“DO IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME”

                        Top 16 Mistakes of beginning pond builders.

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                               Back to Basics Pond building Seminars

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#1) SELECT YOUR LOCATION. CALL BEFORE YOU DIG! No, that low spot in the side yard where water always stands is NOT the best place to put a pond! Locate your pond, 1) where it is visible, preferably from both inside the house as well as out, and accessible, 2) Where runoff water WON’T run into it, or under it. Either of these two things are bad news. You don’t know what chemicals the neighbor up the hill just spread on his yard, and you don’t want to find out by having all your fish and/or plants dead. If water runs under your liner, it can cause enough ground water pressure to push your liner right out of the hole, taking fish, water and everything else with it.

#2) IF BUILDING A POND WITH A STREAM, make sure that your pond is large enough to hold all the water that will run down in to it whenever the pump/power is shut off with out overflowing. Because if it does overflow, when the power/pump is turned back on, there now won’t be enough water in the pond to run properly without refilling it. With most skimmers today that are supplied with an overflow outlet, there is only about ¾” from optimum normal water level to overflow level. So make sure you have enough surface area to handle the water that’s in “suspension”. A 10-12 foot long, shallow meandering stream can easily hold 15-20 gallons of water. The longer, wider, and faster the flow, the more water there will be in suspension. Even more so with one pond flowing down into another. Any guesses on which one better be the smaller of the two?

Good rule of thumb: Upper pond(s) and stream square footage of surface area combined must be equal or less than lowest pond.

#3) SIZING PUMPS AND FILTERS TO YOUR POND SIZE. Any pond or water garden’s size should be determined FIRST. Then you can calculate the gallons capacity of your pond. L X W X Average D X 7.48 = gallons capacity.  Then you know what minimum pump size you need. Then you know what size filter you should use. Ponds should be “turned over” (amount equal to pond’s total capacity), at least once per hour or more in anything up to about 20,000 gallons total capacity. A 1000 gallon pond should have a minimum of 1200 gallon per hour (gph) pump. However, using a 3000gph pump would hurt nothing, as long as your filtration can handle it. Actually, the 3000gph system would be more forgiving, and could handle more little hiccups than the smaller pump’s system could.

#4) LEAVE SLACK IN THE LINER AT ATTACHMENT POINTS. If you don’t, your silicone seals will get pulled loose as the soil and rocks shift and settle. Leave plenty of slack, if you have a 6 to 8 inch fold when you get to the top of your waterfall, just fold it over and cover it.  If you leave a 10”-12” fold at the base of your units, you will have extra liner if you ever have to do a swap out.

#5) DON’T CUT THE LINER. If the pond, waterfall and stream are not full and running, don’t cut it! Even when you do, leave at least one or two feet of extra. Just fold it over, roll it up tight and cover it with stones, dirt or mulch. This way, if the dirt settles, or down the road you get a bigger pump, you’ve got the extra liner to “stretch” your stream and/or waterfall to handle any potential leaks. This one item accounts for more than half of the leaks we see and fix as professionals.

#6) MAKE SURE ALL EQUIPMENT AND THE SIDES OF YOUR POND ARE LEVEL. Water ALWAYS  sits level. It also follows the path of least resistance. You’d swear at times it was intelligent, the way it finds a low spot and leaks out. This little bit of advice backs up #5. If you don’t give it a low spot, it won’t leak out! (And if it does, you’ve got extra liner there to pull up and fix it, RIGHT????)

#7) ECOLOGICAL BALANCE. If you understand this basic fact, your water will always be clear, not green. FISH AND PLANT WASTE =PLANT FOOD=ADEQUATE PLANTS TO USE THE PLANT FOOD=BALANCE=CLEAR WATER. Over feeding fish, and/or not enough plants = green water 90% of the time. A Simple solution that doesn’t come out of a bottle: Understand balance, and you’ve got it whipped!! The Ammonia-nitrite-nitrate cycle is a fact of nature. Fish and plant waste (ammonia) get converted by bacterias into nitrite, which gets converted by additional bacterias into nitrate. Ammonia and nitrite in small amounts can be harmful, and even lethal, to fish. Nitrates, the final step, can be concentrated at much higher levels without being harmful to fish. If there are not enough plants to handle this additional nitrate, (plant food), LOOK OUT!!!, nature will supply it free gratis in the form of green water and/or string/filamentous algaes. In a balanced pond, these algaes will still be present, but in low enough numbers that you won’t even notice them without really, really looking. A mature, balanced pond will have literally no traces of ammonia or nitrites, only nitrate. As a result of this information, go slow with a new pond as far as putting in a lot of fish or feeding them a lot for the first month or so. Give it a chance to colonize these bacterias in sufficient numbers to be able to mature and handle the pond’s biological needs, as well as letting the aquatic and marginal plants get established.

#8) STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY OF THE SOIL. CALL BEFORE YOU DIG! Digging a straight down, bathtub shaped hole, can cause some major problems down the road if you don’t understand this point. Collapsed patios, rocks, and walls crashing into a pond are not fun to see. Some times, stepping, or shelving can be your best solution to get depth as well as stability in your pond’s sides. This usually necessitates a slightly larger surface area, but it’s worth it in the end. (Plus, your pond is now slightly larger, so you’ve got more of it to enjoy!)

