Shop Products
Houzz Logo Print
toffee_el

Dreaming of a large pond - help

toffee-el
10 years ago

Dreaming of building a large pond with a surface area of 500-800 ft2. Anyone with largish pond experience care to help with planning? My experience is limited to something much smaller - like 6'x8' or so.

There are a few problems that I can think of, quite sure there are much more that I haven't realized:

1. Liner - what about the spray type?
2. turnover - would love to minimize energy consumption. with a pond of this size and light fish load limiting to goldies, do I need to run the pump 24x7 or what turnover rate?
3. bottom drain - how many?
4. depth - is 3ft with a few spots of 5ft enough?
5. water evaporation - again, what should I expect?

The site is have some cover by pine trees (yes needles) and south facing. USDA 8b with some snow in the winter and 80F in the summer. ele. 4600ft and minimum rainfall other than winter.

thinking of using plant filter as bio, but what kind of mechanical filter?

Any help is appreciated.

Comments (6)

  • chas045
    10 years ago

    I don't have a big pond, but I do have two ponds. My attractive pond has a stream with many plants and it does almost all of my filtering. I don't have a bottom drain either; without issues. Both ponds only have basic comet goldfish. The second pond is really a water catch for irrigation and it normally has no flowing water and yet the goldfish in it (mosquito duty) survive well without attention.

  • steiconi
    10 years ago

    I have a big pond--20'x30' ish and evaporation is a bit of a problem, especially since it's 300 feet from the house and plumbing. It hasn't rained much in the last week (that's a drought around here), so water level has dropped by about a foot. It doesn't seem to bother the fish, though; no pump, no bottom drain, no problem. I used to have tilapia in there; now just mosquito fish and swordtails.

    I also have a tiny 100 gallon pond (and five other fish tanks/ponds) with no pump or drain. I kept three goldfish in there until they were about 5-6" each, and they did fine. When I moved them to a 4000 gallon tank, they raced around the edges and literally jumped for joy! Then they settled down and made babies.

  • toffee-el
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Thx guys for input. My worries are:

    1. The "wastefulness" of electricity and water. Having a pond with 500ft+ surface area in dry California climate. sure hate to keep topping up.

    2. The soil is very sandy and I would prefer an irregularly shapped pond, so how do I do the liners?

  • chas045
    10 years ago

    Re electricity: I think both of our points were that the pump isn't absolutely necessary or at least that the volume ratios don't need to be up to par just for some goldfish as long as there are plants that do some filtering and aeration.

    However, I do keep my nice pond's pump running 24/7/365. Mine is a mag drive pump which saves some money.

    "It hasn't rained much in the last week (that's a drought around here), so water level has dropped by about a foot."
    Now that's a LEAK not evaporation. I do have high humidity in the summer but I assume an inch drop in a week is usually just a small leak/overspill (that I eventually find) in my stream. The surface area in a big or small pond is the same unless extra deep. Most of our ponds are 2-3 ft deep.

  • steiconi
    10 years ago

    Hmmm, I guess I've got leaks in three ponds then--they've all dropped with the dry heat. We should get rain in a few days, and they'll all overflow.

    Now that's a LEAK not evaporation. I do have high humidity in the summer but I assume an inch drop in a week is usually just a small leak/overspill (that I eventually find) in my stream. The surface area in a big or small pond is the same unless extra deep. Most of our ponds are 2-3 ft deep.

  • joraines
    10 years ago

    We have a very large,long pond, about 175 feet with an upper circle and dam and a long end that curves around. We don't have a bottom drain but our's is an 'open system' in which we pump water from the creek that runs perpendicular into the circle where there is a fountain and the water runs back into the creek at the long end. Our's was a spring-fed boggy area we dug out. We lined it with used vinyl billboard signs overlapping but, we think as it has springs, we have air bubbles that come up and create pockets of liner that bubble up to the surface. We intend to use sand and river rocks to weight this down. Our pond was only begun last year so it is a work in progress but our comet goldfish thrive among the water lilies, parrots feather, etc. However, we also have blue gill bream in there that we did not put in ourselves and we have no idea how they got in there! As we are also near the creek, we have an abundance of water snakes, frogs, newts and crayfish as well.