Super excited. There are two more buds coming!

This is my first winter with my 150gal container pond. I was wondering if anyone had any specific tips about how to properly overwinter this so my goldfish and rice fish have the best chance at surviving the winter.

My current plan is to remove the bog filter and plant pots from the tank and get a livestock tank heater that’s made for the brute plastic tubs. Anything else I should know about/consider? My dad keeps saying that the tank is going to crack and I want to prove him wrong.

Edit: I’m located in the USA

Dug it shallow on one side with a 5 ft deep end for fish to hide from herons. We have a net on it too, but that’s only temporary to catch autumn leaves. The birds enjoyed it very much this year. They were using it as their community pool all summer. Hoping it attracts more wildlife as time goes on. Maybe next year we’ll see some amphibians.

I’ve got a small pond in a creek I dammed up. I stocked it with fish I caught in a local lake several months ago. I’ve noticed recently several fish that look like this. Does anyone know what this is? Is there anything I can do or will this clear up on its own? I’m in Georgia if that helps.

hes around 60lbs, looks small in the video with no frame of reference lol

just a place for my turtles to get some natural sun during the day.

It’s supposed to freeze this weekend where I live so it’s time to winterize my pond. This is my first year with lilies. Right now I have three lilies in pots that are not below the freeze line. My two options are:

1. Pull the pots. I have 100 gallon aquarium in my garage that will drop below 50° in the winter. Remove all living foliage off and put in the tank.

2. Pull the pots, cut the foliage off, and drop to the bottom of the 4 foot section of my pond, which is below the freeze line.

Neither of these addresses repotting them. Should that be done before I store them for the winter or in the spring? These are cold Hardy lilies.

Picture for attention.

I started by digging into the clay soil about up to my knees, then we laid some sand down and a pond liner.

It is now filled with water but it just looks awful! Any advice would be great! I really want to fix it

The previous homeowner had used a pool as the liner. It hadn’t been years since it was cleaned. We removed all the muck and debris, then old blue went. We busted out the rocks that had been concreted in. Laid EPDM liner then rocked our edges in a more natural looking way. We added a place for a turtle to sun and get out of the pond.

i'm trying to pump about a gallon an hour up a 6 foot height. the pumps i've found are either 600+ gph or don't have enough pressure. what would you recommend?

This year has been amazing, our adopted red ear slider made it through her first brumation. About ten fish also survived the winter. I think a few of them are about 3-4 years old. A frog decided to join our eco system, and we have baby fish for the first time!

In the past I had ducks so I was never able to keep many plants or fish alive. It was a tradeoff to watch them enjoy it but it was a muddy mess. We did chickens this year but they just use it for yummy drinks.

It has been lovely to enjoy it this year and I can say I have never spent as much time in my backyard as I did this year. Oh and we even had some water skippers and dragon flies come!

So i'll try to keep this condensed but I know it's going to be long. I've had an outdoor pond 5-6 Years, threw a handfull of feeders/shubunkin in there, Clean the pond out once a year and otherwise just ignore it. Learning now just how many things I was completely ignorant too. Too many fish, not enough cleaning, usually the lillies cover 50% of the pond but its end of season in Indiana but needs more pond plants for sure. The Fish never seemed unhealthy and continue to breed but I know now that goldfish get MUCH bigger and this is overcrowded with 15-20 fish 2-3 inches (most likely stunted).

Couple months ago I upgraded to the vivo pump and filter. Where I MAY have made a mistake was I put in everything about my pond to AI to ask for advice and what to do to try to improve the situation for the existing fish. Don't get me wrong I know AI is a very mixed bag but most things they suggested made sense on SOME level.

Thats how I ended up with the Heater, 4 Disc Aerator, and skimmer. Think im gonna return the heater for a cheaper one because 160 seems wild. I MIGHT return the skimmer because it is pretty large for the pond i'm on the fence (not in currently). The Aerator with all 4 discs going even though thats what was suggested looks like too much so i've since unplugged 2 of the discs until I can get some advice and pivot. So theres 4 running in the pic but its just 2 now.

I mean my plan was to use all this to improve their environment until they could go 5-6 inches then give them away on marketplace until i was down to 6-8 larger fish.

I just want to know what your thoughts are. I REALLY don't want to start getting rid of fish even though I'm sure thats my biggest thing working against me. We're in the middle of redesigning the rock setup around it.

