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Pond Design Tips from Everything FishyPond parts and supplies |
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1. Have a plan. Know where all pipes and buried cables are in your yard. 2. Know where electricity for the pond will need to be, and where it will need to come from. Most cities require cable to be buried 12 inches below ground. Gray PVC around single strand wires of the appropriate weight are the easiest and safest to work with. Match the circuit breaker your electrician will be adding to your outdoor requirements. 25 amp is generally OK for a pond pump and submersible lights. If you plan on (or have) a pool or other large electrical devices, talk to your electrician before doing anything. Once the breaker is selected, match your wire to the breaker. Your GFCI outlet should be mounted above ground and above possible flood zones. Hidden behind a shrub is fine. We generally dig the trench, run and connect the pipe, and run the wire through it, then have an electrician complete the installation. 3. Have the liner ready before you start digging. Just in case mother nature sends a downpour. 4. We place the rim of the pond slightly above ground level (about 4 inches). This prevents runoff from the yard from ending up in the pond. 5. An overflow can be a fish saver. If too much rain falls, it's nice if the fish are still in the pond in the morning. It should be placed an inch or so below the absolute top rim of the pond. A bit of pvc pipe or a fold in the liner between 2 stones will do, on the downhill side if your yard isn't 100% level. 6. Plumbing: The best place to match up the pieces is at the hardware store. Fittings, hose, and pump all need to connect correctly. We carry flexible non-kink hose on Everything Fishy. Hose is generally measured by inside diameter, and should fit very snugly over pump outputs or fittings. 7. If you build a waterfall, put it at a corner of the liner so the liner can extend up into it, under the rockwork. This may prevent leakage problems due to rocks shifting, children, dogs, etc. As long as the water gets back into the pond everything else can be fixed. 8. Avoid glue-dependent situations. Buy a liner that is large enough, rather than piecing 2 sections together. It's more expensive at the beginning, but most submersible glues do not hold up for more than a year or two. 9. Buy or build a good filter. A low flow gravity drain filter is the easiest to work with, and often provides the best clarity and water quality. It is also one of the least expensive. Everything Fishy sells a kit. Cyprio and Hagen make reasonably good filters. Identify a gravity drain filter by its spraybar. Water comes in at the top, and goes out thru the bottom. They do have to sit above water level and cannot be used to drive a waterfall. But they are less prone to pressure leaks and backups, and far easier for a home-owner to maintain. 10. Buy a pump slightly larger than you think you need. Use a T or Y fitting to divide some of the flow off for circulation, a fountain or a falls Use a PVC or other good ball valve to control the flow going into the filter, and elsewhere. That's a start. Mistakes, ours, and some we've seen, are listed below. There are many ways to put together a beautiful pond to enjoy. Ours are custom-designed to a large extent, to suit our customers' requirements. But the tips above are always taken into account.
Everything Fishy is an aquatic design, construction and maintenance company. Everything Fishy would love to design or re-design the landscape around your pond, choosing plants suited to soil conditions, weather, and those that won't litter the pond with debris. Ask us about our landscape services in the Dallas-Fort Worth (Texas) area. Toll-free 877-291-9734. We also do consulting for do-it-yourself pond and landscape customers. Pond photos.
