Our Pond

Julieta and I built a pond in our back yard in July of 2000. We added plants later that summer, and fish in the spring of 2001. In the Spring on 2002 we added a second smaller pond for water plants.

-2000-

First we dig the hole

Then we line the hole with some ugly carpeting we removed from the den, add the liner (which gets really really hot really really fast), and then fill it up with water. The pond takes about 550 US gallons (2000 litres) of water to fill.

Finally we add some rocks around the edge and some more landscaping.

Then comes winter. We leave the pump running but he pond comes close to freezing over a couple times on the coldest days of the year

-2001-

Spring again and now we add 3 goldfish which by the end of summer have become 55

Its late summer and we are starting to think about the coming winter, and pond stuff is going on sale. To increase the chances of our fish surviving, we are going to bring some of them inside for the winter, so we need to build an indoor pond. This time we are going with a pre-formed 75 gallon pond which we are sitting up in our family room.

In October began introducing plants and fish to the indoor pond eventually moving 12 inside for the winter. The plants survived until January when the water lettuce and water hyacinths died off, leaving only the oxygenators ... which continue to grow quite happily. The fish are still doing fine and are also growing quite happily.

Outside the fish are hanging out on the bottom and are doing OK so far. We left the pump running again and added a small doughnut-shaped heater this year to make sure the pond doesn't completely freeze over.

-2002-

We only lost one fish over the winter and we brought the inner fish back out to joing their brothers and sisters. We also added a couple tadpoles and didnt see them as frogs until the middle of August.

We added a UV clarifier this year to help with the algae, and built a smaller shallow pond for bog plants since the netting that we were using in the man pond made it hard for plants to grow there.

Here are some pictures of the pond as of June 2002:

In late July 2002 we suffered a major loss of fish. Within 3 weeks we lost more than three quarters of our fish to infection, with 51 dead. Among the dead were all 3 of the originals, most of the biggest, and my favourite fish (the overly friendly goldfish) but at least we were able to save some of the family ...

Since we wanted to completely clean and disinfect the pond anyway, we took this opportunity to make part of the pond deeper in preparation for winter, and added a bigger and better filtration system. Now we have an in-pond filter, an external filter in the garage, and a U/V clarifier, all of which has made the water much clearer. We also added an air bubbler to help during the very hot weeks of late July and early August.

Fortunately our two frogs were fine, though they needed some encourgenment to leave their home for the temporary renovation.

Then another winter (2002/2003) was upon us and we moved 4 of the fish inside to the same indoor pond we set up last year, and left the 5 fish and the two frogs outside. For several days over the winder the pond was almost completely frozen over.

Here's a picture of the indoor pond and the 4 indoor fish

This year the indoor fish shared their room with another small highly excitable goldfish in an aquarium. Here is the small goldfish swimming (quickly) around his Christmas tree.

-2003-

In the summer of 2003 we added 4 bullgfrog tadpoles to the upper pond, and while we were doing that we found that we had at least 5 small fish swimming around the upper pond as well as several small fish in the lower pond. The new frogs are much more interested in sunning themselves on the rocks than the previous 2 frogs which we haven't seen for a while.

By the end of the summer we did see a big tadpole swimming around in the big pond ... so we may have more frogs than we thought.

We brought 6 fish inside this 2003/2004 winter along with the UV clarifier (which helped a lot) to augment the indoor pump and air generators. We left 11 fish outside.

-2004-

Everybody survived.

Now they are all back outside and there are at least four frogs, including one new one, hanging out in and around the pond.

-2005-

After continued attacks by raccoons (who like disassembling the lights in the pond) and cats (who like to stare at the fish) we decided to add a defense system to the pond. For $60 the motion and heat detecting water sprinkler has done a pretty good job deterring the local critters from menacing the pond without driving away the birds.

This is the first year we tried adding Microbe Lift to the water and that did a very good job keeping the water clear in the summer.

This year we added a second web cam that can see a bit into the infra-red so we can get an idea what is creeping around at night.

-2006-

-2007-

We get several other regular visitors to the pond including raccoons, squirrels, skunks, possums, and an assortment of birds and butterflies.

and an assortment of birds (pidgeons, robins, starlings, a pair of cardinals, and once a woodpecker) and insects ...

And here is a big movie with the day in the life of the pond, taken back when the garden was much less interesting compared to today.

Things that we have found to be really useful to have for the pond:

• Thin net to keep critters and leaves out of the pond
• Heater in winter to keep the pond from freezing over (i.e. the Thermo-Pond)
• U/V clarifier to help keep the water clear (i.e. the tetra ones)
• Microbe Lift to help keep the water clear
  
• Bubbler to keep oxygen in the water, especially during very hot summer days
  
• 0.3% Salt level to help the fish fight off parasites (even for fresh water fish, make there there is no iodine in the salt and that its dissolved in water before adding it to the pond)
• Electronic Salt Level Measuring Device so its easy to check the salt level (i.e. the koimed 1)
  
• Potassium Permanganate (for when salt just isn't enough - see http://www.arborman.com/potperm2.htm)
  

The web page was last updated (11/11/07)