My pond story

tugo

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Aug 26, 2008
66
0
0
Istanbul-Turkey
Dear friends;
Hi from Istanbul.
Well, neither my pond nor my fish are monsters but since I owe lots of thanks to the people who posted here, I believe I can give back the results of your good advices.

Though I am a new member, I have been following your posts since early 2007 and got the inspiration and knowledge for to built my pond from your posts. Thank you all again.

I have a small garden of abt 120 sq meters (143 sq yrds) that limited my dreams so after reading all the stuff and considering my personal possibilities and as well the local possibilities, I decided to build up a liner pond 17 X 8 ft , to be my hobby playground.

Since the free place in the garden was limited I couldn’t give the pond a flexible design and unfortunately there was also no place for a bog filter which I would very much, like to have.

After marking the pond shape have seen that I myself could only dig abt 7-8 inches deep, I had to call a digger and 20 minutes for in and out was more than enough.
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Was planning to have the depth between 1.5 ft to 6 ftbut because of the monster rocks we kept the deepest part to be 3.5 ft.

The rocks, I had to cover with the foam, each one had a nice hat.
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Then after I laid the first sheeting which was a cheap soft material, and then a blue onepiece material which waterproof, used for the trucks and also very cheap.
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[FONT=&quot]Last I laid down a 45 mil EPDM liner.
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With the first snow I filled the water and let it be ready for the coming plants. 2.400 gallons of water was in.
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[FONT=&quot]After abt 5 weeks I placed 7 pots of water lilies, to the shallow parts as a start.
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Beginnig of April, more than 2 months after the water was filled in, I put in a submersible pump, 1.100 gal/hr. And placed a DIY filter which acts as a waterfall also and the water out come was 700 gal/hr.
Besides this I bought another centrifugal pump and made another DIY filter with an outcome of 1.100 gal/hr.that I used only afew times, when necessary. Both of my filters are very basic, a plastic container full with different filter mediums.
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Next day I couldn’t resist and wellcomed my first 8 koi and after 2 days another 4.
But was not possible to see them at all, before May and imagine how I was happy with their first show up.

By today, I have 9 youngsters, which I believe they are the survivors of 3 different spawns since there are 3 different sizes and I wonder how I missed the eggs and the fry. There are 2 more future mothers, still on the way to lay their eggs. My koi are not monsters but they are also beautiful for meJ)

Till now I did not use any kind of chemicals or additives for the water and after 2 months it was looking like a pea soup. Have checked the water parameters every two weeks and all was ok. But now in august, after 7 months, I can see all the bottom details of the pond, I believe the water is building up its natural balance.

As mentioned in your posts, the plants are very helpfull for the cleaning of the water Besides 7 pots of water lilies, I have 3 pots of Water Kanna (Thalia Dealbata), 2 small 1 huge Japanese umbrella ( Cyperus sp) bare root, also Eichhornia crassipe and Lemna minor, but these last 2, I have to grow outside and give back to the pond from time to time because they are treated by my koi as fresh appetisersJ).
Unfortunately, here we have very limited aquatic plants, to find.

I believe, to build this pond up, is the best thing I have done in my life. Now, I don’t care any more for the decoration of the pond (need to cover up the black liner) because there are lots of other things happen to follow besides my plants and fish; visitors like, frogs, birds ( thanks that we don’t have herons here), dragon flies etc etc.

Thanking you all for giving me this inspiration and courage by your valuable posts with full of knowledge and experience.

Some recent photos will come with my next post.
 

tugo

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Aug 26, 2008
66
0
0
Istanbul-Turkey
As I have mentioned in my previous post, I cannot work any more on the decoration side of the pond because it turned out to be my hobby pond, with so many other things to follow.

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mrunlucky07

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 19, 2007
375
0
0
VB
Very nice. I really like the fact that you are able to look down on it from above. Do you have a balcony that overlooks the pond?
 

Dr Joe

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Mar 8, 2006
10,664
9
0
71
Sixty Miles South of Tampa Florida
Congratulations on a job well done :headbang2.

That's some mighty hard ground you have there!

Thanks for documenting and sharing your hard work with us, your an inspiration.

Don't forget to posts updates too.

Dr Joe

.
 

tugo

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Aug 26, 2008
66
0
0
Istanbul-Turkey
Thanks to all who commented.

mrunlucky07;2128087; said:
Very nice. I really like the fact that you are able to look down on it from above. Do you have a balcony that overlooks the pond?
Yes mrunlucky, I am lucky with the balcony, can have a nice wiev also can follow up the fish:)

Dr Joe;2128310; said:
Congratulations on a job well done :headbang2.

That's some mighty hard ground you have there!
.
Oh Dr Joe, soil is my night mare. I need a sledgehammer to dig for plants and it is not a joke:cry:
 
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