I dug a hole and put in a pond in my back yard in 2005. I had a grass back yard I did not enjoy, so I thought I'd put in something I would enjoy more and would be less work. I was half right. I enjoy it more.
Mind you, this page is about things I've learned, and they are from having a relatively small pond in the Phoenix, AZ area. For those of you who don't know, Arizona, especially the Phoenix area, is hot. I mean hot. For anyone about to rebut "it's a dry heat", it's not dry in the pond. Most of my research before digging the pond included things like having a place to "overwinter" your fish. Where I live a particularly cold winter would barely freeze a thimble full of water at 4:00 a.m. on January 15th.
My pond is anywhere between 900 and 1,200 gallons. I'm not 100% certain. I'm not sure because it has "shelves", is an odd shape, has sloped walls, and has various depths. The actual volume would be an interesting homework assignment for a calculus major. I mention this only in case anything I say here has to do with pond size in this environment.
This is not meant to be an exhaustive "all you need to know to have a pond" piece, but rather the things I've learned about having a pond in very hot weather.
So, the things I've learned in no particular order:
- Get a UV clarifier. They're expensive, and worth every penny. If you look online you can find some (relatively) decent prices. And get one twice the size recommended for your pond (their recommendations do not take into consideration Arizona heat). Also, you don't need to pay more for a recognized brand name. UV light is UV light.
- Get a biofilter. Also, get a biofilter twice the size of anything you see recommended for your size of pond. And be prepared to clean it twice as often as they claim during the summer months.
- Get a wet/dry vacuum cleaner to clean the bio filter and bottom of the pond. Email me for an address to send the thank you money for that tid-bit. If it weren't for my ethics I'd become a wet/dry vacuum cleaner dealer and rename them to pond-vacs, charge twice as much, and make a killing. Pour the pond scum from the wet/dry vacuum cleaner onto whatever plants in your yard need the most fertilizing.
- Install waterfalls. It's easier than you think. Make one of them come from the biofilter. Easy. Water holds oxygen worse the warmer the water gets at an exponential rate. The waterfalls will help tremendously.
- Remember what I said about the biofilter and UV clarifier? Same thing goes for the pump. Get one bigger than is recommended for your size pond and waterfall(s).
- Have a spare pump on hand. You can find pumps online for much less than at any retail store, and when your pump dies on a 110 degree Fahrenheit day (as mine did) you'll be glad to not spend the extra money for an emergency replacement. By the way, you can have a low-powered pump to get you through the next few days while your real pump is in the mail rather than spending the money for two high-powered pumps right off the bat. I can't tell you how happy I was to have that extra pump laying around.
- Back to the waterfalls. This is something I did by pure dumb luck, but it was accidental genius. I installed a "T" off the pump so I could run a waterfall off the biofilter and another with unfiltered water. The particular "T" I installed has a knob that allows you to increase the flow to one waterfall while decreasing flow to the other. This allowed me to have the pump push most of the water to the biofilter while a smaller flow went to a small waterfall. The small waterfall was originally meant to be aesthetic only, but it turned out to have a huge function (beyond the additional oxygen to the pond). You see, you should periodically replace some of the water in your pond to keep your pond healthy. The hotter the weather, the more often you should do this (if for no other reason than to reduce the temperature in your pond during the summer months by refilling the pond with tap water). It also happens to coincide with how much water other plants in your yard need. I can attach a hose to the small waterfall's plumbing (at the waterfall, so I don't have to climb into the pond) and use that to water my other plants. The plants get fertilized by virtue of fish poop and pond scum while I drain some of the water out of the pond. Also, this is not affecting flow to the biofilter. Then I refill the pond with (cool) tap water (make sure to use a dechlorinator). The plants get fertilized water while the pond gets fresh tap water. Pond water is all I use to water my outside plants, so I pretty much use the same amount of water as I did before adding a relatively large water feature to my property!
- Get a UV Clarifier. That one is worth repeating.
- Get snails. They eat algae. If you put a bunch in and go out to the pond after dark with a flashlight, you'll be amazed at how they roam around (they're faster than you think).
- And my last tip: If you've dug the pond as wide and as deep as you think you'd like, dig it a bit wider and deeper. While I enjoy my pond, it would stay much cooler and be easier to manage if I'd spent an extra vacation day digging it wider and deeper, and that's a whole lot easier (and cheaper) to do at the beginning.
- Update: I had another happy accident. A small pond snail (I only buy large snails) must have been on a plant I put in the pond and got sucked into the biofilter. I now have hundreds or even thousands of the things living in my biofilter. I can scoop out handfuls of them for food for the koi and turtles while the remainder eat the algae in the filter. This means I don't have to clean the biofilter nearly as often!
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