can you turn swimming pools into ponds?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
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JEAE21

Feeder Fish
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Aug 19, 2007
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So this is something I want in the future but..

Recently I was out swimming in my friend's pool and thought how cool it would be if there were fish in here swimming with me..

Is it possible to drain all the water and fill it up with new clean water and condition it to make it safe..
Or are the concrete pool walls safe fore fish, will they not put out toxic particles into the water overtime?

The reason I picked a pool over a pond is because they're bigger and deeper. And I wanted to put like native species in there and go fishing in crystal clear water(so you can observe how the fish reacts underwater) And it seems much cleaner since I wanted a bare bottom like pools. And if I do get this plan a reality, how would I filter it? Would the pool filters work? What's that wierd vaccum cleaner that runs around the pool?
 
A lot of people make swimming pools into ponds.
 
yeh pools are fine. just make sure u change the filter medium to whatever fish need (eg.bio wool and corals). its quite a hard job. try consult a pond guy near ure home. a lot of people do wat u plan to do.
 
thanks for the advice, but oddball how old is "aged" pool liner? like 5years?
 
My old neighbours did this as they couldn't afford the chlorine any more, and wanted to get into breeding koi - I think it would have been a fantastic pond if they'd done it properly but they didn't do much with the filter and you could never see the fish for the thick green water.

It was actually so thick that when the new neighbours moved in some years later, they drained the pond to reconvert it and found two absolutely huge goldfish in there - hadn't seen a sign of them before! As they didn't have another pond I took them on, still got one of them.

Oh, forgot to add - if you do it be sure you won't want to convert it back at a later date, my new neighbours had awful trouble with frogs and newts returning to the redone pool every year and getting trapped in the skimmers.
 
It is possible. Very.

I do not think you will have to drain the water, just treat it heavily with dechlor, etc. Rip out the pool filters and or install new media/pumps. Consult the guy who turned his 17,000 G pond into a pool.
 
Yup.. we bought a house that had a small swimming pool, but no filter etc.

As it was growing nothing but green water and mozzie wrigglers I dopped 6 feeder goldfish in there.

No more mozzie wrigglers and when we drained the pool a couple of years later it still had 5 x 6" long healthy comets in there.

There will be no chlorine in the water if it hasn't been treated for a few months, and it will go green with algae to some degree. But the fish will love it. You wont need filters if you keep the numbers low and just treat it as a big plastic pond.

Cheers

Ian
 
Theres been a few threads on doing that.Theres always free pools on freecycle,if I had a flat spot in my yard Id try it
 
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