The original owners of my house had a nice pond put in, but the 2nd owners filled in most of it only keeping the waterfall and a small pool, about 3' x 3' x 16". There was a mag 950 running to a 1.5in hose that came out at the top of the rocks for the waterfall. I ran it like that for years but it always bothered me that we found a newpaper article with the original pond and how much nicer it would be to have that. The mag 950 died a year or so ago and we covered the whole thing over with a tarp. This year we decided to clean up the back yard and are looking to expand it back out to it's former glory, or hopefully better.
So far I've decided on a Danner 1800 gph pump, a grech pressure filter with 13w uv, a Danner 8 in waterfall box with biological filtering, and a skimmer feeding the whole loop. I'm deliberating between a floating or in wall skimmer, still learning how each handles fluctuating water levels and which will work best for me. I want to add goldfish and other smaller fish, no koi since I don't think it will be big enough to support them with the space I have available. I estimate the restored/new pond will be a bit under 500 gallons. About 8 ft long in total, sloping from the existing 16in depth to 3 ft and widening to about 6 ft. I want to put in some plant shelves in the new section as well.
Now for the tricky part. I'd like to leave as much of the original waterfall wall as possible and just run a new liner to above the waterline on that end. Since the existing liner runs behind the rock wall, I need to find a way to run my new liner under the existing on that wall or seal it very well where they meet. Am I fighting windmills trying to retain the wall as is? With a smaller pond would I have much benefit looking into a bottom drain? Anything I'm missing before I start this project?
So far I've decided on a Danner 1800 gph pump, a grech pressure filter with 13w uv, a Danner 8 in waterfall box with biological filtering, and a skimmer feeding the whole loop. I'm deliberating between a floating or in wall skimmer, still learning how each handles fluctuating water levels and which will work best for me. I want to add goldfish and other smaller fish, no koi since I don't think it will be big enough to support them with the space I have available. I estimate the restored/new pond will be a bit under 500 gallons. About 8 ft long in total, sloping from the existing 16in depth to 3 ft and widening to about 6 ft. I want to put in some plant shelves in the new section as well.
Now for the tricky part. I'd like to leave as much of the original waterfall wall as possible and just run a new liner to above the waterline on that end. Since the existing liner runs behind the rock wall, I need to find a way to run my new liner under the existing on that wall or seal it very well where they meet. Am I fighting windmills trying to retain the wall as is? With a smaller pond would I have much benefit looking into a bottom drain? Anything I'm missing before I start this project?