Country Escape's 2nd pond - Goldfish only

[j.w]

Will be looking forward to seeing what you accomplish this weekend CE and hoping the weather cooperates for ya.
Mouse in the toaster................glad your cat found it before you put bread in there and pop goes the weasel (mouse) lol!
Good kitty should get some catnip for that one!
Oh and glad you got out of cleaning the house...............much more fun to play in the pond!
My arm is getting better thank you

 

[CometKeith]

Country, Ever year I buy 2 water lettuces and last year I also bought two water hyacinths. Every day I probably had to toss out about 1/2 dozen plants because they were all growing so fast. Here is a picture from last July. My pond gets about 4-5 hours of full sun in the summer.

 

[CountryEscape]

Keith, I sure hope I have that kind of luck with water lettuce and hyacinths with my goldfish. I'm hoping it works that way. Any extra can be tossed into the koi pond, and let them much away!
OK, I have to admit, I HATE Tetra stuff! I caved and bought a Tetra skimmer (stupid) and then a Tetra pump (double stupid) since that is the brand that my Menards is now carrying. Well, the skimmer is the type that have the pump to the side of it, with a pipe, foam piece on the bottom to pull the water through, plus a basket on top of the foam The skimmer box said max 1000 gph pump, so that's what I got. Silly thing barely pulls water in enough to skim! Geesh! At first I had the outlet going up to the top of the stream, so disconnected that, figuring the pump was working too hard to push the water. Well, with nothing on the outlet, it STILL barely pulls water. I cleaned the foam, and emptied the basket many times. Found out I cannot leave the pump running to clean the foam, either, as the jump went into the pump and promptly plugged it. Going to keep it for only a fountain (hopefully it can handle that!!!) and get a new skimmer, like what I have in my other pond, and be done with it. For now, it is on top of a bucket, barely shooting the water higher than the surface, and it's maybe 6" below the surface. That's right after cleaning the foam and taking the impeller off to get the grass clippings out of it. My other skimmer has the pump inside of it, and there is a filter before the pump, plus the pump has the filter basket on it. That works way better in my opinion. I figured smaller pond, this skimmer was about $25 cheaper, learned lesson - cheaper is not better. Just wasted $50 on a skimmer that is not very well made. Anyone else have one and have idea for what I may be doing wrong, I'd appreciate hearing about it! Otherwise, I'm ordering another one like I have in the other pond.

 

[CountryEscape]

A friend made this comment to me today, when I said that my pond is not necessarily level around the edges: Not perfect IS perfect ... it's YOUR perfect. I liked that! Think I will use it as my motto on my ponds. After all, nature is not perfect either.

 

[addy1]

lol ce I used a laser level to attempt to at least have level enough to not have water flowing out over the edges and with our slope it still had low and high spots. Now don't even notice them. A few well placed plants, edge rocks the pond looks perfect to me! lol

 

[pondlover]

CE we used a string and hung one of those little levels on it and I walked it around the pond. LOL Not scientific by any means, but we got "our" perfect level and you will too. I hope you make tons of progress this weekend.

 

[pecan]

CE we used a string and hung one of those little levels on it and I walked it around the pond. LOL Not scientific by any means, but we got "our" perfect level and you will too. I hope you make tons of progress this weekend.

We did the same thing building our pond. Worked swimmingly

 

[CometKeith]

Country, I use to be the same way with Menards. I was there so much buying construction materials I would always stop and look at their pond supplies to see what else I could get. The last year or so I have been going to Home Depot more just because their stores are more convenient to most of our jobs. I just found out this week that if you use a Home Depot credit card they will give you 5% off just by asking them when you pay. They are competing with a special Loews is doing with the same discount. I saved $27 the first day I tried it. I'm losing getting my miles on my other charge card, but this is a better deal and I don't carry balances so I don't care about their interest rates.

 

[addy1]

We sign up when doing a big purchase, get the discount, use the card for a while, close the account, then down the road sign up again when we have another large project come along.

 

[brandonsdad02]

Ce....We had that same problem last year with our pond. The flattest part of our yard still has a little bit of a slope. This year when I rebuilt the pond ( made it deeper so the fish can winter and made it longer) I used retaining wall block to raise the back of the pond so I could get it a little more level. I was able to raise the water level by 8" just by doing that.

 

[CountryEscape]

Thanks for ideas everyone, but I have no clue what a level hanging on a string is. LOL What I did was pounded 2 stakes into the ground, they stuck above the new pond. Then, I used my level, and a tape measure, figured how high above the pond level I wanted the bog wall, used the level and that measurement (6") on the tape measure, when the level was on the 6" and level and the tape measure was barely touching the water, I marked the stake. I figure the water will ALWAYS be level, so that was my running level. LOL We shall see when I add water how it worked.
Got my grass mowed tonight, so that is done for the weekend. Geesh, just mowed on Sunday, and it needed it BAD. Had to run the sweeper. Horses enjoyed some, and the rest went on the garden.
I'm hoping to have the inside (against the pond) bog wall leveled with the ceramic blocks (have about 2/3 of them already in place) by tomorrow evening. What I'm doing is adding clay to the ground level wall that I left between the pond and bog, so that the blocks will be level on the top. I realize the dirt/clay may very likely settle, but I pound it down, and then use the butt of my little shovel to tamp the blocks in place, so hopefully not too much settling will happen. I'm REALLY anxious to get the pea gravel rinsed and put in and the big pump running the water through there. I know that it won't be filtering much with not many plants in there yet, but at least it will filter through the pea gravel. May put a couple of bags of that volcanic rock or whatever that stuff is called in there, too. Guess plants can grow around that as well as the pea gravel. Just have a few parts to buy tomorrow then I will be set to put it all together on Sat., and rinse the pea gravel. I'm sure I'll need more, but the place is just up the road, so it will be easy to get more. I'm really hoping my idea of using the hose and the tractor scoop on an angle will work to rinse the gravel. We shall see! That sure will make it much easier. Shovel it into the tractor scoop, move scoop where the water can run off of the gravel, then go dump gravel into the bog! Sounds too easy to me, so probably will be a problem somewhere, but I'm hoping not!

 

[brandonsdad02]

I have used a 5 gal bucket with holes drilled in it to rinse pea gravel before. It worked really well and was able to do a good amount at a time.

 

[CountryEscape]

Well, that sounds easier than when I did it before, BrandonsDad. I used a 5 gal bucket, but scooped the pea gravel in, sprayed it with water, swished it around, dumped water, repeated about 3-5 times. I never thought about poking holes in the bottom. My idea is to use my 6' wide scoop, which I can tilt somewhat, enough to let the water drain, but hold the pea gravel, or that is the idea. We shall see if it works or if the pea gravel washes away, too. Thanks for the added idea!

 

[j.w]

I've got an old metal bucket that has holes in the bottom and I agree that works very well for rinsing the gravel. If you have tons of gravel to rinse tho that would take forever! Hope your tractor scoop works good rinsing in there CE.

 

[koiguy1969]

i bought the gravel i used in bags. i rinsed it by simply poking some holes on one end and standing it up on that end and put the hose in the top end. worked pretty well. same idea...but i only used a few bags.