New pond, nervous about winter

[Spartamets]

I was going to say exactly what you just said - more plant cover in the pond will help to bring your fish out of hiding. Right now they are VERY exposed and those rocks are a safe spot for them.

I see now what you mean about your water level and I'll tell you what I would tell myself - you need to correct that skimmer misplacement. You will never be happy seeing how much deeper your pond could be until you get that fixed. You did all that digging - take advantage of it! Right now you can see a lot of rocks - with the water at the correct level a lot of that rock will be underwater, so the visual effect will be more water, less rock. Plus plants help to soften the edges and blend the pond in to the surrounding landscape. Your pond will be beautiful! Good job!

Thank you, Lisak. How long did it take your pond to reach its current state? It's fantastic; I especially like how all the elements fit together. That is my goal, but it feels so far away. I have resolved to somehow get that skimmer raised, but I dread the task. Will the resulting depth of around 21 inches be sufficient for a koi? If so, that will make it worth doing, because I had assumed I would have to eventually dig an adjacent/attached 3-foot deep extension. I'd much rather raise the skimmer and develop this pond than do that. My yard doesn't have too much lawn left. Thank you again!

 

[sissy]

I really don't think you need that big of a pond heater .City water or well water .I use window screening so froggy feet don't get stuck in it .My koi kill frogs so I try to catch them and relocate them to farm ponds .I use electrical conduit to hold my netting up and sewed pockets in each end .I also use them and hang my pumps from them and I use sump pump hose since all my hose runs inside the pond .I have become very careful with my pond .Even my filters sit inside liner .I had a pump in 2010 fall sideways and was only left with about a foot of water during a bad snow storm and lucky I caught it around 1 in the morning .PJ's and snow is not the most fun thing I have ever done .I am lucky I had a water faucet inside the basement .After that my son rewired the pond to make it so I could switch each outlet from inside the house to off .He had done only 2 of them originally .Now the switch's are inside my master bedroom closet .

 

[addy1]

Thank you. Is Frederick a different climate zone because of the elevation? I love it out your way. And I love your water feature, too. Amazing.

Thanks, we are 6b a touch colder than over your way. Slightly higher elevation to.
Even just driving into Frederick city we can see a difference, the trees and flowers bloom earlier in the city

 

[Spartamets]

I really don't think you need that big of a pond heater .City water or well water .I use window screening so froggy feet don't get stuck in it .My koi kill frogs so I try to catch them and relocate them to farm ponds .I use electrical conduit to hold my netting up and sewed pockets in each end .I also use them and hang my pumps from them and I use sump pump hose since all my hose runs inside the pond .I have become very careful with my pond .Even my filters sit inside liner .I had a pump in 2010 fall sideways and was only left with about a foot of water during a bad snow storm and lucky I caught it around 1 in the morning .PJ's and snow is not the most fun thing I have ever done .I am lucky I had a water faucet inside the basement .After that my son rewired the pond to make it so I could switch each outlet from inside the house to off .He had done only 2 of them originally .Now the switch's are inside my master bedroom closet . View attachment 96484

Cool and creative setup! What is the role of those floating white balls? I will get wiring put out to the pond area next Spring. I think the electrical box for it will have to be custom built, since I couldn't find anything anywhere for plugging in many things, and ponds seem to have a lot of items to plug in. That's another thing that didn't get done before the budget ran out. I can't say I selected my de-icer based on any criteria other than that it was on sale, so I am not surprised it is a poor fit for my set up. As with other things, I'll try it when I need it and see if I'll need to replace it. I'm almost positive that I'll be getting a pond breather for next year and retiring the de-icer except for serving as a back-up. Since there was ice floating in the pond today, I may get to test that thing out sooner than expected.

 

[addy1]

If you want to go cheaper than the heater, get a small pump like 250 gph or smaller, put it in a home depot bucket with some filtering, take a small tube and have it break the surface of the pond to keep a small amount of circulation.

I did this in the shallow end of my big pond with the breather in the deep end, the small pump kept a very nice opening all winter. I did this mainly due to losing a few fish in the shallow end the winter before, my pond is 27 feet long, figured I needed some movement down here.
it is dark right now but you can see the shape of the bucket. Minimal electricity usage.
You can see the ice layer forming where the water is not moving. Lily pads that grew back after the winter grooming.

These two pictures are from last winter

 

[Spartamets]

If you want to go cheaper than the heater, get a small pump like 250 gph or smaller, put it in a home depot bucket with some filtering, take a small tube and have it break the surface of the pond to keep a small amount of circulation.

I did this in the shallow end of my big pond with the breather in the deep end, the small pump kept a very nice opening all winter. I did this mainly due to losing a few fish in the shallow end the winter before, my pond is 27 feet long, figured I needed some movement down here.
it is dark right now but you can see the shape of the bucket. Minimal electricity usage.
You can see the ice layer forming where the water is not moving. Lily pads that grew back after the winter grooming.


View attachment 96488

These two pictures are from last winterView attachment 96489 View attachment 96490

That's another good idea, thank you for sharing it. This winter I will experiment with what I have. If the electricity costs too much or the aeratoe causes problems, I'll switch out either midseason or next year. I think I like this idea even more than a pond breather. I still can't believe the scope of your project, by the way. It must keep you insanely busy. It's awesome.

 

[sissy]

The fish like to push the balls around ,They are those extra large christmas ornaments and sealed the end with silicon .I do what addy does bucket with dollar store laundry bags full of lava rock .

