Hello fellow garden ponders! I joined this website because it seems to have the topics I am looking for and because it seems to have more attendance than the other pond forums I visit.
*Disclosure: I am new to ponding so as you read this please tell me if I am up in the night about anything :redface: I appreciate all the information I can get.
I live in Salt Lake Valley UT and according to the NEW USDA Zone map am now a zone 7!!! Yay!!!
I am an obsessive gardener and ponder. I spend every minute I can outside once temps are above 50 degrees and until temps reach that high I am inside researching plants and pond stuff. I absolutely love it. I find it to be a sort of meditation when I am out in the yard playing in the dirt :razz: I prefer to do things myself if I can physically do it and if not I ask my DH to help. But I hate the idea of hiring anyone to do something that I feel I could do just as well for less money.
I have been gardening for many years and always wanted a pond. Last spring I talked my DH into digging me one. It was completed in June of last year. This is my first winter and first spring so as you can imagine I have been full of questions.
My pond is a 5000 gallon oval shape with planting shelves. The deepest part is 3 feet and the shelves drop a foot each. Average depth is probably 2 feet. It measures 17 feet by 24 feet. The only money I spent was on the liner, pump, hoses, fish and plants. Luckily the desert is very close and has an abundance of rocks so a few trips out took care of the rocks I needed.
My pond worked out swimmingly last year :razz: I designed it as a garden pond with plants and comets. It has one 6000 GPH pump that feeds two pools that run into a small waterfall. Other than that there is no other equipment in the pond. I had green water for a brief time but that was it. I put 150 anacharis in it last year for filtration and about 8 potted plants, 3 lilies and about 30 WH. I purchased 14, 8 inch Comets (one of which was eaten by a wild animal, found it's bones about 100 feet away in our food garden) and they had at a lot of babies at least 25 of which are still alive and getting big (about 2 inches long). I have never fed the fish.
I knew last year for proper filtration I should have used about 400 bunches of anacharis so this year I started pricing it and found it would cost about 400-600 dollars!!! So I decided instead to create two skippy filters (two because the pond is too large for one). I just purchased a 100 gallon and 70 gallon stock tank today. I plan on removing the back side of the waterfall and pools and installing them behind it. Then they can flow into the pools and down the falls.
I will still buy some anacharis but wont worry about buying as many and still get some WH and other decorative plants.
Well now for the pictures :razz: We bought our house in June 2008 and yard left much to be desired. But since I love gardening I looked at is as a blank slate that I could do whatever I want with.
So here it is in July 2008
July 2010
And here is the evolution of the pond:
Roofing felt
Liner, BTW, It was SOOOO heavy!!! My DH and I moved it and put it in place by ourselves and it weighed 500 lbs!!! It was hot and burning our hands and we laid it out in the wrong direction and had to rotate it 90 degrees... LOL Good memories.
DH LOL
My son bratty Leo
And me pulling the pump out in December... Ewww it was cold.
I imagine it will look quite different this year as the plant will be bigger and the falls will look different. I can't wait!!!
Anywho, nice to meet you all!
*Disclosure: I am new to ponding so as you read this please tell me if I am up in the night about anything :redface: I appreciate all the information I can get.
I live in Salt Lake Valley UT and according to the NEW USDA Zone map am now a zone 7!!! Yay!!!
I am an obsessive gardener and ponder. I spend every minute I can outside once temps are above 50 degrees and until temps reach that high I am inside researching plants and pond stuff. I absolutely love it. I find it to be a sort of meditation when I am out in the yard playing in the dirt :razz: I prefer to do things myself if I can physically do it and if not I ask my DH to help. But I hate the idea of hiring anyone to do something that I feel I could do just as well for less money.
I have been gardening for many years and always wanted a pond. Last spring I talked my DH into digging me one. It was completed in June of last year. This is my first winter and first spring so as you can imagine I have been full of questions.
My pond is a 5000 gallon oval shape with planting shelves. The deepest part is 3 feet and the shelves drop a foot each. Average depth is probably 2 feet. It measures 17 feet by 24 feet. The only money I spent was on the liner, pump, hoses, fish and plants. Luckily the desert is very close and has an abundance of rocks so a few trips out took care of the rocks I needed.
My pond worked out swimmingly last year :razz: I designed it as a garden pond with plants and comets. It has one 6000 GPH pump that feeds two pools that run into a small waterfall. Other than that there is no other equipment in the pond. I had green water for a brief time but that was it. I put 150 anacharis in it last year for filtration and about 8 potted plants, 3 lilies and about 30 WH. I purchased 14, 8 inch Comets (one of which was eaten by a wild animal, found it's bones about 100 feet away in our food garden) and they had at a lot of babies at least 25 of which are still alive and getting big (about 2 inches long). I have never fed the fish.
I knew last year for proper filtration I should have used about 400 bunches of anacharis so this year I started pricing it and found it would cost about 400-600 dollars!!! So I decided instead to create two skippy filters (two because the pond is too large for one). I just purchased a 100 gallon and 70 gallon stock tank today. I plan on removing the back side of the waterfall and pools and installing them behind it. Then they can flow into the pools and down the falls.
I will still buy some anacharis but wont worry about buying as many and still get some WH and other decorative plants.
Well now for the pictures :razz: We bought our house in June 2008 and yard left much to be desired. But since I love gardening I looked at is as a blank slate that I could do whatever I want with.
So here it is in July 2008
July 2010
And here is the evolution of the pond:
Roofing felt
Liner, BTW, It was SOOOO heavy!!! My DH and I moved it and put it in place by ourselves and it weighed 500 lbs!!! It was hot and burning our hands and we laid it out in the wrong direction and had to rotate it 90 degrees... LOL Good memories.
DH LOL
My son bratty Leo
And me pulling the pump out in December... Ewww it was cold.
I imagine it will look quite different this year as the plant will be bigger and the falls will look different. I can't wait!!!
Anywho, nice to meet you all!