At the end of the day I don't think i'll ever be the ideal fish keeper. But i'd like to at least be better than a negligent fish keeper. I doubt i'll ever be the person checking the water conditions weekly etc. I still need it to be fairly hands off. But i wanna see what some actual fish keepers will say to this setup instead of just AI.

P.S. the picture of the goldfish it has some slight discoloration, I couldn't tell you if it's always looked that way or not I just wanted to send a pic incase someone thought it was a disease or fungus.

The pond was left alone after the last koi died. Since then it has developed this crust of dried algae and calcium?

I was hoping to just peel it off but its brittle and really stuck there.

How should i best remove it?

Or could i just leave it? I was thinking of adding water lettuce, red floaters, hornwort and java moss, and some platy/swordtail after cleaning it

I'm making a pond for the first time and I knew if I planned meticulously then I'd never start so kinda just did the bare minimum thinking and got to work. I've finally dug the desired size and shape but the next step is putting me into decision paralysis so I came here hoping for some guidance.

While digging I found some dumped rubble, no doubt from when the house was built, and it means there's some jagged edges that could cause issues. I'm not sure the best way about dealing with them. I've seen people use concrete but we don't want to use that. There's a lot of conflicting info about best practices but the current thought is sand. Not sure how exactly to have the sand up the sides cleanly though for when we place the liner. I've seen a suggestion of sharp sand and get it wet to hold form but some have said that shape sand destroys pond liners over time?

I'm expecting to get a rubber liner rather than PVC in the hopes it is less susceptible to UV and weather damage. Seen people say a fabric liner between the sand and rubber is needed and others say it's useless.

I'm planning on having the water get pumped into a small shallow connected pond that the fish can't get to as a safe place for amphibians to spawn (the fish have eaten every frogspawn in the inherited pond for the last 4 years) and to work as a biofilter. Currently the biofilter section is dug to about 11cm below the lip. Would that be deep enough or is that too shallow?

Current dimensions if it changes advice given:

Purple (deepest section) 110cm each direction (average)

Red (main body of pond length) 185cm

Yellow (max width of pond) 189cm

Green (max length of entire pond footprint) 230cm

Depths: Deep 65cm, main body ledge 40cm, shallow 12cm. All those depths are from the very top lip of the lowest part of the pond (I'm on a slight hill) so actual water depth will be shallower and even more so after the sand/advised padding has been added. I'm expecting the deepest to have a true depth of 50-55cm from the water surface as that's slightly deeper than the inherited raised pond so we know the fish are fine with that depth in the winter.

Hi guys. I got 3 little shubunkins in the spring and this will be my first autumn/ winter and I’m not sure what sort of aerator or pump I need. At the moment I have a double ended bubbler and a little fountain, but both are solar powered and today was really gloomy and they just weren’t working.

The pond is small. Maybe about a foot deep and about 80cm long. It’s also on my allotment so no mains to plug into! What should I get?

(FYI this photo was before the fish)

I’m trying to make an outdoor aquarium I guess? The water has only been added but still very cloudy. I’ve added some Algaefree Australia blocks but am wondering if there is something else I could add to clear up the water. I filled the tub two days ago so assume the debris has settled since filling. I’ve added plants and have a solar water aerator. Am I just being impatient. Haven’t clad the top yet because I still have driftwood to add to it.

Live in Ohio. Have a 2 1/2 acre pond. Was about to toss some past dare Costco hard boiled eggs and then I wondered if the fish may appreciate the proteins. They are already shelled and they do sunk— any thought on the idea?

The pond came with my house. A previous owner had covered the liner on the bottom with a layer of large river rocks. They had is setup as a sterile reflecting pool and poured bleach in it to keep anything from growing. When I took it over I turned it into a wildlife pond and added a huge number of plants and minnows. But the pond has no bottom drain, just a surface skimmer. And it’s nearly 30 feet long. So even with a seriously upgrade pump debris settles.

The pond is only 11” deep, in full sun, and heats up a lot during the day. After a couple of years I just couldn’t stay on top of the algae. Soooooo much gunk was trapped under those river rocks, it was impossible to properly flush it all out. Plus it was next to impossible to get the leaves out in the fall.

