I started about 4 days ago on digging my first pond. It's something my dad wanted to do so I said I would build it for him. I'm wondering if anyone has any tips for this pond. I currently haven't dug the shelf yet for rocks or tamped the soil to make it flat.
Tips on my first pond
- Thread starter garagerats
- Start date
well tell us about your pond.
what size of pond are you planning?
what pump are you planning?
what filter set up are you going with?
fish? plants?
you say something about a shelf and rocks? most people on here will tell you from experience do not do either. A shelf will give predators a way into your pond to eat your fish. poop and other stuff collects around the rocks in the pond and are almost impossible to clean. so no shelfs and no rocks or gravel anywhere in the water. around the pond is fine but not in the water.
what size of pond are you planning?
what pump are you planning?
what filter set up are you going with?
fish? plants?
you say something about a shelf and rocks? most people on here will tell you from experience do not do either. A shelf will give predators a way into your pond to eat your fish. poop and other stuff collects around the rocks in the pond and are almost impossible to clean. so no shelfs and no rocks or gravel anywhere in the water. around the pond is fine but not in the water.
what i meant by shelf was a small 2 inch one around the pond where i can place the rocks. It is an awkward oval shape that is 95x103, it is roughly 550 gallons so We only plan on putting one or two koi and some goldfish. I'm not sure what kind of rocks we are going to put around or what kind of plants. My dad is buying that stuff. I'm only 15. His pump does 10 gallons a minute. We aren't sure what kind of filter to get yet since we're having fish. That's about all
how deep are you going? most people say it needs to be 4 ft deep for kio. the deeper you go the better within reason. the pond temp will change a lot less the deeper you go as well. better for the fish. with only 550GL i wouldn't do kio but there are a lot of goldfish that look like kio just don't get as big. you know a koi will get 24in or so long and your pond really isnt big enough. but a goldfish that looks like a koi that only get 8-10 in would be much better.
I wasn't aware that there were goldfish that looked like koi. We will probably get those instead because we don't want ginormous fish in our pond. The average depth is about 2 feet.
Go atleast 3 ft
agreed at least 3ft deep
If you're doing 500g, the posters before me are correct, stick with goldfish as the pond is too small for koi. You can do sarassa, shubunkin and comets. All available at your local pet stores like Petsmart and the like.
No shelves, as this will only serve as an easy spot for your goldfish to get snatched by a predator. You are giving them a good spot to stand and go fishing. Also, no rocks in the pond. It makes it impossible to clean, and food, poop and other stuff just gets under them and you can't get it out--then it pollutes your water.
before you dig any further, what are you thinking about for filtration. I would take a deep read on our pond construction forum, as you can learn a lot there.
No shelves, as this will only serve as an easy spot for your goldfish to get snatched by a predator. You are giving them a good spot to stand and go fishing. Also, no rocks in the pond. It makes it impossible to clean, and food, poop and other stuff just gets under them and you can't get it out--then it pollutes your water.
before you dig any further, what are you thinking about for filtration. I would take a deep read on our pond construction forum, as you can learn a lot there.
I calculated the measurements wrong which is my bad, the average gallons is 1,000 not 500. I have a shelf in a few places but if I didn't have them ow would I plant plants?
Size of the pond doesn't matter--no shelves for the same reasons already given. If you want plants, you simply get floating ones such as water hyacinth, water lettuce, etc.
Plant shelves also collect muck and detrius.
Plant shelves also collect muck and detrius.