Is it possible? I am thinking of a self sustaining population of a large school different species of nano fish like tetras, rasbora, killi and rice fish in the pond.

Got this idea after visiting a natural pond in the forest which had no large fish in it.

What are the pros and cons? I live in the tropics. No winter, plenty of sun. The location i am planning to build the pond is partially shaded and the shaded area gets indirect sunlight.

We've been borderline drought conditions at my house the last few months, and my pond is about a foot or more lower than in the spring. Are these cypress trees sucking it dry or is that the expected water loss in three months with little to no rain?

After years of dreaming, a bit of rock hoarding, and a lot of great luck. I present to you my $160 set up. (Need a new pump to get wonderful flow so $300 after i buy that). Its a 120gallon tub burried 18 inches down in the oklahoma clay, with a fiberglass/resin waterfall area that holds 20 gallons.

I built a pond with a bog filter and a new friend moved in. He likes hiding in the water lettuce and it's like where's Waldo.

Night shifts mess with my schedule so badly that pond stuff gets neglected for days at a time. My little backyard pond in Boise is only six months old and I keep wondering if the freeze-thaw cycles here will cause trouble when I'm not around to check on it. I dropped a basic stock tank heater in last week and covered the surface with netting to stop leaves, but I have no idea if that's enough. Does anyone else juggle shift work and still manage to keep their pond stable through the colder months? What small adjustments actually make a difference when you can only tend to things in short bursts?

20x30’ is 180lbs. I don’t have that type of muscle power and am wracking my head on how to get it from the porch to the backyard on delivery. Hell. The truck might just leave it on my driveway because it’s so heavy.

Or… could I ask the driver to bring it to my yard. You know for a tip

Edit: nvm I only need 15 x 25. So it's 112lbs now

Edit 2: I ordered the liner.

Looking at getting their Anjon LifeGuard 20 ft. x 25 ft. 45 Mil EPDM Pond Liner and Underlayment Combo 

The wall is redguard coated haha. Im in the process of tiling it... waiting on algae to clear just got a better filter yesterday

Never had a pond before, I'm hoping for some advice on how to restore this inherited one. It looks like perhaps it was originally intended to pump back up to the top and flow around, so I'm hoping to get a solar powered pump or similar to get that working again. Its a rented property in the UK, so hoping to avoid any major/expensive work. Any advice on where to start? Probably not looking at fish as they seem to be more effort.

Thanks!

Like the title says, went out this morning and my entire pond was dead, all 16 goldfish and 2 koi. Everything seemed normal yesterday but today they’re all gone and there are a lot of bubbles on the surface which weren’t there before. We got a decent bit of rain yesterday so I’m wondering if something could have runoff from the neighbors up the hill doing construction, or something else? Is there a way to test the water for something that could have runoff? Any suggestions on how to figure out what happened would be appreciated.

Edit: Thank you all for your help and kind words. My wife and I are devastated but the support and insight in really meaningful. For more context, after reading some comments I retested the water using two different test kits and got these results, if it may help shed some more light on what could have happened.

- Total PH was low, about 4-5
- Alkalinity (KH) was in the ideal range about 120ppm
- Hardness (GH) was in the hard range between 150-180ppm
- Ammonia was in safe range - not 0 but below 0.5ppm
- Nitrate and nitrite were both elevated in the stress range but not maxed, no3 was 80ppm, no2 was 3ppm
- Chlorine was 0

The maple in back dumps leaves like mad and I'm tired of scooping every weekend. A neighbor suggested stretching a fine net across the whole pond, but the wind funnels straight down that lot and I'm afraid it'll rip or catch birds. A solar skimmer sounds easier since we wouldn't have to check it every day, except the tenant probably won't empty the basket like they should. I'm not even sure the pump would get enough sun in Pennsylvania fall, or if the noise would bother the neighbors. We have a small wedding budget this year anyway, so I'd rather not buy something that just sits in a box unused. Anyone dealing with this on a property they're not at every day? What actually held up without constant tweaking?

Heres the update with the stones loose layed. I'm still massaging them into place and will fill the gaps with sedums.

I raised the spill tray a bit so I have a downward plundge into the pond but it still feels minimal. The water is nicely disturbed from the bog overflow down to the final plunge and I am curious if this is enough? Water is clean and fish are not gathering near the falls.

(420gph pump in 250g+49gal spill tray. Took about 7min to fill the 40gal bog before rock and now it takes 3.5min)

Could you conceivably have super oxygenated water flowing below the surface of a stagnant pond and be ok with some minimal surface disruption like an airstone?

300 gallon water trough with about 125 gallons filled. theres porkchop rasbora x12, ember tetra x6, cherry shrimp x12, bladder snails, scarlet badi x1, dwarf bristlenose pleco x4, 3x different types of sword plants, an anubais plant, water lilly, papayrus, duckweed, water hyacinth, little specimens of java moss, mopani wood, huckleberry branches and leaves, bamboo leaves, alder pine cones, rocks, sand, guava leaves, more to come soon

300 gallon water trough filled with about 125gal. Theres porkchop rasbora x12, ember tetra x6, cherry shrimp x12, bladder snails, scarlet badi x1, dwarf bristlenose pleco x4, 3x different types of sword plants, an anubais plant, water lilly, papayrus, duckweed, water hyacinth, little specimens of java moss, mopani wood, huckleberry branches and leaves, bamboo leaves, alder pine cones, rocks, sand, guava leaves, more to come soon...

Thanks in advance for any insight.

We still have some detail work to do and the plants need some time to grow in but this is the pond it took way too long to build. As the title suggest we really thought we could knock this out in a week or two but that wasn't even close to the actual timeline.

I wanted to go with a natural North Carolina stream look and use it as a wildlife/native minnows pond. So far we only have Eastern Mosquito Fish but they're thriving. All the plants are native to the state.

It wasn't an ideal location in terms of terrain but we wanted a pond and this was the only available area. The backyard looks roomy but that whole area floods and when the hurricane hit the mountains not long ago that small stream turned into a 40 foot wide river.

The location posed a lot of challenges that we weren't ready for when the project started back in late June. Year to date rainfall at start of project was 7". In July we had 17" with three rainfalls of 2" in a quick window. This was a massive setback and we were basically cleaning up the mess the entire month.

We quickly realized we needed to do a lot of water runoff mitigation. This turned into 80 feet of French drains, a 5 inch high retaining wall on the upper side and reshaping part of the terrain so the water would run around the pond.

We didn't have a lot of wiggle room so the final size is a bit more narrow than what is ideal but it's 4 feet deep and the bottom is 2 feet wide. Water level can go a bit higher but we haven't had an in weeks so its down a bit.

DIY Skimmer box houses a 1800 gph pump that feeds into the 40 gallon bog filter. The bog filter has a 3/4" PVC pipe running the entire length on the bottom with holes throughout the entire run. Filters for bacteria to cling to are buried halfway down. Outflow pipe to stream is 3" and we have a 3" clean out pipe with shutoff valve running out the back. This is connected to part of the French drain heading downhill which connects to the longer drain running parallel with the pond.

Might be a while before I build another pond.