#9) DEPTH OF YOUR POND. Thermal cooling and protection for your fish from predators are two major criteria for going deeper. The deeper you go, fish will have better muscle tone and conformation, the cooler your water will be in summer, and warmer in the winter. Large fish eating birds, such as herons, can stand in water as deep as 24”. They can’t catch fish while they’re swimming, so going slightly deeper in a fairly large area gives your fish protection from these natural born fish killers. Raccoons are the same way, they don’t swim for fish, they catch them with their paws and teeth from shallower water. Hawks and Owls always have the ability of snatching a quick fishburger on a fly by, but normally don’t get many fish, as the fish learn quickly to stay low, except for feeding time. Don’t dwell on this natural occurring event in nature, just build your pond properly to begin with, and the industry’s myths and nightmares won’t happen to you in any greater frequency than they normally occur in nature, which is infrequently.

#10) SIZE OF YOUR POND, BIGGER IS BETTER! A larger pond gives your fish more protection and safer construction to a greater depth. It also will achieve Ecological Balance easier. You also have the ability to explore more options of the pond/water garden hobby without building a second or bigger pond. You’ve already got one! One water lily can overwhelm a 6X6 pond, whereas a 15X20 pond can comfortably have 4 or 5, with room left over. Most people, once they get their first pond, and a few fish, are always finding a cool fish or plant that they’d like to add down the road. Going larger to begin with gives you this flexibility from the start. Did I mention CALL BEFORE YOU DIG !!!!!!!!!!?

#11) NO CHEMICALS NEEDED. The title says it all. If you grasp the basics of design and balance, you don’t need to play with chemicals to have a successful pond. I would challenge anyone to show me photos of the woodland sprites and elves running up and down the river and lake banks pouring in PH up or PH down after a rain or a hot sunny day.

#12) ROCK SELECTION, STAY AWAY FROM SHARP ONES. Too many people buy large, flat, slate flags, because they cover so much area quickly. They also cut liner, quickly and easily. Weather and water rounded rocks and gravels are the ONLY way to go. There are really nice, naturally weathered stones that don’t look like basketballs that are available at most stone centers, without having to buy sharp and pointy ones that will just cause you headaches and heartaches. Any gravel placed in a pond should just cover the liner, and NOT be more than 1 ½” to 2” deep, and should be rounded, not sharp or broken.

#13) SIZING YOUR LINER: Take the maximum width and length measurements with a tape measure. Add the maximum depth, twice (once down, once up) plus add at least 1 foot extra to each side and end (2 for width, 2 for length). You now will have enough liner to do your project. Liner comes in 5’ increments of width. Round up to the next size, not down. Always use an underlayment fabric under your liner. Sand won’t stay on a vertical surface. It’s cheap protection for your liner. You wouldn’t install new carpet without pad, don’t install your liner without one either.

#14) PROPER SIZING OF FILTRATION: Your filter should be sized at a minimum to handle your pump flow, not gallons of pond capacity. You can use a 5000gph rated filter with a 3000gph pump. You can’t use a 2000gph rated filter with a 3000gph pump and expect it to perform properly. The more fish you have, the more filtration capacity you’re going to need to capture and convert their waste to plant food. Undersized filters are a common problem with ponds. Choose a filter that is easy to clean. Yes, they need periodic cleaning. Check with the supplier or manufacturer for suggested frequency of cleaning. Once every week or so should be an average if properly sized. Oversizing of your filtration may cut down on the frequency of cleaning, but not eliminate it. Undersizing of your filter is going to cause you more problems and headaches than the few dollars you saved is worth.

#15) DOING SMALL WATER CHANGES: These are beneficial to the health of your fish, and the pond ecosystem overall. These will automatically occur if you use pond water to rinse your filter media(s). A 5-10% water change every week or two will be a good thing to consider. Purchase a small sump pump in the 300 to 3000gph range and hook a hose or larger flexible pipe to it to use in your filter cleaning regimen. The larger the pump, the larger sized hose you want to use. Consider this an investment in the long term health and maintenance of your pond. Using tap water to rinse your filter media(s) kills the beneficial bacterias colonized there. Not a good thing to do if you want to maintain a healthy, balanced ecosystem. Killing out your beneficial bacteria every week or two will cause your ecosystem to never get a chance to balance and do its job, causing green water and un-healthy conditions in your pond.

#16 ALWAYS HAVE SOME DE-CHLORINATOR HANDY:  If you’re on municipal water, you’re going to want to have this product available to use anytime you have to add more than 5% new water to the pond. Keep some handy in the closet or on your bookshelf.

We hope you find this information of value. It is the accumulated experience of literally decades of experience that is being shared with you, with only one goal in mind:

ENJOY THE POND AND WATERGARDEN HOBBY AND INDUSTRY!

For any further information, contact the IPPCA member hosting this event, or feel free to contact THE POND HOBBYISTS HOTLINE at 770-592-9790 at IPPCA Headquarters