My wife wants a waterfall and pond

[tdf-texas]

That's the reason I am here.

Now the question is how do I do it? She wants a water garden with a few fish, lillies, and of course a waterfall with stream. I want a pond that requires as little work on my part to maintain it.

Koi are out of the question. I live next to the Galveston bay system and have water birds on my property daily. My neighbor tried to keep koi in his pond and used all kinds of deterents (including the Remington type) and still lost all of his fish within a few days.

My back yard is about an 1/2 acre so room is not a problem. I am thinking about a 25 x 35 liner (18 x 28 pond), Savio S00000, two 4" bottom drains into 55g DIY filters each, each going thru feed valves to a Sequence 7800PRM24 pump, out to a Pondbuilder Elite 30" waterfall, then returning down a 10 x 30 liner for the streambed.

Am I on the right track?

 

[koikeepr]

LOL! 18x28 isn't exactly a watergarden. That's a big-a$$ pond, my friend.

Let me caution you that a 18 foot pond is extremely wide and will make it very hard to catch fish if you ever need to get a good look at one for a potential illness, etc. You would totally need a seine net to wrangle them into a smaller space to be able to catch them with a net. Just a warning so you know what you're getting into with that. But otherwise, yowza! your wife is about to be a very lucky girl!

You will not be able to run a 4" BD into a 55g barrel, it's just not big enough to handle that kinda flow. As a recommendation that I think would fit your situation very well, and since you are eager not to do lots of work--do spend the money on a sieve. You could tie both those 4" drains into this sieve--and then tee in your skimmer behind it before your pump, and then flow the whole thing into either a parallel series of barrels or even better a very large stock tank. Call Simon at Water Arts Consulting, he's really fantastic and will walk you through your needs. He will also give you a better price than what's advertised online. [ame="[MEDIA=youtube]12j2DnrINZA[/MEDIA]"]Here[/ame] Here is a video Simon made of it functioning. I have the midi sized one with two 3" BD's flowing into it and the thing kicks butt. You wouldn't believe what it collects on a daily basis. And you just dump all the crud out in a minute. It's the single best piece of pond equipment that I invested in. You can see it laid out in my thread here on my 5,000g pond build.

We look forward to helping you.

 

[DrCase]

Welcome to the forum !!
Build it just the way your wife wants you to...Keep her happy

 

[koiguy1969]

welcome to our humble meeting of the minds

 

[koikeepr]

Welcome to the forum !!
Build it just the way your wife wants you to...Keep her happy

I wish my husband would say those words! Sigh! LOL!

 

[Squidhead]

Now I really got to go and see your pond and this contraption. I smell a DIY down the road. I'll have to remember to leave some room for something like this when I plumb the rest. I guess this goes before the bio-filter though.

 

[koikeepr]

We did this thread a few weeks back, Squid. A sieve is not worth DIY'ing. Well, let me clarify by saying that a SIY sieve if it is a direct copy of the the Ultra sieve is not worth copying. The steel plate alone can run $500. And DIY'ing the moving wier is a gamble as well. By the time you're done with it, you've basically paid for a store bought sieve.

Of course, one could DIY a contraption to catch debris, like in a basket of sorts or even on an angled screen of some kind. What I can tell you is that it is not the same as catching crud on a 300 micron stainless sieve. You can buy cheap versions of this sieve plate material from China, and it's not the same. This particular stuff comes from Holland, so the shipping gets ya.

Look for that sieve thread we just did within the last month talking about the subject. But, I always admire someone with the hutzpah to try to DIY one of these. The ones that I've seen which have been built as exact copies of the Ultra sieve, have all cost roughly the same as purchasing the UltraSieve according to the DIY'er. They just did it for the pure challenge.

 

[Squidhead]

Could it be done with a 300 micron nylon screen?

 

[koikeepr]

Hmmm.... I don't want to say no, as I've seen many DIY feats pulled off. DoDad would have a better answer than I, I think. I'm leaning towards, no, as it's probably worse than the chinese try plating stuff....