New to ponds, digging myself in deeper...

[Sushiducks]

Hi all,

For whatever reason this year the wife and I went crazy (according to our boys) and build raised bed vegetable, herb and butterfly gardens. For pest control, eggs and fertilizer plus why the heck not we got 4 Muscovy chicks in June. And now we are digging a pond. Started small but we figured might as well do it right so looks like we are settling on 18' x 10' x 4'.

Thought I would look through here and get some ideas. We are pretty sure of what we want to do, just looking to make sure we don't make major mistakes and save us headaches down the road.

 

[JRS]

Welcome! Cool ducks.

 

[Sushiducks]

Thanks! We are hoping we can make something clean and pretty they and us can both enjoy.

 

[Lisak1]

Welcome! What pretty ducks!

I think you made a smart choice to make the pond as big as you can. As you probably already know, ducks are notoriously dirty in the water. Greater volume will help with water quality. Do you have plans to filter the pond? Are you digging by hand? That's a LOT of digging!

 

[poconojoe]

Those are some cool looking ducks!
When we dug our pond we rented a baby backhoe called a Terramite. It was $300 for the weekend. It worked great. It had a bucket in front and the backhoe out back. It was easy to run. You just had to plan on where to put the soil you dug out.

 

[Sushiducks]

Welcome! What pretty ducks!

I think you made a smart choice to make the pond as big as you can. As you probably already know, ducks are notoriously dirty in the water. Greater volume will help with water quality. Do you have plans to filter the pond? Are you digging by hand? That's a LOT of digging!

Yeah we've been digging off and on for the last couple weeks. Have most of it dug out now. Just trying to finalize what we are doing. This kind of a tentative idea of what we were thinking.

Lighter blue would be shelf area ~18" deep. Deeper would be 4', bottom bit slanted towards drain. Thinking of skimmer feeding small waterfall and bottom drain feeding a stream to a waterfall on opposite end. There is a shop nearby that has a year end sale on EasyPro so we are thinking of picking up the underlayment, liner and drain at least, probably skimmer too.

Lol. This was supposed to be next springs project but my wife got bored when she had a Friday off 4 weeks ago and started digging while I was still at work. So now we kind of have to at least get lining done so it doesn't turn into a frightful mess.

This is really planned for ducks and decoration, but if we can handle the load and keep the water clean we probably will try and have minnows in there for them to munch on (they love when we dump them in their kiddie pool) and if remotely possible shubunkin. But I don't know if that will be possible with ducks. Will see how the water does after a month or two of them in it. They are muscovy and won't spend all their time in it like a mallard derivative would. They mostly like to perch.

 

[Sushiducks]

Those are some cool looking ducks!
When we dug our pond we rented a baby backhoe called a Terramite. It was $300 for the weekend. It worked great. It had a bucket in front and the backhoe out back. It was easy to run. You just had to plan on where to put the soil you dug out.

Ha, I wish! I was all for renting but wife just wanted to poke at it over time. We are pretty easy going though, so she doesn't mind if I go in to work at my 3D printer or something while she is still out there with a shovel.

 

[j.w]

@Sushiducks

Great fun w/ducks! I had them as a kid and loved them. Nice idea giving them such a nice big pond and the bottom drain will help you a bunch. They will love it and hope we get to see photo's of your work in progress and the 1st day of the ducks getting in the pond.

 

[Sushiducks]

View attachment 125164@Sushiducks

Great fun w/ducks! I had them as a kid and loved them. Nice idea giving them such a nice big pond and the bottom drain will help you a bunch. They will love it and hope we get to see photo's of your work in progress and the 1st day of the ducks getting in the pond.

Thanks! First day has sailed lol. If I pick up a shovel and it's more than a half a second since I turned over earth for them to dig through for worms, I start getting pecked in the leg. They are big helpers. If standing on your shovel and glaring at you for being a lazy bum is a big help.

 

[j.w]

They already love it!

 

[addy1]

Welcome to our group! Neat looking ducks!

If you have room a plant bog might really help with all the duckie poo. I only filter with a bog keeps my pond in perfect shape. Plants love to eat up the excess nutrients.

 

[Sushiducks]

Progress

 

[j.w]

Lookin good

 

[j.w]

The only thing I notice is the land in some places around the pond seem to be higher than the pond edge. This could create a problem w/rain allowing stuff to run into your pond, like dirt, etc. That excess dirt on the left is prolly just from your digging but you might want to make a burm up all around the edge so pond edge is higher than outer land area. Maybe you already planned to do this, if so, disregard

 

[Sushiducks]

The only thing I notice is the land in some places around the pond seem to be higher than the pond edge. This could create a problem w/rain allowing stuff to run into your pond, like dirt, etc. That excess dirt on the left is prolly just from your digging but you might want to make a burm up all around the edge so pond edge is higher than outer land area. Maybe you already planned to do this, if so, disregard

Yes we are planning on pulling the sod back and dressing it with stones. Just hadn't gotten that far yet. Thanks!

Edit: and there is a ledge that goes around part of the pond, that's about 16" down. So the edge of the pond is much closer to the level of the yard. The mounded dirt is purposeful as that will have liner, rocks and 2 waterfall filters there. One will feed a waterfall towards the top of the pond (in the picture) the other will feed a stream on the left side that empties into the bottom left side of pond.