My new 300 gallon rubber made out door heated pond for my turtles and fish

[Fly River]

My new heated pond.

Hey All, it's been awhile since I have posted anything so I decide to post some new things of mine. I used to have a 200 gallon aquarium for about 5 years but I moved and my new landlord would not allow a big tank. In my tank I had a Fly River turtle, snake necked turtles, giraffe catfish, frontosas, bichirs and a red eye pleco. I did not want to get rid of my fish so I ask if I could put a pond in the back yard. They said yes, so I didn't wast any time looking.

Looking around on the Internet I found a 300 gallon rubbermaid tub. It was tough and had a lot of room for my turtles. The next thing was trying to find one for a good price. I looked at feed stores but their prices were high. Then I found this web sit called Zorrotools.com and they had it for $199.99 with free shipping to my door. If you register with them before you buy, a few days before they send you deals. My deal was $50.00 dollars off $200.00 or more. So of course I did and it was a great buy. Four days later they delivered it to my front door.

I have grass in my yard and I hate wasting water so I set the pond in my yard where it looks good and also allows extra over flow water to flow into the grass. For water changes, I drilled two holes for two, one inch bulk heads. I just drop a hose in let it over flow into the grass.

For filtration I'm running one Fluval FX5. I purchased the filter off Craigslist for a $100.00 and its been working great for two years now. It was on my aquarium first before the pond. I also installed a inline heater, it's only 300 watts but it works.

Living in SD our weather is nice but mostly on the cooler side. It nice and all but for a tropical pond it does require a heater most of the year. One of the ways I help keep the heat in, is by covering the top with thick 2mm clear plastic. It helps but I found that in the summer the sun was hitting it more causing algae bloom so I added a 5mm tarp for more shade. On my weekends I take both traps off for the turtles, so they can get UVA and UVB. During the rest of the time I move the dark tarp back a few feet rotated around for that week. It helps keeping the algae bloom under control.

 

[Hennesssy]

Nice setup! Turtle looks great. I'm thinking about doing the same thing... placing order on the site you posted.

 

[Fly River]

I recently moved, so I will try to post some more pics soon. The big thing I had to do is change the heater. The inline heater I had on it was running so much it melted from the inside out and water was pouring out. I'm now using two titanium heaters connected to a Helix thermostat. With the two heaters and the cover on the pond, it keeps it nice and warm (80 degrees).

 

[paulW]

I am in ohio, and last year, I experimented doing rubbermaid tubs like you have.
Although I did smaller ones. I did 100 gallons (they were on sale) and a 50 gallon (bought used)
I don't know if my "lesson learned" apply to you or not, but here it goes.

I only did it in summer, because our weather is obviously harsher than yours.
In the evening, if it was getting chilly, I covered the top of the ponds with sheet styrofoam. Worked great. I had livebearers in there, could cover up when the temp got below 60 at night and they never got sick. I used scrap wood on top of the styro sheets to prevent the wind from blowing them off.

The rubbermaids I got had a drain built in. Unfortunately, both the 100 gallons leaked, so I had to replace with a "Real" schedule 80 bulkhead, and slightly enlarge the hole. Kind of a PITA. Now maybe Rubbermaid fixed this? The ones I got were on clearance, so maybe new ones are ok.

This summer, I am going to run some PVC on the outside of the tank so that I can open a valve and drain about 1/4 of the water. I'm also going to run it so that it has an overflow, to prevent the tub from overflowing on a heavy rain. Last year, I had to run out about 6 times during a heavy rain and remove water so they didn't overflow (and lose fish) not fun at all.

If I don't cover the tanks with syrofoam at night, I had put some netting material from a fabric store over it to prevent racoons from snacking on the fish.
Yes, they will go after even little guppies. I used the binder clips from an office store to hold the fabric netting on. It worked well.

Lastly, I found that these outdoor tubs are just awesome grow out tanks. One tank, I just dumped fry in there. They grew awesome.
This year, I am considering using all 3 as growouts (breeding indoors, then dumping fry into tubs).


Oh I forgot to say.. during the day, I put the styro sheets on top, so they shaded about 1/3 of the tank so the fish could escape the sun if they wanted to. I had so-so luck with growing plants in them. The pond lilies did great (they are overwintering in a 75g now)
Other aquarium plants did kind of mediocre, but I am going to try again.