New Sleeper koi pond build

[gerrythechip]

Hi everyone, new to the forum but have kept fish roughly 15years. Mainly tropical but also have a 1000ltr preformed pond. Just moved house and looking to built a railway sleep pond. I'm sure many of you have gone down this route before. Can't built it much bigger than 2.4m x 1.2m x 1m so roughly 3000ltr,due to size of my garden. Any other tips or advice welcome. Have been watching lots of videos online. Any links to previous built also welcome.

 

[j.w]

@gerrythechip

 

[Mmathis]

Hello and welcome! You might want to do a search here on GPF. I know this topic has come up before, so hopefully there will be plenty of insights.

 

[TheFishGuy]

Welcome! 3000 liters is roughly 800 gallons, which is no where near big enough for koi. Koi need at least 1000 gallons ( 4500 liters ) for the first fish, plus 250 gallons (1100 liters ) per fish after that. If you cant go bigger than 3000 liters I would recommend goldfish. There are tons of fun types, namely shubunkin, comet, and even some fancy goldfish types such as fantails.

Railways sleepers should be a great material for an above ground pond as they are very sturdy, and meant to withstand quite a bit of a beating! I have not run into any railway sleeper pond builds on here, but there do seem to be quite a few floating around the wider web.

 

[Jhn]

Really with any type of lumber framing for a pond be it sleepers, 6x, 8x, whatever the key is to interlock the corners and rebar running through everything into the ground, every 18” or so.

I built about 1800 gallon pond for terrapins out of 6x’s probably 5-6 years ago. Personally wouldn’t put koi in a pond under 5000 gallons but that’s me. Wouldn’t even consider it in my 1800 gallon pond that is way too small for a fish that can get 3’ long.