Hey I'm new here!!!

[ElijahTurtle]

Well I don't have a pond to show yet...
My wife & I just bought our first house & I have been dreaming about a Garden pond in the back yard since we started looking for houses back in April. I've been keeping planted aquariums for about 5 years now & I want to step it up a notch in the yard with a pond. Being in the DFW metroplex, its the perfect climate for a year round pond.
I have a nice sunny spot picked out in the corner of the yard & plan on building a 800 gallon pond, maybe more maybe less.
Right now it's just a rough idea in my head. I've got a rough sketch done in MSpaint of the shape & rough estimate on size & depth I can post so I can get some critiques, input & advice on it.

 

[ElijahTurtle]

I guess i should have posted this in the introductions section

 

[kirscp]

Couple of things,

Is the "Box" in the pond a pump? If it is, I would avoid having a pump in the pond. Reason is simple, If your plumbing gets a leak, the pump will pump your pond dry. I had this happen to me a couple of times, mostly due to a clogged fountain head.

Since you are starting from scratch, you could easily add a DIY bottom drain, which is piped into a settling chamber. You put the pump in the settling chamber, a few inches from the top of your waterline. The pump will draw the water through the bottom drain, and the muck and other particles will settle to the bottom of the settling chamber. This makes cleaning your pond very simple. I made my bottom drain and boot for under $20, the most expensive parts were the 4" pvc pipe. All a settling chamber is, is another square pond. A 2.5 x 2.5 x 2.5 would be a decent size, so it doesn't take that much room. I just used my old pond liner for mine.

From my settling chamber my pump pumps the water through my DIY skippy filter, which doubles at my waterfalls. I used a stock tank for mine, as they are thick plastic. You could use a 55 gallon drum. There are plans in this forum on how to do that.

Those two would be more than enough filtration for your pond, besides a skimmer.

It is always easiest to built your pond correctly the first time, instead of trying to add and modify after you have completed it.

 

[ElijahTurtle]

Yeah, I sketched this up early on based off of what I had seen. Before I even considered a skimmer as a possibility. I don't want to mess with a bottom drain since I'll have a combination of river rock & gravel in the bottom. So I plan on having a skimmer at the edge with my pump in it. The big rectangle is a DIY 2 stage filter I'm hashing out. I've also already decided to dig the center down to 4 ft deep & the mid level to 2.5. the top shelves will stay at between 8-12" depending on what shallow water plants I want.
The deep part will be planted with anachris, hornwart & vallisnaria for nutrient consumption.
I'll have lillies at the mid-level & maybe some rotala, & java fern on some drift wood. In the shallow areas I'll try some Dwarf Hairgrass & some dwarf lillies. The bog will have dwarf cattails & dwarf japanese rush & possible some christmas moss.

Of course I could always change my mind on the bottm drain later...but before I start digging :icon_mrgreen:

 

[kirscp]

Rock on the bottom of the pond is a haven for muck and many ponders end up removing their rock later. Just something to think about. It looks nice, but all the muck gets caught in the recesses and decays. I've never had rock in my ponds, for the above reason.

 

[DrDave]

Rocks on the sides are ok. Rocks on the bottom can be a problem unless you plan to remove them at least once a year for cleaning. The bottom will get enough stuff on it to make it look natural without the rocks or sand.
Keep good circulation to force stuff into solution. the pump will catch and send it off to the filtration.

No bottom drain necessary.

 

[ElijahTurtle]

Well the bottom was going to be more a layer of gravel to hold plants down like anachris & hornwart