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Landscaper built "water features" were booming in the DFW area during 2000, based on what we saw this spring. Chief design features (and flaws) of landscaper built ponds. The kit with skimmer box and "waterfall" filter box comes from a hardware store in a box, buy liner and you are set to go. And go they did. The waterfall filter isn't tall enough or correctly designed to actually filter the water and keep it clear. These filters were perched on inaccessible hills to make them more dramatic, so access for filter cleaning was exceptionally poor. Lifting an 80 pound bag of wet lava rock out of one while standing on one foot leaning into a hill is not a fun thing. Some improved skimmers have come out in the last 2 years, but many skimmer boxes trap large, favorite fish rather than small ones, but they do have a leaf bag to keep the leaves out of the pump chamber. On the one that gave my customer trouble, I think the weight of the fish tore the net. A landscaper built the pond, and once the skimmer was installed and the water fall was in, they draped the vinyl liner in position, then covered most of it with limestone or river rock. The river rock just traps debris and turns dark with algae growth. If stacked vertically it does tend to fall down. (I truly wish I was joking.) The limestone spreads algae over every surface of the pond, including the waterfall, that is touched by the water. Even after removing the limestone my customers are still fighting algae. MicrobeLift PL, featured on the pond supply page, was the weapon of choice for dealing with the algae. But it takes at least twice as long to work in the presence of lime. In the meantime, using a high pressure hose nozzle on the falls can keep it somewhat presentable. After the limestone was installed to cover the liner, they overplanted the area around the pond with fine leaved deciduous plants that drop leaves in the water, which then break down, eventually, and feed more algae. The ultimate test on your prospective pond builder: is he willing to come back and clean it every spring? You want a pond that is effortlessly beautiful. If he's expecting to clean it, he'll put a bit of thought into the design features. Pool filtration systems with a backwash feature, labelled for ponds. A customer called in 2005 and gave us our first look at one, upclose and personal, to get the real story on how easy they are to live with. His 15,000 gal pond actually had 2 filters, and about 30 koi. He needed the biobead filter taken off because it had to be backwashed daily, and unlike the house's former owner, he and his wife both worked. They didn't have time to keep it operational. Everything Fishy sells a gravity drain wet/dry for $130.00 in the DFW area. (We also custom-build and ship them, email and let us know what you need.) The system requires a $75.00 pump in most circumstances, and maybe $25.00 worth of PVC and tubing to hook it up. It will keep your water immaculately clear. We build them, and we'll be happy to sell you one. You see, we also have a backyard pool with a sand filter and a backwash valve. Promptly, every 2 years, that valve breaks on the poor soul that attempts to loosen it, and the new valve costs $80.00. Electrical follies: An extension cord you can see isn't that safe, but if the plug is sheltered from rain, and above ground level, it beats some very expensive and foolish things I've seen.
We answer emergency calls as quickly as possible. Often we can tell you, by phone, what to do to temporarily rescue your fish until we can get there. Everything Fishy's telephone number is 877-291-9734. Our hours are essentially 9:00 a.m. to sundown during pond season. (March thru June) If we're out on a job you will get voicemail. Because cell phones are vulnerable to water damage, it can be a few minutes before we get the message. We are based in Fort Worth, Texas, and on annual maintenance we cover a pretty wide area, including McKinney, Plano, Frisco, The Colony, Denton, Weatherford. There is a mileage charge on visits over 30 miles from our base.
Good filtration is critical to a healthy pond. Aeration helps to control temperature in the summer and enhance conditions for your fish, in addition to allowing many creative options in the way your pond appears, and sounds. The pleasant sound of trickling water, or the roar of a larger waterfall can be arranged. Cattails and native water plants enhance the ecosystem by using up nitrates. They also soften and naturalize the appearance of the pond. Water lilies bloom in the morning during the summer months, and provide shade for the fish during the heat of the day. |
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Pond design services are available whether we build the pond, or you do. Generally, we try not to build anything we wouldn't want to service. Good results require good quality materials. Everything Fishy handles only 45 mil liner on a per order basis. We handle only the best pumps, and we build our own filters. We also sell selected filters by Tetra Pond and Hagen / Laguna. We do NOT sell pressurized bead or sand filters or hardware store filter kits or skimmers. (The markup on these is great, but we're around to take those unhappy phone calls.) We accept the following credit cards:
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Aquatics information, photographs, articles Copyright © 1999 - 2007 by Alice Burkhart, All Rights Reserved.
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July 2000, before the upper plant basin, rockwork redesign, and while the falls still leaked a bit. |
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Chief design flaw in this one: all
those white stones are limestone. Stringy tough, brilliant green hair algae 3 to 4 ft long growing throughout it
and rooting in the liner. Filtration: Gravity flow Tetra Pond Filter. Hardware store pump, Beckett or Little Giant
Church pond built by Everything Fishy with volunteers' help in October 2000. Design flaws: Inadequate
rock available due to limited funds, so the waterfall is too narrow for beauty. Filtration: EF built waterfall
filter with adequate height, correct flow level to properly filter the pond. Photo taken about 3 weeks after filter
turned on in spring with 900 gph pump. Added MicrobeLift PL in a product test. It helped a little. Upgraded the
pump to 3900 gph recently, as funds became available, and divided flow into upper cattail basin and fountain to
control waterfall speed and get maximum circulation, aeration and filtration. This has totally cleared the pond.
Summer 2005 update: Over the last 5 years, bits of mortar have periodically ended up in the pond, and the tree
has died, leaving the pond in full sun. The water clarity remains good, but algae growth on the rock below the
water line is present, and grew right back after the spring cleaning. String algae has occasionally popped in,
but Water Wych seems to be handling it.
Sandstone, concrete and mortar
shift as they age. Leaks develop and water ends up under the waterfall. Water under pressure leaks more than standing
water. A lot more.
May 2001
