Our pond project (with pics)

By popular demand for pics, I decided to consolidate my pond project story into a new thread. Here goes.

Back in winter time, bored, the lad and I decided on a whim to build a pond. So we dug a hole.



Then, as with so many of my projects, it sort of got ignored for a while before work resumed.

The hole was carefully sculpted, then line with cement. Sorry, no pics of that stage. It was a failure. It simply didn't hold water. So I smashed out much of the cement and on advice from the good and wise folks here, I bought a butyl pond liner. Butyl is expensive, but for a pond of this size, I was able to get the liner for as little as £56. I lined the hole with old newspaper several sheets thick to protect the liner, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the butyl liner is actually quite tough as it is.

In terms of cost, I initially went for cement to line/seal it because I thought it would work out cheaper. I was wrong. I spent nearly as much on sand and cement as I did on the butyl liner, and the cement option failed.

There are cheaper options for liners than butyl, but I'd avoid them having seen butyl, because it is just good stuff. As you can see, it hold water.



Here we can sort of see the 'L' shape I was going for. Towards the bottom of the pic we see the shallow end. That leg of the L slopes down gradually, then at the corner, drops suddenly into the deep end. The white floaters are fish food that has been completely ignored by the 8 resident fish.

Here's a few more pics, mostly of the deep end. If you look carefully, you can just see some of the 8 fishes.









A pond is no good on its own. As the original plan was to make the pond like a rock pool, it follows that it should have a beach. Its not finished (none of it is), but here's the start of its beach.



It actually looks quite small in this pic, and I guess it is, but not as small as it looks. You can see the bottom of the shed in the top left of the pic, and that's about 6 ft wide.

I still need to purchase more rocks to go in, which I intend to use to hide the liner al the way round. I also need to fence it off from the rest of the garden, because I don't want the lad getting to the pond when we're not looking. Maybe some lights will follow, and maybe a waterfall or some other feature to keep the water moving a bit. We'll see.

 

looks good. I've almost finished my pond project for this year, couldn't get any more bags of stones though, as the shop has run out so its on hold for now.

 

Clue, it's a lot bigger than you had led me to believe. It's gonna be a handsome place for you and your lad to develop over this coming year.
I promise you ,he will never forget this as he grows up. It's super,
Jenny

 

It does look a lot bigger than you led me to believe too CL.
Once it matures over the next few months it will look great
If you want some yellow flag iris seed or pennywort later in the year let me know.
I can recommend the hozelock easy clear 3000 filter

 

Looks brill so far, will the beach slope down into the water? Or are they totally seperate?

 

The beach will go right up to the water's edge. If I'd thought it through a bit better I'd have made the slope into the pond much more gentle, but as it is I'm going to have a job getting the sand to not simply fall in, which is why I've started putting rocks along the edge.

Its not finalised yet though, so I'll see what I can do. I'm going to check the tide times and then head to the beach about an hour after high tide, so I can take inspiration from the rock pools.

 

I wonder if your fish are a bit daunted by the size of the pellets, Clueless? Perhaps they'd appreciate some mini-pellets until they grow a bit?
Sorry, meant to add...you've done a superb job of fitting that liner into the corners! It's a tricky job to do well. The pond looks lovely.

 

They do eat them (at least as presume they do because they go away when I'm not looking), but I know what you mean, they are massive.

They also don't look very appetizing. If I were the fish, I'd much prefer a juicy mozzie or moth that accidentally ends up in the water, which I suspect they are stuffing their faces on too. I also see them grazing the around the exposed roots of the plants I've put in, and they also seem to nibble the rocks, which is a puzzle, but my dad guesses (and he admits its a pure guess) that they're after the minerals from them, much like farmers put blocks of salt out for sheep that are grazing on the moors.

 

They would appreciate some Tetra Fish Flake to start with Clue,
Jenny

 

Well Clueless that by far beats my pond. You've put a lot of work and effort into that and it's going to look great when it's completed.
Here's mine -

 

Not a very exciting update, but I've got nowt else for today

Been down the beach today looking for inspiration from the rock pools left by the receding tide. Went to the wrong part of the beach really for that, because the best rock pools are a further up than where we parked, but never mind, we had fun looking for creatures and found two tiny crabs and one worm.

I did however acquire the first of my fence posts for building the fence around the pond area. And here it is, the magnificent well weathered, sea battered fence post. All sorts wash up on our beach, and I figured seeing as lots of small boats launch from here, best if I remove such large lumps of wood before they end up snagging on someone's propeller or something

 

My plan is coming together.

There's been no more work done since the last update, but an exciting development has happened all the same.

I went out this morning on my usual pre-work morning garden patrol, and went to check up on the fish. As I approached I heard 'plop' and my first thought was it was one of the mischievous Golden Orfes jumping out of the water, so my eye was immediately drawn to the source of the 'plop' sound in case I had to go on a rescue to save a stranded fish (not had to do that yet).

It wasn't a fish. It was a fairly large frog or toad that had jumped in from the rocks at the side. I saw it plain as day, swim to the bottom of the deep end, and just sit their for a while at the bottom, before going into what I've know for a while to be the fishes favourite hiding place. You should have seen the fish. They were all there in a a group, staring at the strange newcomer. In case anyone is wondering, I can now confirm that fish can give dirty looks. They can scowl and frown as well as any animal. They were flabbergasted that this strange creature had had the nerve to not only enter their pond, but to also occupy their favourite hideout, preposterous.

I'm hoping to see it again. I didn't get a long enough look at it out of the water to be sure which it was, and in the water I think frogs and toads look about the same.

 

Hi Clue,
how's the pond coming along?
Jenny

 

See that old fence post in the pic in post #11? Well that's stuck in the ground now.

 

Good. Is it to be joined by others from the seashore?