my Zen Water Garden and Koi Pond

[FishyFishy!]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

What's a water change like? Do you pump the outgoing water onto the grass, or what do you do with it? Can you get in trouble if you just pump it into a swail or a storm sewer?

I also wonder about peoples water changing regiments. Jared and I are going to be building a pond this spring, so i'm trying to plan before hand if I need some sort of a drain setup. Luckily I have a swail on the edge of my property right behind the pond, so drainage will be easy.

How often do you change water? Or do you even change water?

[kien]

Originally Posted by Dez

What kind of auto feeder did you use? I only fed mine twice a day in the evening after work.

When the pond started 7 years ago now I think, I only fed twice a day. Morning and evening because ya, those were the only times I was home! But everywhere I read says you should really be feeding them 3 to 4 times a day if you want them to put on some major weight. Especially if you plan to over winter outside in harsh climates. After using an auto-feeder on my Reef for a few years with great success I googled pond auto-feeders and found this:



It's called a fish mate p7000. I was going to order it online but then happend to find a bunch of them stocked at my local big box pet store! It has been a god send! The first few years the fish grew fine (or so I thought) but after a whole season with the auto-feeder, wow, growth was explosive! I have it programmed to feed 3 times a day while I'm at work but I will still feed them their 4th meal in the evenings myself. It's amazing their appetites! When I feed them in the evenings they act as if they haven't been fed all day!

Originally Posted by Delphinus

I hear you on the digging Kien. I don't think I'll ever put a pond in at my place as I remember every single minute of digging the post holes for the fence the tree holes.. I'm right over top of some rather interesting glacial sill, which is probably more rock than clay but definitely the right amount of both to make digging very difficult. For the fence, I ran out of steam for the post holes with only two terminal holes left, I hired a bobcat to do the two holes and he broke his auger. He tells me afterwards "I am soooo raising my minimum price for any of your neighbours who hire me."

Anyhow so how do you battle algae in these things?

What's a water change like? Do you pump the outgoing water onto the grass, or what do you do with it? Can you get in trouble if you just pump it into a swail or a storm sewer?

Ya, digging sucks. The area where the pond is for some reason is really rocky too. I have a mountain of bolders as well that I dug up. Today I noticed that I have wonderful blisters on my right hand When I first dug out the pond I had my dad helping me and we did it over the course of an entire week. I do recall it being back breaking labour then as well but at least we spread out the workload a bit. Still, digging sucks!

Originally Posted by FishyFishy!

I also wonder about peoples water changing regiments. Jared and I are going to be building a pond this spring, so i'm trying to plan before hand if I need some sort of a drain setup. Luckily I have a swail on the edge of my property right behind the pond, so drainage will be easy.

How often do you change water? Or do you even change water?

I have a swail that runs along the back edge of my property as well and that's where I typically drain the pond to. I honestly don't know if that's against bylaws. Maybe I should check LOL. I will often times drain the pond into the garden (flower beds, trees, vegetable garden, etc) as well. Pond water is wonderful for this.

Mike, I do not have a bottom drain but if you read on various pond/koi forums they will certainly always recommend you install a bottom drain into a new build. I thought about installing one in mine with the recent reno but honestly, 7 years running this pond and I never had major problems with sludge build up. Also, a lot of the sites that recommend the bottom drains are referring to people who live in much warmer climates. I fear the installation of a bottom drain in our climate because if a seal breaks down there, or if the pipe to the bottom drain cracks, you are SOL!! I would rather not risk that to be honest.

Previously I just sucked up the bottom of the pond with one of them laguna pond pumps but this year I'm going to do something slightly different. I'm going to build semi-bottom drain but with the plumbing in the pond and not under the pond in the ground. I am also building myself a new above ground filter system. Previously I just used an off the shelf powerfilter (laguna). It works, but I find it high maintenance to clean so often.

As for water changes, yes, every couple of weeks I do a 50% water changes. sometimes in the middle of summer because of the sun and algae I'll need to do a 50-75% every week! I've discovered the secret to keeping algae at bay though, and that is to grow floating plants like water hyacinth and water lettuce. Both will grow like weeds and out compete algae. My pond was so overgrown with floating plants I had to give and throw away bucket loads of them!

[FishyFishy!]

Good to know where to get some plants this summer then! haha.

I'm thinking of using a laguna pond pump that pumps up to a custom rubbermaid filter that spits it out onto a rock waterfall. I'll probably just T the piping so that it can pump right into my swail with the turn of a couple valves.

