What Is Needed to Start a Backyard Pond?
Before you turn over the first shovel full of dirt, think about why you want to build a pond. If you intend your pond to be a relaxing oasis, it will require different construction methods than one intended to grow aquatic crops such as crawfish, mollusks, catfish or rice, or a pond that will become a wildlife refuge. Consider the impact of your chosen pump and filter size and placement, pond size and depth, aesthetics, fish size, pond location and the construction materials you intend to use.
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Location
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Locate your pond where it will serve your intended purpose best. If you want a meditation pond, build it where it can be seen from as many vantage points inside your home as possible. If you have a home office, build at least a portion of the pond so that it can be seen from your desk. This gives you a visual break when you need a creative recharge, allowing you to rest your eyes and restore your inner balance. Add a water bell fountain, water wall, dry stream bed, fish ladders or a waterfall to maximize the visual and auditory impact of the pond.
Wildlife preservation ponds should be built as far away from the house as possible while still being in view. Position the pond away from pine, spruce, cedar or fir trees to prevent needles and sap from clogging your filters. Build a hedgerow along the property line, about 100 yards from your pond, to provide cover for small animals and game birds such as grouse, quail and pheasant. Build your pond with a gently sloped edge to allow small animals and wading birds to enter and leave easily. Do not stock a wildlife preservation pond with expensive ornamental fish such as koi. Instead, stock minnows, bluegill, frog and toad spawn, fingerling catfish and crawfish.
Excavation
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Rent, borrow or buy a backhoe to excavate your pond. The single most common answer from backyard pond builders, when asked about their satisfaction with their ponds, is that they wish they had built a larger pond. A backhoe can have your pond ready to line in less than a day. Dig as deep, wide and long as your yard will accommodate. You pay a backhoe driver by the hour, so you might as well get your money's worth. Have any dry stream beds, watercourses, overflow ponds and runoff basins excavated at the same time. Decide whether to use concrete, fiberglass or preformed plastic pond liners. Make sure all materials are safe for water gardens.
Filtration
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Build your pond with a definite slope along the bottom so that any debris that is not captured by your surface skimmers gets collected and removed by your pump and filter. After you dig your pond to its basic shape, depth and breadth, lay all the conduit you need for any electrical wiring. Install GFCI outlets for all pumps and filters, lighting and ornamental equipment. Run plumbing for drain lines, filters and aeration.
Add a prefilter system to keep your filter and skimmers from becoming clogged. Use bottom filters whenever possible. This keeps water oxygenated throughout all levels of your pond, preventing the growth of anaerobic bacteria. Use the largest commercial filter you can afford. This gives you a margin of error if your pond becomes overstocked, has a rapid temperature change, has a pH crash or becomes eutrophied from overfeeding your fish. Use a series of refugium tanks filled with gravel, aquarium-safe carbon-filter screens or plastic, brush-style hair rollers. Each tank will filter out progressively smaller particles, leaving tank water nearly pure as it exits back into your pond.
Aeration
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Add a fountain to take water from the bottom of your pond and bring it to the surface to increase dissolved oxygen levels. If desired, have the fountain spill down a water wall to make a fish ladder to the next pond section. Set your pump and filter system so that it cycles your entire pond water volume every two hours.
Stock Slowly
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Give your pond's filter system time to mature before introducing any fish. Pond water quality can be a catch-22. The beneficial bacteria, nitrosomonas, which convert ammonia to nitrite, and nitrobacter, which convert nitrite to nitrate, need time to establish a strong presence in your filter and create the protective slime coating on the bottom and sides of your pond. Here's where the catch-22 comes into play.
Be patient and add just one or two inexpensive minnows or feeder fish until your filter system has been working for several weeks. Nitrosomonas will not function without the presence of ammonia, but fish produce more ammonia than a newly emerging bacterial colony can handle. Test your water. Once your bacterial colony is working properly, you should not detect the presence of ammonia or nitrite at all. You will see a spike in nitrate, which is when you should add some marsh plants at the edges of your pond. Add just one or two fish at a time over the next few weeks, waiting for the bacterial colony to adjust.
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