Hello again everyone! 2007 has Offered an opportunity for us to build a pond at yet another home. All of my moving around has made me able to apply knowledge from past projects and create a pond which dwarfs any of my previous projects. We will very much enjoy our new - deck, pond and Homemade beach for many years The new pond is 18'x 13'x 6'deep and sits in the center of a deck which was built at the same time. The filtration system is TBA as I am currently running a home made system which I doubt will handle the 7000-8000 gallon pond capacity. The filtration pond above is about 9'x5'x30"deep. The stream from the filtration pond to the main contains about 600lb of lava rock and some decorative stones. A streambed consisting of stones and rocks from the back alley was constructed with loving care (as if),using a furniture dolly prevented what could have been some very sore backs. Four truck loads of bark mulch surround the filtration pond and deck doing away with the volcano image you see in the early construction pictures. Come spring we will fill the left side area with sand and have our own private beach complete with a fire pit. All of this and no grass to mow either What a Bonus!
2004-2005 in the winter I decided to shelter the fish in a greenhouse style hoophouse which I designed utilizing various ideas from many fish savvy netizens in combination with my own ingenuity. The picture at the left below shows what I have come up with. During the winter, temperatures outside reached -32 Celcius and the pond froze over almost completely once but reversed in the following warm spell. I kept a 250 watt spotlight focused on the water surface about 2 inches above the water in a combination skimmer/filter which had a small submerged pump which shot the warmed water down into the pond. This skimmer/filter never froze over at any time and kept the pond water warm enough to prevent complete freezing as well when combined with my two aeration stones.
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Don and Lorna Mann's Koi / Goldfish pond was started June 14th 2004 in another home we owned in Greenwood BC. It was 13 feet long and 8.5 feet wide and 3.5 feet deep at its deep end with a volume of about 1200 gallons C/W a submerged waterfall pump with a 4000 GPH rating.
The waterfall was also a biological filter pond which held about another 80 gallons and pumped the water from the pond up from the empty chamber at its bottom through a layer of about 5 cubic ft of lava rock with dense vegetation on top including Watercress, Lillies and various unnamed local pond plants.
The pond's bottom was laid out in 3 zones, there is a 1.5 foot deep breeding bed approximately 4x4 covered with assorted weeds including milfoil and anarchris but with other local unidentified bottom weeds as well. There is a 3 foot deep area about the same size where the waterfall pump is located. There is a one foot deep shelf about a foot wide for plants full width at the waterfall end. About four feet of the ledge is overhung by a shelter overhanging about 20 inches with pond liner draped to form a sheltered cave. The balance of the pond is almost round and tapered to about 4' deep at the very bottom where the lillies are located.
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