Pond Life

It's almost time to start moving our koi fish into the new big pond. But the pond is already full of life.
The new filter system is almost complete and the goldfish we put in already seem to be enjoying their new home.

The lotus is growing and blooming. 

 

 

The newest resident is "Flip" the green frog. He likes to float in the shade under the lotus leaves.

 

 

A big dragonfly larvae.

 

 

 

 A wonderful surprise. . . the first goldfish we put in the pond have already spawned and we have little baby goldfish! These tiny goldfish will be brown in color, for protection, until they get a bit bigger. They are able to hide amongst the rocks around the side of the pond.

 

 

Trap door snails, collected from a local garden center's big natural pond, will eat algae from the sides of our pond and act as nature's cleaners.

Pond Progress - Quick Weekend Update

My husband has been working on the new filter system for our smaller koi pond, and it's now up and running. We're very pleased with the results as this is a smaller version of the filter system he'll be building for the new koi pond.

He cut down a 55 gallon plastic storage drum, fitted it with pipes to go to and from the pond and filled the drum about 2/3 full of lava rock. The lava rock will be the filter medium.

 

He set the pump in a plastic bucket and weighted it with rocks so that it would stay in place on the bottom of the pond. Then he attached the fitting he created to the pipe that takes the water from the pond into the filter.

 

He added some basic furnace filters on top of the lava rocks for additional filtration and plugged in the pump. Water started flowing right away.

 

The filtered water then flows back into the pond.

This is what the water looked like when the filter system was first started. As you can see, it's a little green with algae and kind of murky.

 

But in just a little more than 24 hours, the water is clear and we can see the koi much more clearly.  We're thrilled with the filtering results and are anxious to get starting on the filter system for the new, big pond.

 

 

Click here to see a short video of the koi.

 

 

Pond Progress - Finally We Have a Pond!

We made great progress this weekend on our new backyard koi pond project. 

 

The ground has dried out from last week's rain and we were able to finish the side walls. 

 

Next we unfolded and fit the protective underlament for the pond liner.

 Then it was time for the big moment, actually laying in the pond liner.

It is very heavy, I believe the shipping box said 70 lbs. My husband and I were able to lay the folded liner into the pond and then he climbed in to unfold it. It's a thick, rubber-like material and since it's black, it got hot to the touch very quickly.

 

 The next big thing was to get one of the lotus plants out of our smaller koi pond and move it to the new pond.

So our first water plant is in place and we've added enough water to cover the lotus plant.

 

Still quite a bit to do:

build the filter system

run an electrical line from the house out to the pond to power the filter system

collect rocks to finish the edge of the pond

collect some native water lilies to go in the pond

Then, of course, move the fish from the smaller pond to their new home. . . I think they'll love it!

New Backyard Koi Pond

Finally! The snow has melted and my husband was finally able to get started on his long awaited Spring project. . . a new backyard koi pond. Hopefully the weather will start to be a little more cooperative and he can make steady progress on this big project.

The plan is for a 14 feet by 14 feet koi pond with a liner. He will be building his own filter system for the water, about 3000 gallons!

I'll share photos of our progress.