Need Pond Advice

[Dana C]

Hi,

We will be starting on digging our pond tomorrow after spending the day removing very heavy paving slabs and just need a little advice.

It will be about 6 feet by 4 and I think you are suppose to go about 3 feet down, is this right?

When we get the filter it will be used with a waterfall and i was wondering if it matters where the waterfall goes. Does it have to be at one of the ends or can we have it halfway down the pond?

One last thing I am always reading about shelves for plants how many do you normally have, how deep down and how wide should they be?

Sorry for all the questions I would just like to make sure we are doing everything right.

 

[Dana C]

We have now dug down about 2 feet but have decided to make it a semi-raised pond with a wall around the edge.

I just need to know if anybody knows how thick should the wall be and how far away from the hole?
The wall will be made from breeze blocks should there be any problems from this?

Thanks for any comments.

 

[black angel]

Sounds ok to me what youre doing but i'm not an expert on pond digging. Where in the country do you live? Most ponds should be around three foor at the centre point to allow the fish to escape heat, cold and predators. My own pond is roughly 10 foot long and 8 wide and has two shelves. The first being 1 foot down and the second 2 foot down. I dont like this as theres no swimming space really and the new pond is going to be roughly 15x10 and will have only one wide shelf and a drop of 4 foot.
Dont think it matters where it goes but you dont want the inlet and outlet to be in the same place. Our waterfall is at one end with the pump in the middle. Fountain pumps arent really that great as they dont pick up the larger particles of dirt so maybe get a proper pond pump that will pick up these larger bits.

Anyway hope that helps a little, and hopefully an expert on the subject can help you further.

 

[Dana C]

Thanks for your reply,

I live in suffolk, our plans keep changing and now it may not be raised at all. We are going to get one of the pre made waterfalls and put it at one of the ends so it should go more into one of the corners and have the other end of the pond deeper and place the pump there.

I don't understand about the filters and pumps for ponds so we are going to work out how much water the pond will hold when we finally agree on a shape and sort it out then.

 

[sakaspuds]

if you are under 2000 gallons the best filter you can get is an eazypod, i have one and they are a pleasure to clean and look after, most people would advise a koi pond to be as close to 6 foot deep as you can get it, with a bottom drain and gravity fed filter set up, but you can still have a very nice koi pond with a liner, i plan on doing one myself soon

 

[Dana C]

Not sure how many gallons it will be yet but will have a look at that filter.
We are going to keep goldfish in it so we won't have to dig as far as you do for koi which is a good thing as we ended up going 3 feet in the middle which seemed to take forever.

 

[sakaspuds]

3 feet is fine for goldies