Pond Building Tips

What can be more relaxing after a hard day at the office than sitting out by your koi pond listening to the pond fountains sound of falling water?  Nothing!  To sit and relax while watching your koi swim around is one of the best ways to relax and let the tension roll off your shoulders.

Pond fountains are more than enough to relax to with the sound of falling water.  It always creates a soothing sound for the mind and body.  That’s why you see water fountains in doctor’s offices.  They help you relax while waiting.  Installing a fountain in your koi pond is not only great for the koi but for your peace of mind as well.

Pond fountains are not hard to install if you plan ahead.  You can have it up and running in a couple of hours.  Then just sit back and relax.  There are a few things you’ll need when you put in a fountain in your koi pond.  You’ll need the fountain itself plus aerators and possibly splitters, depending on how many fountains you want in your pond.  There are floating fountains you can install without too much trouble.  You can find fountain kits with everything you need to install them or you can purchase individual parts.  You can even have more than one fountain in your koi pond.

Pond fountains have a pump for the water plus, since your pond needs aeration, fountains create the needed air, not only for the fish but for the rest of the wildlife that lives in your pond. Floating water fountains are the easiest to install since they float on the top of the water.  Connect the pump and tubing and put the in the pond and you’re ready to sit back and relax to the soothing sounds of the flow of water.  Of course, there’s a little more to it but it’s not a major installation like a standard pond fountain.  Standard means a permanent fixture in the pond.

Most pond fountains are permanent and need to be installed properly to work right.  It can be complicated if you don’t know what you’re doing.  You also have to keep a proper maintenance schedule for the fountain.  Keeping the fountain clean is the best way to make it last so you can enjoy the sounds of the water.  If you live where it freezes in the winter, you might have in uninstall if during that time so it isn’t damaged by Mother Nature.

Installing a fountain in your koi pond is an excellent way to create a space to sit and relax while distressing the body.

If you Use pond liners you can create a modern koi pond in a weekend.  They come in any size you need to beautify your backyard.  With the preformed pond liner your pond will look like it was professional installed.  All you need is pond kit, a little back work, and a weekend.

Building a pond in a weekend is not as nearly difficult as you think it is.  Call up your friends, purchase all the material, and you can easily have your pond up and running this weekend. Choose the design you want either from the preformed ponds or make your own design with a pond liner.  The liner is a sheet of vinyl, flexible piece of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), EPDM, or a preformed liner of fiberglass material, usually black, and easy to work with.

You can choose from vinyl, PVC, or EPDM rubber.  Ethylene propylene diene Monomer (M-class) rubber or EPDM rubber is a type of synthetic rubber that is versatile with designing, durable, and easy to install.  Many ponds have been created using EPDM.  PVC is single ply sheet made from polyvinyl chloride.  Created with the first virgin resins it meets all standard specifications for ponds. Strong, tough, and durable, PVC pond liners are the easiest to install in a weekend.  Create your design; dig out the hole, and install the liner and your pond is done, almost.  Add all the equipment to create a work of art and the next weekend you can put your koi fish in your pond.

It does take a little planning to design, create, and install your pond. You can add various depths, ledges, and make it as deep or shallow as you want.  That’s one of the advantages of using pond liners is you won’t have a pond that looks like everyone’s.  You can also install a waterfall, stream, or other types of water features.

After you install your pond with a liner you do need to check it for leaks and repair it.  If you treat the pond liner with care you won’t have any leak repairs to do for several years.  Normally pond liners last quite a few years but fish, weather, and time do tend to wear the liner, so you will have to maintain the liner to increase the life of your pond.

It does take a plan to create your pond in a weekend.  Once the plan, design, and the material is chosen, all you need is back work, a few friends to help, and your pond will be up and running in no time.  You can easily create that perfect backyard you’ve always wanted with a good pond liner filled with fish, plants, rocks, and landscaped for a beautiful spot to sit back and relax.

Not every pond needs filters but every pond that contains fish needs a pond filter.  Pond filters do more than clean the water.  They keep the eco balance of ponds, clean the water, and provide the needed oxygen koi need to survive.  Although, if you look at Mother Nature’s way of controlling ponds you’ll see you do need a pond filter.

