1. What Kind of Pond

There are many choices. The pond can be made of plastic, or half of an old wooden barrel with a plastic liner, or a concrete pond with or without an epoxy or tile coating. Some pond keepers put dirt in the bottom of their plastic or concrete ponds to make their ponds more organic. Ponds also vary greatly in size from a few gallons to many thousands of gallons.

2. How to Start a Pond

Your pond probably comes with some instructions about how to install it. Carefully read and follow those instructions. The instructions may recommend that you add a water conditioner to neutralize some of the chemicals that your local water department adds to the tap water. Don't be impatient. Fill the pond with tap water from the faucet, add some water conditioner, and wait at least three days before adding any fish.

You’ll also need some floating goldfish food, which is appropriate size for your fish. Get an 8-inch fish net with a handle long enough to reach everywhere in your pond.

3. Pick a Good Place for Your Fish Pond

You can put your pond almost anywhere, but not where a lot of leaves or other debris will fall into it. Or you could cover your pond with lath or screen probably available at Home Depot.

Ponds use quite a bit of water, so it's convenient to put your pond near the plants in your yard and pump the old water from your pond on to those plants.


4. Good Fish for Ponds

You have three choices:

Fantails and Orandas

Pond Comets

Koi and Butterfly Koi

Fantails are less aggressive than Pond Comets and Koi. If you prefer Fantails, do not mix them with Pond Comets or Koi.

5. How to Change Water in your fish pond

Change 20% of the water in your pond twice each week. Remove some old water from your pond and replace it with fresh tap water from the faucet. In most areas of the country you don't need to add conditioner to the water when you change 20% or less. But changing more than 20% can be risky even when you add conditioner.

What could be better on a nice warm summer`s day than an attractive pond in the garden?

Now we`ve been introduced to starting and setting up a pool I`d like to know our members` experiences with their own pools, keeping it clean and healthy, types of fish they stock the pool with and so on.

The problems can arise in winter though when it gets so cold the surface ices up.

Heating Garden Ponds

Koi, goldfish, catfish, minnows, bluegills and many other fish are capable of living in ice-covered ponds in their natural conditions. But when you put a lot of fish in a small pond, a fish kill will result if the ice cover persists too long. To prevent a fish kill, all you need to do is keep a very small percentage of the surface ice free for gas transfer. Use one or more small heaters with thermostats built for the purpose.

Water temperatures below 65°F (18°C) can stress fish, reducing their resistance to disease. Rapid and extreme fluctuations can also cause disease. If your fish are extremely important to you, and you want to keep the temperature above 65°F, you will need to both insulate and heat your pond in most locations in the U.S. Unless you don’t mind spending a king’s ransom for heating, you will need to insulate and turn off all fountains, waterfalls and other water-chilling devices.