a few videos! Enjoy!
The pond is generally a no maintance pond. We have two Preasurized Filters that do most of the work. Three times a week we use the scraping arms to back wash and then once a month/every other month we clean them out.
The Pond isn't done just yet, we want to rock up the walls around the inside and behind the waterfall. This was done with by purchasing bits and peices at a time, and working with what we had. Hope you like it.

ANY ADVISE IS WELCOME!!!

Residence:

15 Large Koi/Goldfish 9 - 15 inches.
30 - 35 Medium Koi/Goldfish 5 - 9 inches.
15 - 20 Small Goldfish - 2 - 5 inches.
8 Butterfly Koi of different sizes
4 "Bobble Goldfish", We don't know the actual name. (Fat Fantailed Goldfish?)
Tons of baby goldfish, maybe some baby koi.
We used to have 10000s of tadpoles. We now have two 100gallon water gardens that the tadpoles live in along with about 50 baby goldfish, they stay away from the large pond.

Pond Layout! (Link: http://img40.imagesh.../pondlayout.png)

Pictures: (I tried to keep them in order of dates taken, but you know how that goes)

 

[Josh1289op]

A GIANT HOLE APPEARED!!!!!!!!(BTW, I gave up on picture order.)

In most of my pond videos, I seem to be feeding the fish! Sorry! LOL

Pond Videos:

Last Year, First Video - Brother and I working on Pond :

Last Year 2011 - New Dirt!

First Upgrade: UV Filter - Added a UV Filter, Changed the skimmer to a DIY recycle Bin

New Side Dug: Waterfall project began. Fish are loving it.

Feeding: Up Close - Bad day, They were all camera shy! Normally they would eat right out of your hand!

 

[Josh1289op]

Some of the Aquatic Plant Life:
No Idea what this plant is!

Papyrus Giant:

Water Hyacinth(Supposably this is illegal in my state. We grow tons of this stuff a year and feed to our koi):

Cattails(Recently took a trip to Virginia for rocks, found some cattails. Snagged two for our pond. Their working out nicely!)

 

[DrCase]

Welcome to the Forum
mom has to be proud of you guys

 

[Mmathis]

Welcome. Nice work -- can tell you guys put a lot of thought into it. Your mom must be in pond-heaven (actually, speaking as the mom of a 17 y/o son, your mom must be super proud of YOU guys!).

Who is your little pooped-out furry helper? Cute pic.

 

[pondlover]

Very nice pond.

 

[addy1]

Beautiful!

to our group! of pond fanatics!

 

[j.w]

Josh
What a huge beauty of a pond. Mom must be loving it and think you two boys do too :razz:

 

[Fishylove]

Very Nice! I wish my boys would help me like that! Lol. They ABSOLUTEY have No interest in helping in my pond oh Well more fun for me!

 

[taherrmann4]

Welcome to the forum.

Nice pond...

 

[sissy]

Welcome and great pond but you may need a bigger filter than that .It is against the law to work a doggie to the bone .

 

[Peggy]

Beautiful pond!

 

[Josh1289op]

Some of the pictures posted above have darker water. We were only running one pressure flow filter. We knew we needed another but as you can probably guess their not cheap. We have since purchased another and the pond is crystal clear. So clear in fact we worry about blue herons swooping down and eating them all up....

Thank you guys for such kind words!

Our next project this fall is to use 6 - 8 inch river round stones and mortar/concrete for the walls.... Willll be funnnnnnnnnnnnnnn lol

 

[sissy]

I guess you will have to come up with a barrier or 2 to distract the pesky heron .I saw something interesting at the flea market they had an owl with sensors in the eyes that flash red and the wings flap and the thing makes a screeching noise .It was 300 dollars but guess it would keep a heron away .

 

[Fishylove]

looks great Josh you might try puting more floating plants and such in the big pond for them to hide under. Mine like the huge piece of river drift wood i put in there. It also slows down the flow of water for the fry on the other side. The Froggies love it too! :cheerful: