10 Essential Pond Building Tips

Full sun. Did I let it get overgrown?  Ya think?

But on to the ten rules to follow that make pond keeping easy.

• • You must have one bunch of anacharis (underwater grass) per square foot of water surface area. This serves as a natural filter and as food for the fish. It grows faster than the fish can eat it.
• • 50 - 60% of the surface of the water must be shaded with floating plants. Water lilies are great, as are water hyacinths, water lettuce or water poppies. Just be sure to compost them as they multiply and not allow them loose in a natural waterway.
• • You must have fish to complete the balanced ecosystem. I recommend common goldfish. Do not put Koi in your pond unless you have built a koi pond. They will eat all of your plants.
• • Do not feed your fish. They will become too big for the pond and upset the ecosystem. You will have an overpopulation problem and all of your fish will die.
• • Put in one linear foot of fish for each 25 square feet of pond surface area. If you have 100 square feet of pond, you may have 4 foot long fish, 8 six inch fish or 16 three inch fish and so on.
• • Do not allow turtles, crawfish, alligators, ducks, geese, dogs, raccoons, possums, muskrats, nutria or your children to swim in your pond.
• • Do not use chemicals!!! EVER! Add a dechlorinator when you first fill the pond and then when you add more than 10% water afterwards.
• • Do not worry about pH. It will take care of itself.
• • Remove any dead or decaying vegetation regularly so that ammonia does not build up and foul your pond.
• • Relax. Your pond will generally take care of itself. I recommend benevolent neglect as the best approach to pondkeeping.

Do not even try to seam large pieces of butyl rubber liner together at home. It won't work. If you need an extra large piece, the factory will seam it for you, usually for free or very little money.

Read this and 200 pages more of great pond building and keeping advice in my new book "The Practical Guide to Building and Maintaining your Pond."  Get it from Amazon

For more info, pond questions, photos, ideas, problem solving, visit us at pondlady.com

Thanks for visiting.

Too many fish

Question: We put a pond in 3 years ago and had to put in an ultra voiet light to clear up the pond not working fast enough what is the next step? We have about 35 fish.


Pondlady sez:
It sounds to me as if you have too many fish and you feed them too much.
Your possibilities are to cut down your fish population (probably the best way) or to install a huge filtration system (very expensive) plus your UV light. Even then it is possible your bioload will be too heavy. Maybe you have some friends who could adopt some fish?

The rule for fish load is 1 linear foot of fish per 25 square feet of pond surface.