Our little pond

[raganwald]

We're on a small lot in Toronto's Ashbridge's neighbourhood. The pond has a main koi area at five feet deep, plus a "header" area with waterfall. (Build photo (c) 2007, Clarke Koi Ponds)

[marla]

Very, very nice. Love how the deck area comes right to the pond, formal yet rustic. Great job with rock placement.

[Peg]

Very nice, it's very cozy looking. Even small yards deserve a nice pond.
Peg

[Terri]

Welcome raganwald :)

How about telling us a little more about your pond system,... what's the filter, drain or no drain, etc etc... for us pond techie type geeks :grin:

[Jackie Ramo]

Hey we are neighbours, well almost just up the road more or less.

I love the glass block detail in the fence, adds a real special something to the entire pond area.

[raganwald]

The pond was built by Randall Clarke of Clarke Koi Ponds http://clarkekoi.com/. I wanted to be much more involved, but as luck would have it a huge project crisis developed at work just when it was getting going and I had to leave most of it up to Randall. Randall did the excavation (including demolishing a huge concrete slab and part of a concrete driveway), the pond (concrete collar + liner), and the rocks lining the edge. I am to blame for the gravel, plantings, and placement of rocks in the sitting stones area next to the header.

One of our goals was to put my initial budget into things that would be hard to retrofit later, like a bottom drain.

As mentioned, probably 1,800-2,000 gallons. The main pond is five feet and a bit deep with sloping sides, and the header is about two feet deep. There is a bottom drain, naturally. There's a small concrete ledge with room for two big lily baskets. They have to be big, because I layer river-rocks over them to keep the koi out. There's also lots of room around the concrete collar for marginals, which are to my taste.

There are two independent circulation systems. The main filtration goes bottom drain into a conventional vortex, then into an upflow barrel biofilter, with a big slab of foam on top for polishing. From there it goes to the waterfall, which has a main feed and four independent lines to give the illusion of water pouring all over it. There are valves for each line to adjust the effect. It's all gravity fed, of course, and in the future the system can be upgraded in various ways.

The pump goes at 2,200 GPH, I believe, so after subtracting head or whatever it turns over about once an hour.

There is a second system fed from a Savio mini-skimmer, through another 2,200 GPH pump into two jets. One is on the surface, one mid-water pointing at the bottom drain. Leaves do not collect on that side of the bottom! One of my first purchases next Spring will be a UV light. Emperor Aquatics makes one that drops right into the mini-skimmer, so no additional plumbing will be required.

There's an air pump driving two air stones. The lines run through a jet hose. Another upgrade option would be to add a third jet using that hose.

In the future, should I lose my mind and want to overstock this small pond, possible upgrades are things like retrofitting a micro-screen to the vortex (I imagine that Terri would be only too happy to help me with that), or running an independent biofilter off the skimmer line, such as a pressurized bead filter. I really like the idea of a fully redundant system, what would I do if a line broke or a pump failed?

Someone mentioned the deck. Actually, the former owners of the house had a ground-level deck covering about half of the current pond area. I was going to tear it all up, but Randall suggested leaving that bit to look a little like a "dock." It's next to an actual raised deck, so if you pretend really hard, you can imagine yourself away at the cottage next to a lake teeming with brightly coloured fish ;-)

[raganwald]

Hey we are neighbours, well almost just up the road more or less.

I love the glass block detail in the fence, adds a real special something to the entire pond area.

Yes, let's get together. I'd love to see your longfins before they disappear under the ice.

[Jackie Ramo]

Actually I only have 2 longfins, GG just dominates the photos so it seems I have 100. She eats like I have 100 as well.

Sure, send me an email ramo203@rogers.com