 

[addy1]

I still can't believe the scope of your project, by the way. It must keep you insanely busy. It's awesome.

I barely do anything to the pond during the ponding season, groom the lilies now and then, groom the bog plants now and then ow I ignore it. It takes care of itself. No filters to clean. My dear hubby loves to wander so it is a good thing I can just walk away at any time.

The most work is pulling the external pump in the fall, reinstalling in the spring, maybe a hour in the fall, 1/2 hour in the spring. Turn it on, the pond is on its own again the rest of the summer.

The bees..........they are a different story.

 

[Spartamets]

I barely do anything to the pond during the ponding season, groom the lilies now and then, groom the bog plants now and then ow I ignore it. It takes care of itself. No filters to clean. My dear hubby loves to wander so it is a good thing I can just walk away at any time.

The most work is pulling the external pump in the fall, reinstalling in the spring, maybe a hour in the fall, 1/2 hour in the spring. Turn it on, the pond is on its own again the rest of the summer.

The bees..........they are a different story.

That is both inconceivable to me and very encouraging. From early July through the end of October, I probably averaged 60-80 hours a week or more on the pond, waterfall and surrounding landscaping. This is hard to sustain with a full-time job that sometimes makes very high demands on my time, too. Of course, that was building it and unrepresentative of how the time demands will be moving forward, but I still have a lot of fixing and finishing to do. Maintenance aside from building and fixing has itself been time consuming, but a lot of that is because I had major water loss almost straight up until leaf season. I was adding water literally every day. I hated that part. It is encouraging to know that, unless my track record fails to improve, I will soon be able to spend time around the pond just enjoying it and not correcting my mistakes. But as I noted in an earlier post, working on the pond supplies its own pleasures. I like being literally on/in a waterfall and having it count as yardwork. That's a treat. (Tearing it out to rebuild it from scratch three times was less of a treat, though...)

 

[addy1]

lol this is after it became a established pond. I built it one year, finally had fish the next year.

Of course changes etc over the next x years, but I would say within 3 yrs I can ignore it. Yep redid waterfalls over time, an opps here and there. Once it was built never spent a lot of time on it.
The filtering I use, a huge plant bog, takes care of the pond. I quit testing the water, no need, every now and then I do need to fix a water fall, a stream, mainly due to deer walking in it, or excessive plant growth, but over all I can totally ignore the entire setup all summer if I had to. Which I did the year my hubby ended up with emergency surgery. The lilies overgrew, the leaves died but all catch up able.

I have water loss over the years, deer, plants, a wandering rock, but quick and easy to fix. I have a auto water system hit the manual add water, done.

 

[Lisak1]

Same here - very little that we have to do with the pond at all in any season. My "work" is all really just puttering around. I keep my lilies fertilized, keep the lily pads groomed, check in with the frogs two, three times a day... literally, they work harder than I do!

But again - established pond. The building season was intense, the first winter was worrisome, (for no reason), the next spring was frustrating (not enough plants, too much string algae)... and then that first full summer rolled around - smooth sailing.

 

[snoozer]

Mine is also the same. It is 12 years old now and pretty much takes care of itself. I think that the size of the pond also makes a difference. My 200 gallon preformed was alot more work than this one that is 35x20. The most work is in fall scooping leaves out.

 

[Spartamets]

I am very encouraged by the most recent posts, especially given how great your ponds are. A lot of the time I'm counting as time spent working on the pond was research time--I did tons and tons of it, every night, and I still am doing it (as you patient folks can probably tell from all of my questions). It has been my hope that a lot of things would balance out biologically, but I have water additives on hand just in case, like a security blanket. My waterfalls are still grossly imperfect, I have basically no pond plants, and the landscaping around the pond still has a ways to go. So I know next year will be a very busy one, too, and that's fine. I am hoping, however, that the time I spend on the pond in the years that follow more reflect me being obsessive and a perfectionist than building and repairing problems. Fixing water loss started driving me crazy; I had at least 5 different causes of it, so when I knew I fixed "the" problem and then lost water anyway the next day, over and over again, well, that got rough. I look forward to joining the ranks of you long-timers and having a better balance of labor versus enjoyment, and it's nice to know that it will eventually happen. And also that my fish will eventually start liking (or at least not fearing) me, too. It will be a new day in my yard when those days finally get here.

OK, I hate to do it, but I have a few more questions. Or should I ask them in topic-specific areas? I broke the upload-pond-pictures-when-first-posting protocol, with poor results, and I don't want a repeat. Should I ask my additional and endless questions in this thread, or would it be best to add them to other threads/forums so that the answers can be available in a more topically relevant location? I am so happy to have found this forum and you nice and knowledgeable people who spend time here. I appreciate your help and hope one day to be able to similarly offer insight to others. (I'll certainly be able to let people who make mistakes know that they have company!)

 

[addy1]

You can ask here or start a thread in the construction area with a title of something help me questions, new to ponding! Or do topic specific, your choice. And there is not rule on posting pictures, the forum will stop you if you add xxxx amount then you just do a reply to your own and add more. It really helps us understand what we are helping you with.

We will follow along and love to help out.

You will find out most of us do not use water additives, some do. I rely on plants , a whole lot of plants, to take care of my pond and they do a great job.

 

[sissy]

Plants and air are your friends when it comes to ponds and there success .