Newbie Here with small pond

[sentrek]

Hey all, Newbie here with a question about pumps. I am currently building a small pond (I estimate around 800 gallons, its irregular shaped so hard to say for sure) but assuming it is around 800 gallons, the pond is exactly 3' deep (water will be a few inches less when filled, say 32"), I plan to use a waterfall filter so i can do a waterfall around 2-3 high, how many gph should the pump be able to handle at a 7' head height? This is the pump I was thinking of using.
http://www.bestnest.com/bestnest/RTProduct.asp?SKU=PON-02663

Thoughts? I will post pictures late tonight of current progress. I am working on this and extending my patio at the same time so it will be a few weeks before its up and running.

 

[HTH]

If you have the room I suggest you go with at least 1000 gallons. Smaller ponds are harder to take care of.

Head is calculated from the water surface not the pump location. 7' of head for a water fall on a 500 gallon pond would result in a pond that looked like a boiling pot.

How about we start with your goals for the pond and work from there ?

 

[sentrek]

I am glad you said something, I would have sworn I read head height was from location of the pump...
As far as making it a thousand gallons, I have made it as big as I can, according to my wife I have made it too big already. I will take some pictures and measurements and maybe you guys can help me come up with a closer estimate to its actual capacity. As far as goals, I just want a nice looking, tropical themed pond with probably some goldfish, maybe a Koi or two if its big enough.

 

[HTH]

Too small for koi. Current thinking is 1000 gallons for the first and 300 to 500 for each additional and about 4 feet deep. Small ones would be OK but they grow and if you wife falls in love with them.... 2000 gallons here we come.

You have a conflict. You want a big roaring water fall (6500GPH) into a little 500 gallon pond. If you want water lilies you want a mostly smooth water surface. Do you see the problem.

 

[sentrek]

Yeah, let me get some pictures and some good measurements tonight, now that I think about it, I bought a 15 x 20 liner (firestone 45mil with the underlayment) and on the width there is only maybe 3' overlap total (18" each side) so its got to be a full 4' wide so it may be a thousand gallons. Its definetely 10' long and 3' deep. I will get better dimensions tonight. I ended up carving it bigger due to some errosion over the winter. As far as a roaring waterfall no.. but a nice steady flowing one yes.. I don't have the room for roaring.

 

[sissy]

you may want a bigger overlap after I put my water in my liner sunk over 4 inches and I have clay soil .I marked my liner every day for a month

 

[sentrek]

Ok, here are the pictures. Keep in mind the liner is just more or less thrown in there because it is suppose to rain this weekend and I didnt want all my work getting washed back in. I started diggin g the hole last fall but didnt get it done in time before winter came. Anyway, it is exactly 10' long at its longest point (its shaped like a kidney bean if you can tell, hard to see with the liner so loose right now. It is 6' across at center and 4' across at the ends, the deep part is right 36-38" all across, the ledge is about 20" wide at its widest part and about 18" deep. The waterfall will be at the back center where the fence is angled.

 

[Fishylove]

Just curious. OH and WELCOME to our forum :wave:
The ledge you have? It it there because you want a ledge for plants? Reason I'm asking is because when I built my second pond, I had to put a ledge in one area due to a HUUUGE main root of one of my trees. I didn't want to kill the tree, so we worked around it, turned out better than I thought it would, with caves and all, the fish like the caves
Anywho, lol I do have a point If you were wanting the ledge for plant life, ( and this is just my opinion ) I would suggest taking out the ledge and using black milk crates with holes cut out in the sides ( so the fish can swim through, and also have a place to hide ) to put your plants on. It would increase the swimming area for the fish, and honestly as small as your pond is wide, they would also be safer from predators with the sides going straight down. A Heron could easily stand on the sides, or even on that ledge for that matter and pick off a few fish no problem. Giving them a few things to hide under would help with that alot.

 

[sentrek]

Thanks for the welcome and the input. To be honest I just thought it would be a nice feature and double as a place for plants and or possibly some lights. Do you think one of those nets above to help keep the leaves and stuff out would help keep out Heron? When we first bought the house there was a small pond, about 100 gallons or so that had some gold fish and stuff in it and I never had a problem, but it was also up close to the house.