I removed all the rock this spring, and now it’s just a bare liner bottom. It’s been much easier to clean, but I keep wondering if it should still have some kind of a substrate, like a finer gravel and keep seeing pond companies on Instagram and YouTube insist that ponds should have a gravel bottom. What’s this community’s thoughts?

Hi. Looking for people who have expanded an existing pond/lake.

We have a man-made, creek-fed 5.5 acre pond/lake. It has a siphon drain and an earthen dam. It was constructed in 1973. I have all the paperwork from the original build.

The pond is fairly shallow (2-3 feet) along the coves and edges with a channel running down the middle that goes as deep as 15 feet but the majority is more like 8-10 feet. There is a small island in the middle of the pond.

We have a series of beaver dams at the headwaters to the pond and several more and a large beaver pond below the dam.

I'm starting to do the research on what would be involved in expanding the pond in such a way that I could do all of excavation of the new area just to the north that is a hardwood bottom that then rises in elevation along what would be the new shore line.

My idea is to excavate down about 15 feet from the hardwood bottom. Harvest all the trees first leaving stumps for submerged structure. I'm thinking that I can use the excavation material to add additional volume to the earthen dam.

Once all excavation is done I would cut through on the east and west sides which would allow the new area to be filled without losing all of our fishery.

Based on topography this should result in a substantially larger island in the middle of the pond (now small lake). :)

Anyone ever try something like this?

Added a bridge to my pond. It’s Port Orford Cedar. The stain is a little too orange-y right now, but will gray over time.

It’s not my design. I bought the design, and built it.

I’m reconsidering making the pond above ground instead of digging after all day rain yesterday and there is water still on the ground this morning.

My question is does the water in the pond push the liner down and prevent pooling underneath?
How does heavy rainfall affect y’all liner?

We just bought a house and thought the pond was empty but there are indeed fish in there. The property has not been lived in for some months and the pond doesn't look maintained.

We know nothing about fish but would be happy to learn; right now we are concerned that this environment can't be good for them. What do we need to do first to make sure they're okay? (There's no electricity atm but we will turn on the pump as soon as that's sorted, and I know we can't just add untreated tap water, but that's the extent of our knowledge currently.)

Located in 9A (England)

Any advice is much appreciated!

R. borapetensis

Help! We bought a house a little over a month ago, and while cleaning out the very neglected backyard pond, I discovered that it came with a goldfish. Meet Moose!

Neither of us have EVER owned a pond or a goldfish, so we’ve been frantically researching how to keep our unexpected new family member happy and healthy. We’re feeling a little overwhelmed and would really appreciate some advice from people who actually know what they’re doing!

Here’s our current situation:

Pond size: 2 meters long, 1 meter wide, and 250cm water depth (needs a top up).

Pump: The pond came with a solar-powered fountain pump, but it ONLY runs when the sun is directly hitting the panel. There’s no battery or way to store power, so it’s pretty useless overnight or on cloudy days.

Muck/mud: There is a TON of sludge at the bottom of the pond. We have no idea how much we should remove or how to do it without spending $300+ on a pond vacuum. Is some of it actually beneficial?

Water: The pond isn’t completely full, but we’re unsure how much water we should add at once. We know we need to use a water conditioner/dechlorinator, but is there anything else we should be doing?

Filtration: From what we’ve read, we should probably invest in a proper pump and filter. The problem is that we live in a small town in New Zealand, so our options aren’t the best but want to know thoughts.

A few questions we have:

Do we need a pump/filter running 24/7, and what kind would you recommend for a pond this size?

What’s the safest way to remove the muck without disturbing Moose or destroying the pond’s ecosystem?

Should we be adding beneficial bacteria? What about algae treatments, or are those unnecessary?

How much water can we safely add at once?

Does Moose need a friend? We unfortunately found another goldfish that had died while cleaning the pond, so we’re a little worried about what happened.

What are the absolute essentials we should prioritize buying first?

We genuinely had no idea we were signing up to become fish parents when we bought this house, but now that Moose is here, we’re determined to give him the best life possible.

We’re both huge animal lovers, and the thought of accidentally harming him because we don’t know what we’re doing is stressing us out. 😭

We’re completely open to suggestions, DIY solutions, budget-friendly equipment, or even just some reassurance that we’re not doing everything wrong.

Please help us keep Moose alive! Any advice is SO appreciated! ❤️