Ressurecting an old pond for my sisters's new house

[corrado33]

Hey guys, my sis just bought a house, and it has a small pond in the back yard. It is holding water currently, but the liner is a bit iffy in some places. Does anyone have any advice for what I should do about it? Is it salvageable? Should I replace the liner? Honestly I don't even know how deep it is because I haven't cleaned it yet. Should I keep the plants, or are they invasive. I'm cleaning it out today, and inspecting the liner, is it possible to fix with silicon sealant or something similar? It's been sitting for 2-3 years probably. Could you guys give me advice on where to start? Here are the pics. It is very pretty, and if I remember correctly, if you have a pond, it's almost a bad thing NOT to have fish in it, cause nothing will be there to eat the mosquito larvae, right?

 

[Etunes]

Wow, that is a gorgeous pond. I would empty it out and clean it. It is up to you whether you want to save the plants. As for the liner it is always best to replace it as it last longer but as long as it is not brittily then you should be good. They do have patches for them but if i remember right you can use tire patches or something like that to seel them as well but i am not sure on that 1.

EDIT: just looked at those pics of the corner parts of the liner and they would worry me.

 

[corrado33]

Thanks! After clearing out the leaves all day, this is what it looks like...

What the heck is that thing above? It just has little pebbles in it?

Ok now for my questions.

Is there supposed to be dirt in the bottom of the pond? The plants are rooted in something, but wouldn't that make the pond look dirty all of the time? The pump was pretty much submerged in mud.

Uhh.. that's all I can think of right now... I'm tired, long day.

 

[MNEEME]

I have no clue what that is in your last picture. In my opinion it looks like it used to be a plant basket.

I don't have a planted pond but we put a new one in the other day and I dropped a little bit of mud in it and it became quite cloudy. No longer see the bottom like before. I'd get rid of the dirt/mud.

New pond liner - Pond & Water Garden Construction, Pond Liners: EPDM Pond Liners

Or if you could buy one of the plastic like preshaped ones to fit that would work too.

I see one issue with replacing the liner is the fact that is held in place by the slate rock so to replace it you have to remove all the slate rock and replace.

 

[Etunes]

I would have to see it in person to see if it is held in by the rock. If it is then you do have a problem. The basket is part of the filter system i believe. Our old pond had 1 and i think that is what it was for.

 

[corrado33]

We're not replacing the liner. My uncle does ponds for a living and he says they hardly ever replace liners. It looked like the corners just fell down due to wood rotting. (We fixed all of the wood)

And I think that basket was an old plant basket, as we found one (or two) bundled in the roots of the plants that were in there, I guess that's what happens when you leave a pond for 2 years. Regardless, we're buying a different (external) filter, and burying it in the hillside..

We also took most of the plants out, and put a few pots of them in the pond. So no more dirt in there.

EDIT: Oh and the pump and waterfall still works.

 

[Tivaala]

ok that is going to be beautiful when its cleaned up. do you think your sis will let me come sit by it to study?

 

[corrado33]

ok that is going to be beautiful when its cleaned up. do you think your sis will let me come sit by it to study?

Ha I dunno! Apparently her hubby has taken the pond as his personal project. (After I did all of the dirty work) That thing was a pain to clean. The plants must have weighted a couple hundred pounds. The roots on those things were CRAZY. We could barely cut them with a shovel. (Ok I'm exaggerating, but still, they were hard).

When we first turned the pump on, we were losing water like crazy. Apparently a pipe was disconnected up top, but SOME water was still coming down the waterfall. That has been fixed, so now everything is good.

My sis wanted to go buy fish the day we fixed it. I was like "No, you have to wait a few weeks first." You know, for the cycle and stuff. Plus, I'm sure it'll cycle quickly cause we're still keeping some of the plants in there, and I'm sure there's a TON of bacteria in and around their roots.

 

[redneckgearhead]

What no pics of it working?

 

[corrado33]

It hasn't been completely filled yet. I might get some pics tomorrow if you're lucky.

Actually, as of today's rains, it's filled as high as it's going to be, and it looks awesome!

 

[CA_BroncoFan]

You guys figure out how big it is? Looks great!! I bet its gonna be nice.

 

[corrado33]

It's about 300 gallons.

On another note, they finally got fish for it. Two regular koi, one sarrass (sp) golfish, and one red fantail goldfish. All were about 4 -6 inches, so they were pretty cheap. I don't think they plan on adding very many more fish. Maybe one more koi, that's it though.

 

[Crepe]

That's really heavily stocked. Do you know what type of filter it has? Two koi generate gargantuan waste. They literally poop out tetras every hour. I have two 20" koi and they are giant composting machines. I feed them clippings from my indoor tank and koi pellets haha. Then again my goldfish in the pond are all anywhere from 8-12" long. I've had them for maybe 5-6years now?

 

[corrado33]

Really? Honestly I had no say over how many fish they got but even so, I would have never have imagined that was overstocked. What isn't overstocked? 2 fish? 1 fish? Seems a little silly to me. Yeah I know koi get huge but still?

Anyway, they have a pretty large (probably 30 gallon) "filter" that's basically filled with lava rock and has a bunch of plants on top of it. The water comes up through the rocks via a PVC "square" that's sunk into the bottom of the rocks. The Local Pond place said they don't even like to put canister filters on ponds, they actually prefer the lava rocks, so I didn't think anything of it.

 

[Crepe]

With that filter 3 koi is fine just don't go over board on goldfish. Get maybe 5, they'll have babies and if the pond is planted the babies will survive.

I run a 480 gallon pond with a 960 gph canister/UV sterilizer. I'm crazy about water quality. Then again these koi were gifts from my uncle when we got the pond who is a koi fanatic and has maybe 12 3'+ koi that runs 2x 100gallon tubs worth of filter pads, sand and lava rock in his 20' long 4' deep, 6' wide pond. He gave us his runts. Each one however is appraised at about 900-1500 dollars a piece so I try to baby them.

 

[corrado33]

Yeah my sis's hubby was really... fanatic about getting koi, so that's what they got. I bet they probably won't even get any more fish, and since the only repeated species is koi, I don't think they'll have any babies.

 

[Crepe]

My koi had babies XD and the eggs clogged up my filter intake. So just a heads up.