Mike asked awhile back about my little pond (I'm sure he was just being kind tee-hee) but I decided to show it off a bit, as well of course seek feedback! Plus, I am hoping to start a trend here and have some of you do your own virtual pond tours. I love getting ideas from other folks ponds.

We live in a small suburban community and our property is a sandhill oak hammock. Hubs works from home, his upstairs and my below him downstairs office both face the front. We decided we wanted a small water feature outside our office windows for ambiance and white noise. It is quite the surprise rounding the curve in the front entry walk - adds a whole lot to the front appeal. I love sitting out on the front porch in the mornings.

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It is a small pond, the best I have determined is between 600 - 700 gallons. I don't treat the pond, so I have no high need to know the exact gallons.

The center piece of the pond is the fountain.

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This is the second year for the pond, but the first for this iteration. I dismantled it and rebuilt it this past winter, fixing many of the original things. One of the things I did was to drive a 4" sch80 PVC pipe under the sidewalk for an expansion this winter!

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The pump (Pondmaster 2400) is in a bin directly in the lower left of the above photo. Pump outflow goes to the fountain, the spitting turtle and the black biofilter pot filled with elephant ears. The biofilter pot sets on a slight rise in the midst of the bog pond filter.

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I installed barbs on either side of the biofilter pot to outflow to each side of the bog. As well, water tumbles over the top. The feed from the pump is into the bottom of the pot. I have a check valve (for unplanned outages) and a stop valve (for planned outages) between the biofilter pot and the pump.

The bog pond outflow is from either end back into the pond.

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The fountain we just love. It was intended to be a stand alone water feature but we always planned it to sit in the middle of a small pond. It is setting on concrete block, and try as we might it is not exactly level. We are pumping water from the pump box, the water spits out the top, spirals down the three sides, fills up the basin, then overflows into the pond. Over time, the fountain has began to function like a vertical stream. Algae grows on the ridges of the three side, and the basin is filling with algae and bacopa.

The pond has 4 comet goldfish, 4 rosey minnows, 1 betta and 2 cory catfish. And a water frog, several toads, and a couple of tree frogs.

I just love messing with the pond, always something to tinker with. Most of the time it is fun, sometimes not so much. Always something new to learn.

My latest adventure was tracking down (and hopefully permanently repairing) a leak in the EPDM. We had a heavy storm, 10" of rain in a few days. The sand around the under the sidewalk fitting washed out. The fitting I guess wiggled around enough to wear a pin-prick hole in the EPDM where I made the boot and fastened it with a hose clamp. Duhhh. At any rate, I dug everything out, patched the pin prick from both sides, and decided against cementing in the pipe. What I decided instead was to dump a load of roofing asphalt sealer. My thinking is it would harden but have a bit of flexibility to flex with the sand and the sidewalk. In the mean time, PL Roofing & Flashing Sealant is my newest BFF.

The expansion will be on the other side of the sidewalk, pond area about 8' x 6' with a bog on two sides. Hubs wants a 'water wall' fall off the bog so that side will have its very own pump. Then we saw mckools water wheel and now he wants a water wheel also.

I am working on getting the plants around the exterior of the pond going. Working in various things into the rock work.

Next, we are checking out lights. We plan to put path lights along the sidewalk and the mulch patch, but we also want to put some led lights in the pond upfacing onto the fountain.

Hope you enjoyed my virtual pond tour! PS - you can click any of the photos to open them in Picassa to get a better look.

~dianne