[Rbacchiega]

we built a step up deck/viewing area that went around about half of the shark poon and completely around the gar pond. It's really nice on a hot summer night to head into the quanset, have a beer and watch the sharks. Get the barbeque going and get those steaks grilled...yum. Anyways, back to the projects..

When we bought the quanset it was orriginally being used as a mechanical garage. There was a pit dug measuring roughly 10 feet long by 4 feet wide and about 5 feet deep. This works out to just under 1400 gallons. We'd been talking about a large pond for a long time and knew that when we initially bought the property we would be adding at least one here. (We now actually have a koi pond out by a shadded area with a swing chair...quite pretty actually) Since we were redoing alot of the plumbing under the quanset anyways, we dug a trench so that I could run 2 2" pvc lines up into a filter.

In order to accomplish this I pretty much built a fake floor in the bottom of the pit, about 4 inches off the actual bottom. In the floor are two drains similar to what alot of people have in their fish rooms. The rest of the pond was built as anyone would do with their normal out door ponds. We did use 1" styrofoam to help insulate and then pond liner and then epoxy. We used a very dark one, which now that I see it all the time, I wish we could have found something that didn't dry so dark.

Before we even added water I knew it was going to be too deep to even consider seeing my rays...what to do?

Pretty simple really. Build a shallow end! I wish we could have done it gradual, but for ease we pretty much just made a 5 foot section of the tank only 2.5-3 feet deep. The rays use the entire tank, but know when the lights go on to head to that end...it's feeding time.

Considering gars and rays don't necessarily enjoy overly well lit areas, I needed to get something that would still allow me to see the fish (otherwise, what's the point?!) but not be so bright as to bother them. We ended up going with lights that you would normally see in buildings (with 4 t8 or 12 bulbs in them) and suspending 4 of them above the tank. There is still some glare off the surface, but not enough to distort the view.

That pond currently houses a shoal of 8 Florida/Spotted gars, ranging in size from 20-24" and a trio of Motoro rays, the largest has a disc span of approximately 18" the last time I tried to measure.

Heat is again provided via a inline propane heater. Best investment for these two setups. EVER.