[Delphinus]

Well out of interest I started poking around the bylaws. Not surprisingly it's rather ambiguous...

Although not mentioned here in the FAQ:
http://www.calgary.ca/UEP/Water/Page...omeowners.aspx

The bylaw itself (http://www.calgary.ca/CA/city-clerks...5-Drainage.pdf) does seem to state that you can drain from a decorative pond so long as it is less than 3000 litres.

However, elsewhere, it mentions that a decorative pond is defined as "an artificial body of water for ornamental purposes but does not include fish ponds". But then.... nowhere does it say that fish ponds are allowed to be drained into a swale, but neither does it state "do not".

It does list that fish themselves can't be put into the drainage. But I can't find anything about water that has touched fish while in your custody.

Confused as ever as to whether the city feels they can fine you for draining a pond into the swales or not. I know they will gleefully fine you if you don't keep it clean enough or if you dare put anything close to it or over top of it. That's a rant for another day though.

[andestang]

If you need some help digging I could send over some eff'ing moles I have here . Think gophers are bad, at least you can see them to get them. I am worried about them damaging my pond liner.

[Seriak]

My pond digging experience wasn't too bad. I did give up after my shovel was bouncing back at me every time I hit the ground because the ground was so hard, but no too many rocks. Lots of clay though. I filled it in last year and have decided to go with 3 level above ground pond this year.

In this climate I would not worry about a bottom drain. It's no worth it as we usually do not go deep enough to get under the frostline. A good pond vac is great.

Algae is not much of a problem if you keep enough plants in the pond and even better if you have a marsh area to plant even more plants. The trick is to keep the soil out of the pond as this adds lots of nutrients. I used a mixture of barley straw in my filter and concentrated barley and never had any problems with algae. I also used a UV to get rid of the green water when it got really bad.

I miss my pond and hopefully my multilevel design will help keep my plants apart from the fish and apart from the turtles. One thing kept eating the others. They don't do well together I find.

[FishyFishy!]

I have a questions for you pond goers...

How important is the fabric underlay underneath the pond liner itself? I really don't want to buy one. lol.

[kien]

Originally Posted by FishyFishy!

I have a questions for you pond goers...

How important is the fabric underlay underneath the pond liner itself? I really don't want to buy one. lol.

That depends how smooth the dirt is going to be under your liner. I didn't use an underlay under mine either because like you, i was too cheap LOL. Instead, I made sure to get as many pointy rocks out as I could and laid down a significant layer of newspaper. I collected like 4 weeks worth of flyers from my house and my parents house. use duct tape to tape them together when you lay them down otherwise they will fly and shift all over the place! The newspaper was probably as thick as the underlay that you could buy and that cushioned the liner well. Also, I don't have any large trees with roots anywhere near my pond so I didn't have to worry about that, but if you do then you need to take those roots into consideration.

Mind you, I did look up what the underlay cost at Burnco just a few days ago and it's actually not that expensive there. for a 300sqft sheet that I would need I think it would only cost me like $60 ? That seems pretty cheap to me but honestly I think the thick layer of newspapers provided more cushioning.

With my reno I was going to do the same and lay down news papers/flyers again but this time I also have the added advantage of having my old pond liner that I will also use to lay down underneath the new liner.

Bottom line is, you should put something that you trust, in between the pond and the ground. You WILL need to walk inside the pond and you will probably lay down heavy pond plants/baskets, etc, so it's good to have that cushioning to prevent puncture.

[Seriak]

Originally Posted by FishyFishy!

I have a questions for you pond goers...

How important is the fabric underlay underneath the pond liner itself? I really don't want to buy one. lol.

I had a friend who was removing there old shag carpet and I took it off their hands and used it , but I agree with Kien you should have something because if you miss that one rock, the weight of the water pushing against it could cause a tear in your liner which is a lot bigger pain then buying some cheap underlayment at .25 per square foot.

Hey Kien, where did you buy that autofeeder. That is the exact one I want to buy but I was going to have it shipped as local prices were insane. Was the price similar to online vendors?

[intarsiabox]

Originally Posted by FishyFishy!

I have a questions for you pond goers...

How important is the fabric underlay underneath the pond liner itself? I really don't want to buy one. lol.

I just made sure all rocks were out of the hole and put news paper under my rubber liner. It lasted 10 years without a single leak until I sold the house. Even after 10 years the liner was still soft and pliable.