Pond design

[Dez]

I have an air pump in my shed an I cover the pump with a Rubbermaid container and blankets so that the heat of the pump warms the air and have it teed off to two air stones in the pond. I also have 2 heaters which only kick on at 6 degrees Celsius about 2 feet away from the air stones. If it snows, then I'll shovel snow from my patio onto the pond for another layer of insulation.

As far as maintenance, I back flush my filters once every 2 weeks 10 mins. And then I'll empty the skimmer net and wash the brushes at the same time, another 10 mins. In the fall, every day I'll skim the surface of the pond for sea leaves.

[mandyplo]

Hi reefgirl! That property looks awesome for a nice big pond if you don't have a lot of shade available just make up for it with shade providing plants (lilies are great for this they get massive and also help protect your fish from birds flying over and sun damage) I have 5 lilies in mine and just one of them covers about about 15 square feet it's just huge the leaves/pads are larger than a frying pan. This one plant alone I'm positive has protected my fish from all the eagles hawks blue herons and kormorans that fly over. Before I acquired this plant I was losing about a fish a week and they would just disappear so I'm assuming it was birds... Since I got this one plant no one has gone missing.
Shade and coverage is not only to prevent algae growth it has many other crucial purposes.
It depends where you live, but I've always been lead to believe that the deeper the pond the better... For many reasons, if it's shallow it's free game for any big bird to jump right in and go fishing. You'll find the temperatures will rise much faster in a more shallow pond, but if it's deeper your fish have an escape from the sun and heat. If you have it only two or so feet deep and you live somewhere as cold as I do, it's going to take a lot more work and energy to keep it from freezing. My pond easily freezes two feet down in the winter, I would need a much more powerful heater or many more heaters to be able to keep my fish in it in the winter. And that would be expensive. It's just easier for me anyways to have it deeper and have no worries of freezing all the way through.
Where abouts do you live reefgirl? And don't worry about shade for now, as long as you plant some trees around it and provide ample plant coverage

[intarsiabox]

[quote=reefgirl189;732755]This is what I was looking for! How deep does it need to be to overwinter them. We are looking at a 15K to 20K gal total water volume so there's no way to overwinter the fish unless I put a swimming pool in the basement.

The only problem I'm having so far is placement of the pond. I don't have any suitable area with adequate shade and will probably have to build a structure to provide some relief from the sun. We're going to buy some trees but they won't be big enough in time to provide shade for the future pond.
QUOTE]

As far as placement goes it looks pretty flat and treeless so a 15-20K pond will have lots of evaporation and you will want an auto top off installed. Might want to consider that in your placement plans. I had a much smaller pond than you are planning and it involved topping up with a garden hose for an hour every week because I didn't install an auto top off as I didn't think evaporation would be as much as it was. A depth of 3' is recommended in Alberta for over wintering fish. I had small goldfish over wintered at this depth for three years without doing anything to the pond. Larger fish would probably need an air pump and a small floating heater to keep the gas exchange going in the winter. A pelican ate them all in the 4th year. Netting may also be required as I would think your proximity to Cold Lake would bring in plenty of fish loving fowl. As far as the pond itself goes there is not much to it, just make sure the top of the hole is level all the way around or it will be very noticable when the water is added.

[mandyplo]

Yes, thats another thing, I don't know if this is possible at all for you but we have our sump pump pipe running into our pond (since only fresh cold groundwater goes through our sump pump). This way when the sump pump puts about 5 gallons of water into the pond every hour it keeps the pond topped off, then we built a little run-off area and a creek for the run-off to flow into (to prevent the pond from ever overflowing). Have been doing this for a few years and its worked like a charm, never had any problems.

Here are some pictures Reefgirl:




Here is the giant lily-pad I was talking about, with frying pan-sized leaves.



Hard to see to the bottom of the pond from a photo, but the water is crystal-clear.

[MMAX]

Here's a link to my pond thread.

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=78916

Everything was done by myself, just read and gathered all the information I could on the subject and went for it. On a pond the size you're planning, I would probably hire someone...I made a few mistakes here and there but mostly it's been trouble free.