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Sissy, you are right about selling fish. I was in a garden store this year talking to an employee and a customer came in wanting to buy a lot of plants for his koi pond in his restaurant. You should have seen the look the garden store employee gave me when I told the customer that his larger koi will probably eat them. 2 small fish would have been good for starting up a pond, not 10.
 
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One of the pond installers at that place told me a layer of 2-3" river rock would help keep my pond water cooler, by covering the bla ck liner. It is also holding the liner that overlaps from the waterfall in place, and keeping my pump slightly off the bottom. I read that you shouldn't have your pump right on the bottom. I wondered how I would go about cleaning it eventually when that time comes. But just assumed that eventually I could rent a pond vacuum for a day and it would suck it out.
 

sissy

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gosh it amazes you what you hear these days .My first question to them do you own a koi pond or is what your telling me is what you think you know .The pet shop I work with test my water but he has 2 ponds and he knows what he is doing and saying.I really don't know any place that rents them but I do know pond companies that charge over 300 dollars to clean a pond my size
 
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Hi Jen welcome! It took my pond not very long to cycle and it has been (thankfully) good so far (set up in late march), it does take time though for the whole pond to work with itself though, and a good bio/skippy helps!
 

ididntdoit99

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Welcome Jen, I took a look at your pictures, it looks like a great start, question though, you have 2 ponds side by side, but only one of them has water? It looks to me like the top one could be feeding the second one, do you plan on leaving them seperate?
 

addy1

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JenH said:
One of the pond installers at that place told me a layer of 2-3" river rock would help keep my pond water cooler, by covering the bla ck liner. It is also holding the liner that overlaps from the waterfall in place, and keeping my pump slightly off the bottom. I read that you shouldn't have your pump right on the bottom. I wondered how I would go about cleaning it eventually when that time comes. But just assumed that eventually I could rent a pond vacuum for a day and it would suck it out.


It won't keep your pond cooler jen, they will collect muck. I hope you sealed the waterfall liner to the pond liner, you may end up with leaks there. The muck will settle in all the cracks crevices, making it hard to suck out the muck.
 
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I didn't seal the waterfall liner to the pond. Again, they said I didn't need to that they don't seal any of their liners. The place I go to is a specialty place and they have 3 well established koi ponds on site. They are all outdoors and beautiful and have pristine water with huge fish and are most definitely overstocked for their size. I figured if they can keep the water that clear with that many fish then they must know something. If I seal the liner down what do I use to seal it with and how far down does it need to go?

I could take some of my water to Petsmart for testing I think, since I bought the fish there. Maybe I will try that. It is definitely improving though. I can finally see the bottom and the fish in it. Here's a pic. The water is still brown, but no more green, YEA! But now there is this white stuff floating around here and there. For lack of any better way to describe it, it looks like spit bubbles.

The back pond is not attached and doesn't have any water in it yet because I still need to get the pump and filter for it. I was told that there was no way to attach the 2 preforms to feed each other since neither of them have any sort of spillway. It would have been ideal to have them connected. If any of you have suggestions for how I could do that then great!! Otherwise, I was planning to set up just a simple mechanical filter and small pump to create a fountain in the center with plants all along the side plant shelves, probably covering most of the water. I wasn't going to ever put fish in there, and was planning to use rocks to hide the liner enough so that it apears to all be connected.
 

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addy1

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Well if you felt brave, take a jig saw, or some cutting tool, cut down a small section of the top preform and create a weir. Just make two cuts down xx wide on a flat side, bend the side down, using pliers, attach the two ponds together with some liner, sealed with roofing compound double side tape, something.
 

addy1

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ididntdoit99 said:
Yep, that's all I was thinking... cutting a notch in the top pond and using a small piece of liner to connect the two.


Great minds think a like! lol
 

ididntdoit99

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I just dont have any problems taking something that is perfectly fine and chopping and sawing the h*ll outta it until it turns into something else. lol.
 

addy1

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Me either make it work the way you want it to, I think she could to it and it would work great.
 

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