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I thought this thread might be helpful for some and I have some doozys.
On my second pond I wish first of all that I had built a bog pond to act as my filtration system instead of my expensive bead filter and uv system I put in place.
My first pond has a bog filter of sorts and it works perfectly with the only filter being one attached to the pump in the lower pond with next to zero issues for 15 years.
My second pond with the expensive filter system has had multiple issues that all would have been avoided had I gone with a bog pond as filtration.
Flex PVC. For me, a massive mistake. It began to leak under the stone work and I couldn't get to it so all piping had to be rerouted outside of the stone flooring with regular pvc pipe. No issues since but never EVER if you can avoid it have piping that you cannot dig easily to get at.
Use the widest pipe you can. I went with 1.5 inch to save a little money which was a massive mistake and caused more problems with clogging that could have been easily avoided.
When bringing a drain pipe up from the bottom of the pond, keep the pipe as wide as you possibly can until you can get at it. The company that I stupidly let install my koi toilet went from 4 inch pipe to 1.5 inch pipe once it got to the surface and caused all sorts of clogging issues.
Don't use hard pvc for your water filler. For some reason one of the guys who ran this for me cut the hose off and used a hard pvc for the last foot of pipe before connecting it to the auto filler and it took just a few seasons of freezing for it to crack and because of its location it was a real pain to fix.
Shade your pond. At least in the south where we get a lot of heat this was a major problem for me with algae until I installed some shade sails.
When building your pond avoid making a step for plants around the perimeter. I've found that blue herons use that as a step to better get at the fish. My first pond has it and has to be covered 24/7 to keep animals out. My second pond I have no step around it, just a straight drop 3.5 feet down and the water level is about a foot lower than the stone around it. We never keep it covered and I've never lost a fish but I've seen countless herons trying their luck for hours on camera and getting nowhere. Make some shelving you can submerge for plants that can only accommodate the plants if you are adding them. For the middle area for plants I used a large 3 way 4 inch pvc pipe for the fish to swim around in and put a mini shelf on top of it that a plant could sit on.
Please add to this list and hopefully we can help others avoid some of the mistakes we ran into when building!
On my second pond I wish first of all that I had built a bog pond to act as my filtration system instead of my expensive bead filter and uv system I put in place.
My first pond has a bog filter of sorts and it works perfectly with the only filter being one attached to the pump in the lower pond with next to zero issues for 15 years.
My second pond with the expensive filter system has had multiple issues that all would have been avoided had I gone with a bog pond as filtration.
Flex PVC. For me, a massive mistake. It began to leak under the stone work and I couldn't get to it so all piping had to be rerouted outside of the stone flooring with regular pvc pipe. No issues since but never EVER if you can avoid it have piping that you cannot dig easily to get at.
Use the widest pipe you can. I went with 1.5 inch to save a little money which was a massive mistake and caused more problems with clogging that could have been easily avoided.
When bringing a drain pipe up from the bottom of the pond, keep the pipe as wide as you possibly can until you can get at it. The company that I stupidly let install my koi toilet went from 4 inch pipe to 1.5 inch pipe once it got to the surface and caused all sorts of clogging issues.
Don't use hard pvc for your water filler. For some reason one of the guys who ran this for me cut the hose off and used a hard pvc for the last foot of pipe before connecting it to the auto filler and it took just a few seasons of freezing for it to crack and because of its location it was a real pain to fix.
Shade your pond. At least in the south where we get a lot of heat this was a major problem for me with algae until I installed some shade sails.
When building your pond avoid making a step for plants around the perimeter. I've found that blue herons use that as a step to better get at the fish. My first pond has it and has to be covered 24/7 to keep animals out. My second pond I have no step around it, just a straight drop 3.5 feet down and the water level is about a foot lower than the stone around it. We never keep it covered and I've never lost a fish but I've seen countless herons trying their luck for hours on camera and getting nowhere. Make some shelving you can submerge for plants that can only accommodate the plants if you are adding them. For the middle area for plants I used a large 3 way 4 inch pvc pipe for the fish to swim around in and put a mini shelf on top of it that a plant could sit on.
Please add to this list and hopefully we can help others avoid some of the mistakes we ran into when building!