If we follow the way Mother Nature takes care of her ponds then we can see she supplies ponds with water, air, and nutrients to keep the pond’s ecosystem balanced.  The same can be applied to your koi pond with a pond filter.  Depending on the type of filtration, a pond filter can keep a pond in top condition 24 hours a day.

Pond filters come in all sizes and shapes.  They can run 24 hours a day or be put on a timer to run several times a day or 10 minutes every hour.  It depends on the type of pond you have for the type of filter you need.  Plus, it depends on the number and size of fish, whether they are koi, goldfish, or even trout.

There are pond filters that filter out the debris and algae while inserting oxygen into the water.  Oxygen is needed not only for the fish to breath but for plants to grow as well.  The more fish you have to more oxygen you’ll need to keep them healthy and alive. The filter pump can be submersible or sit on top of the water such as a waterfall with a built-in pond filter, usually called an external pond filter.

A pond filter system in a complete system you need to keep your pond’s ecosystem intact. They come with filtration, pump, skimmers, baskets, filters, and filter media.  They also include sand or rock or other types of filtration media.  Filtration media can be rock, carbons, zeolites, ion-exchange resins, aluminum sulfate, and other types of media.  They remove the “junk” or bad biological bacteria from the water.

Fish waste consists of ammonia.  Too much ammonia and it eats up all the oxygen in the water and your fish will die from lack of air to breath.  Pond filters not only clean the water of ammonia but they also clean out bad bacteria while increasing good bacteria and oxygen — The main essentials for a healthy koi pond.

You can purchase pond filters fully ready to install or individually components of a filter system (as replacement parts, too).  They also have pond filter kits you can put together for your pond.  You can hire a professional to install your pond filter system or get your best friend to do it for you.

Most of the kits come with everything you need for your pond.  All you have to do is install it and turn it on for it to start working.  The price range for filter systems can run from $20 to hundreds of dollars depending on the size of your pond.

To insure your koi have a long life and remain healthy be sure to use the right size pond filter for the amount of water your pond contains.  If the filter system is too small it won’t be able to keep up with the debris from the pond or the ammonia from the fish. Always use the next largest size filter that you think you need. Most manufacturers have a calculator to figure what size is needed according to the gallons of water in your pond.

I personally run with two filters, one pumps from the skimmer and the other pumps from the bottom of the pond. I like the idea of pulling the water from two separate sources in the pond. The one is a biological filter with media and the other is a pad type filter which requires more cleaning than the established biological filter. I hope my insight into filtration helps you with your decisions to purchase a filtration unit.

Using solar lighting in your koi pond not only supplies light but it also create ambience for an area to sit back and relax. The advantages of using solar lighting are not only good for the environment but they are also better for your pocketbook. Your koi fish will also enjoy them as much as you will when you sit and enjoy the atmosphere of your pond.

Sun powered pond lights are lights that use the sun to keep them lit. They don’t usually need any wiring or long cords plus you don’t have to dig out posts to hold the wiring or the lights. With some solar lighting you can take them out of the box, drop them in your pond and they will charge during the day and light up at night. Some of them even have day/night or motion sensors.

Lighting provides an accent to your pond or you can use one of the solar lights to spot light a certain place in your ponds such as the waterfall, statue, or stepping stones. Solar lighting comes with rechargeable batteries that charge during the day; even if the sun isn’t out they will still charge. They run off the batteries at night. Solar lighting has submersible lights to show through the water. They give a gentle underwater glow to your pond. They are easy to install and are low voltage lighting.

Since solar lighting doesn’t cost anything to run, other than the initial cost for the lights themselves, you can have other lighting install to augment the solar lights. Lights create a nice ambience in a pond with them either floating or submerged under the water or shinnying right on the pond. Some solar lighting has motion sensors for highlighting steps if you want to walk around your pond at night. They will also come on when animals try to take their dinner from your pond.

They can be used in conjunction with sound to keep predators away from your pond. The lights come on along with a loud blare of sound and the predator takes off before it can have dinner from your pond.

One last advantage of having solar lighting is you don’t have to mess with turning it on or off. They are designed to turn off at sunrise and turn on sunset. You don’t have to do anything with the lighting after you install it.

Solar lighting comes in kits of 8 to 12 lights or you can purchase them individually such as spot lights or submersible lights. Floating lights come in different colors and shapes so you can have flowers or butterflies floating on the top of your pond. The koi will love the protection they get when you install solar lighting in your pond.