planning my first pond

[timber]

thinking of having a 6 foot x 4 foot x 17 inch deep square pond,made with a sturdy wooden frame and lined with pond liner.what i want to know is how important is it to have a pump/filter, i intend to put fish in it, I do a lot of fishing and obviously the fish i catch or healthy but they come from a water with no pumps or filters,or are the pumps/filters only there to keep the water clear,and not to keep the fish alive?

 

[Mmathis]

Welcome! You will hear this many times, but deeper is better. Seventeen inches will be too shallow for fish kept outdoors year round.

 

[GreatDanesDad]

I am pretty new to the game as well, but the idea of a pond without a pump and filter is like building a mansion without a bathroom. In lakes, streams, and anywhere else you would catch “healthy” fish, there is a large amount of surface area under the water for beneficial bacteria to grow. These bacteria live on the materials and chemicals that would make your fish sick, and in-turn “filter” the water by consuming these items. You may get many responses explaining everything is such detail that it will be overwhelming, but the easiest analogy I can think of, is the pump acts, “flushing” and the bio-filter full of beneficial bacteria assures that the water being circulated back into your pond is clean. There is also the subject of oxygenation. There are so many schools of thought on this, but the water needs to be circulated one way or another to absorb O2 into the water for the fish to extract through their gills. Hopefully that helps. And as for the depth of the pond, fish need clean water, nutrients, oxygen, and an amicable temperatures. You have to decide if your pump/biofilter can clean the water properly, what to feed, and decide if your circulation is enough for the fish you have. Depth never hurts, but many people keep shallow ponds that are very healthy and grow amazing fish and plants.

 

[Waterbug]

It's purely a question of fish load which includes the amount of food fed. Pump and filters are not needed unless the fish load requires pumps and filters to keep the fish alive. So it's not just pump/filter vs none. The size of the pump/filters is the question. That varies from zero to a lot.

 

[j.w]

timber

 

[Carolyn22]

Welcome Timber -

Yes, you will need a pump/filter and some other things as well.

In a lake or a stream, it is an open ended body of water - by that, I mean the water is consistently cleaned as it is fed by water coming in as well as water going out. In a pond, you have a body of water that is stagnant without any type of pump and with fish, the filtration is needed so the fish are not poisoned by their own fish waste. Eventually the fish waste will build up enough and starve the oxygen from the water.

So definitely, you will need the pump and the filtration.

 

[addy1]

to the group!

 

[Waterbug]

That's the beauty about forums...you can get all the answers in one spot. Yes, no and maybe.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

thinking of having a 6 foot x 4 foot x 17 inch deep square pond,made with a sturdy wooden frame and lined with pond liner.what i want to know is how important is it to have a pump/filter, i intend to put fish in it, I do a lot of fishing and obviously the fish i catch or healthy but they come from a water with no pumps or filters,or are the pumps/filters only there to keep the water clear,and not to keep the fish alive?

The answer is BOTH.
Pumps/filters help keep the water clear,,,,, and help keep the fish alive. Although you could easily have one without the other, You could have perfectly clear water that is not capable of supporting fish life, or you could have cloudy green water that fish are perfectly happy in.
You can think of your proposed pond as a big aquarium, and if you look at any aquarium with fish in it, how many do you see that don't have some sort of pump or filter? Of course there are also goldfish bowls, they don't have pumps or filters, but they keep live fish in them and quite often the water seems clear????
It all seems very confusing doesn't it?
The first aquarium I ever had when I was about 8 or 9 years old I filled full of fish I netted out of the local creek. I must have had 100 or more little minnows swimming around in that 20 gallon tank with no filter or pump or anything, I remember how cool they looked swimming around in there, and bugging my parents to take me to the pet store to buy some fish food before they all starved. They promised they would do it the next day, but by that evening it was too late nearly all of them were belly up, and by the following morning everyone of them was dead. I was very upset with my parents that they didn't take me to get that fish food right away because in my little child mind I reasoned that they had all died because they starved to death. Of course the truth of the mater was very different, but it took me years to understand all the things that went wrong.

 

[Dave 54]

The answer is BOTH.
Pumps/filters help keep the water clear,,,,, and help keep the fish alive. Although you could easily have one without the other, You could have perfectly clear water that is not capable of supporting fish life, or you could have cloudy green water that fish are perfectly happy in.
You can think of your proposed pond as a big aquarium, and if you look at any aquarium with fish in it, how many do you see that don't have some sort of pump or filter? Of course there are also goldfish bowls, they don't have pumps or filters, but they keep live fish in them and quite often the water seems clear????
It all seems very confusing doesn't it?
The first aquarium I ever had when I was about 8 or 9 years old I filled full of fish I netted out of the local creek. I must have had 100 or more little minnows swimming around in that 20 gallon tank with no filter or pump or anything, I remember how cool they looked swimming around in there, and bugging my parents to take me to the pet store to buy some fish food before they all starved. They promised they would do it the next day, but by that evening it was too late nearly all of them were belly up, and by the following morning everyone of them was dead. I was very upset with my parents that they didn't take me to get that fish food right away because in my little child mind I reasoned that they had all died because they starved to death. Of course the truth of the mater was very different, but it took me years to understand all the things that went wrong.

I think I needent say more as Mucky has touched on everything your going to need, but first you really have to work at keeping them alive .

rgrds

Dave