What changes are you going to make to your pond this Spring?

[dieselplower]

OK people Spring is almost here! If any of you are like me, you have been waiting for Spring to do some remodeling! So what's it going to be? Digging it deeper? Bigger? A new pump that flows more water? New filter? Waterfall? Additional plants and landscaping? New fish?

Last year I dug my pond deeper, got new plants, and added quite a bit more filtration. This year I just plan to add another filter. Probably half of a whiskey barrel with a liner and fill it with rocks. An upflow design.

 

[sissy]

EVERY ONE OF THOSE sorry to say except for the new fish unless I find more babies

 

[j.w]

I just added a new big double pre-filter and I want to put all my water lilies in net bags w/ a rock to weigh them down so I don't have to mess w/ soil anymore. Need to hook up my turtle spitter the kids gave me for Christmas.

 

[JBtheExplorer]

I have ponding fever right now. We're so close and yet so far to getting the pond going again.

We might be redoing the entire pond (sad face for the work involved, happy face for how cool it could be when completed)

I used a 14'x14' liner but at the time had very little room to work with, so there was extra liner that I cut off to use for my stream. Now that we have more room after moving the fence, it might be nice to have a couple of extra feet of pond, so instead of 7' by 4', we might be able to make it 7' x 7', or maybe 6'x 6' if we want to go deeper. It would also give me the opportunity to redo my plant shelves. I had no idea what I was doing when I made them and they ended up too narrow and too shallow.

I'll have to wait until everything thaws out. If I have any living frogs in the pond I'll have to wait until temps are warm enough so I don't take them out of hibernation early, and ideally I'd have to get the liner and water in, in one day. That also means that we wont put the fish out until later than normal, which is kind of disappointing.

I'm not sure if its going to happen yet though. I also plan on getting more plants for both in the pond and around the area. I have a wildflower area that I'm hoping works out. If they get too 'wild' for my taste, I'll have to tear them out and figure out something different.

So.... yeah.... tons of stuff. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

 

[sissy]

I'm exhausted doing it and it is really no fun either.Not sure I will ever want to do it again .Taking it apart and then putting it all back together is hard work .But at least now my whole pond is one flat surface .So far I am at 47 inches deep and once I add the next layer of block up I will be at 50 inches deep and i could still go up more if I decide later .Plenty of liner left over .

 

[addy1]

Nice spitter JW! All I am doing is turning on the pump and grooming lilies. ow nothing to the pond. This is the summer for the bees.

 

[Nepen]

This is what I've been obsessing over for the past week!!

My pond is made from bricks and a raised pond so I'm thinking of adding a raised bog next to it. I'll have to lay bricks again but not as much work as the pond!

It's going to be a bit of work trying to figure the liner and the flow back to the pond. I'll have to think of the way to do a bottom drain to be able to clean the bog, build it higher than the pond and find a way to connect the two. All the plumbing work too.

I'm hoping since this will be about 50-70 gallon I won't have to lay double bricks like my pond and could just lay one or it'll take all the space I have to work with limited space.

The other option is just get a stock tank and use pipe for an out flow but that's not pretty, but will be lots less work with about costing the same. I could have plants to cover the pipe.... This is getting more and more like an ideal thing for me to do (less time and work) and thinking about laying bricks makes me shudder now

Ok I might end up getting the stock tank, thinking it's probably a lot stronger than my one layer bricks the chance of the tear and leaks from liner.

 

[mrsclem]

Cleaning out old bog and moving it back where it was! (leak someplace). Move 150 gal. stock tank filter back away from pond and finish putting my window box bogs on the large pond. Also have a new Savio filter hubby got me as several of my filters are leaking from all this freezing weather. Fix all leaks and get rid of some more fish to make room for babies!

 

[haver79]

I want to redo my waterfall area as I was not quite satisfied with how it turned out. And since my pond is new I may have to rebuild the edges a bit and try to pick a certain area for runoff. Thinking of adding a bog as well. Add plants around the pond.
Lots of work to do. As I am still learning and already finding things I want to change.

 

[morewater]

Waterfall foam is a pretty decent product. Spray it in your crevices, then use a knife to get rid of the excess.

 

[ZenZilla]

Waterfall foam is a pretty decent product. Spray it in your crevices, then use a knife to get rid of the excess.

Just ordered 4 cans myself off amazon $9 each regularly 14 I think?? Not fun to try and get off hands FYI

 

[morewater]

Yeah, just make sure that all the surrounding rock is completely dry before you apply the foam.

I run waterfalls when they're complete, then note where the foam should be applied, turn off the pump, towel off the areas to be foamed and then use a spray bottle of ethyl alcohol (not the good stuff, I don't waste) to dry off the area completely prior to applying the foam. The foam sets up fairly quickly (15 mins.), then just hack off the excess with a decent knife.

I've been to places where people have used the regular insulating foam that's in a can......what a mess! It's yellow. It's not waterproof. DUH.

Don't get waterfall foam on your hands, wear disposable painters gloves. Do not mistake for shaving gel. Keep separate from toiletries.

 

[Sunshine]

Redoing my waterfall also. Right now it goes into an ugly black plastic thing. I'm going back to layers of slate like it use to be.

 

[Tula]

I started up my filter on Friday....pond looks like pea green soup....but my five koi are slowly coming to life and are munching on algae.

I need to get my skimmer install corrected, as it's sunk and is totally lopsided. I bought a floating basket to coral water hyacinth in. Hoping the bird netting over my lily baskets hold and I have lilies....but am not holding my breath with koi.

I'm curious what my pond will look like this year, without my gravel and all the shubunkin and comets I rehomed. Want to keep things simple this year

 

[JohnHuff]

There's a leak in my pond somewhere so I have to isolate the leak and fix it. Hope it'll be an easy fix.

Last week I switched my pump back on and cleaned my filters. I also installed my old shower filter.

While eating breakfast, I thought of another filter I'm going to make. It's going to be a slow sand filter, except the flow will be sideways. Actually looking forward to doing it.

Last year I had a lot of fish deaths after I came back on vacation and I had none of my supplementary filters installed. Never figured out what it was since the water parameters were good, this time, I think I'll be installing some low maintenance filters.