Fishroom and pond build.

[lukenewton]

Hello all. So I moved house recently and wanted to take my stingrays with me. Luckily the house I moved into had a good sized shed in the garden which the other half kindly said I could have as my fish house. The shed was roughly a 10fft square. So the first task was getting it ready. Floor needed replacing as it was very weak and whole shed needed insulating. Once that was completed next plan was to biild a ppnd for my rays. Decided eventually to make the back half of the shed a pond giving me internal dimensions of 9ftx4.5ftx3ft. I will.update you as the build gets completed. Firstly here is the floor being built. I used 2x2 for this roughly every 8-10" then packed the gaps with 2" polystyrene and finally laid 3/4" ply over the top so it should be pretty solid.

 

[lukenewton]

Next job was to insulate the entire shed. For this I used 1" thick cellotex style insulation board. Cut nice and tight to size the held in with a few metal L brackets. And yes that's me pointing at the roof. Obviously very proud of my handy work ??

 

[Oughtsix]

Looks good! I am sure you will appreciate the insulation as your tank/pond progresses. What are your thoughts on your pond build... What constructions technique are you planning on using for the pond?

 

[lukenewton]

Pond is made from a 4x2 frame. Bolted together in the corners. Then lined with 3/4" ply. I will firstly add some pond liner underlay. Then a 0.5mm pvc liner. Over that ill add a layer of 1" insilation board on the base and 4 sides. Finally a 1mm liner will be added as the main waterproofing.

 

[lukenewton]

Pond frame has been built. Used 4x2 for the frame. In each corner 2 prices of 4x2 were used essentially making it 4x4 these were then bolted together using large 8" bolts. The bottom lengths of 4x2 were also bolted together. The top has 2 layers of 4x2 also to reduce the chance of any bowing at all. It was then all boarded with 3/4" ply. Even the bottom so with that and the floor it is 1 1/2" worth of ply to take the weight. Didn't manage to get too many pics as it was being built as I get too caught up doing the work. But here are the ones I did get.

 

[lukenewton]

Added a layer of underlay. Followed by a thin 0.5mm liner. I then insulated the whole pond with 25mm insulation board. Next job is to add a thicker 1mm liner and to fill her up!

 

[fishtankkeepers]

Wow nice work, this looks really cool i need to build a fish room outside

 

[lukenewton]

Sorry for slow updates. So the pond is now.full. got the 2nd liner in and added a small amount of water to hold it down whilst I taped the folded corners in place. Next I built a platform over the pond at 1 end to hold my filters. For filtration I have built a overhead moving bed filter. The water is pumped in the top through a filter sock. There will be 2 large air stones in the filter with probably 100-150 litres of media. Then gravity return back to the pond. I will.also put a couple of heaters in the filter. Plan to make another filter exactly the same to go next to this one aswell. Will also ha be and fx6 and an eheim.bucket filter on the pond as I have them spare. Here are a few videos as an update.

 

[adamsfishes]

Looks good. You're making me think how I could do something like this ...

PS. Turn your phone sideways when you make videos.

 

[TheWolfman]

What are your plans for regulating the temperature? I’m not sure see you live but my shed gets to about 100* in the summer time when I open it up.