putting in a pond help please

[bluebird]

We have a small pond we put in the backyard. We put a piece of wood so frogs can get in and out. What else do we need to do? Fish and plants..... I am planning on using goldfish.

[bluebird]

A man here is cleaning up his yard and didn't want a load of rocks. We loaded them up and brought them home. Hundreds of dollars saved. The kids were so excited when we were unloading the rocks, we went ahead and placed them around the pond. It is really neat. Jasmine had the great idea to use some of the sandstone slabs for a base to put the firepit on. So far our pond has cost us nothing!! Jasmine also asked if I could plant some snow on the mountain around the back of the pond. Those flowers need thinned out so I did that. Now I am looking around my yard to see what else can be thinned out. I know my bee balm needs thinned out. I always have yarrow. We are so excited. We will go to town and get the fish and water plants tomorrow. We are all beat!

[jfe]

bluebird make sure your pond is at least i believe it is 18 inches deep or it is here in nc to be below the frost line. We have lily plants and lotus plants and parrots feather and water lilies in our pond. The frogs can get up on the water lily leaves and sit. Have you got a pump system and filter system in place to. We also have koi in ours and a albino cat fish along with some gold fish. Let me know how it turns out.

[seleach]

Connie, like jfe said you need a pump and filter system. The water needs to circulate.
If you have enough rocks, you can make a waterfall.

[KSJEn6891]

In my childhood home my parents used a cement pond surrounded by rocks, flowers, slow growing fir/pine trees, and a border fence. My mom originally wanted Koi, but settled on polywogs / tadpoles and fair-gold fishes, but the landscape looked nice anyway. Oh one more thing, if you do not want pond muck you may want to check into adding a filter pump that recycles the water while circulating it.

[jfe]

They are at times a lot of work especially when it gets the time of year to clean them but they are peaceful for sure...We didn't have any bull frogs around until we made our ponds. Now its a peaceful kind of noise to hear them croaking.

[sonya]

My pond experience....

I love the sound of the waterfall. We built a frame that would raise the waterfall higher so that the sound was louder. We put a cement park bench right next to the pond so we could sit and watch the gold fish swim.

Gold fish were cheap and we did not know how the fish would live through winter. We did add an aquarium heater as a precaution and it seemed to work fine.

My problem... I had been warned if the pond was not 18 inches the racoons would eat the gold fish. But it was 20 inches so I was not concerned. One day I came home and did not hear the lovely sound of running water, and went to look. I found an opposum had went in after our fish and wrapped himself on the pump tubing and drowned. Yuk! I think I may have been missing the lovely sound sooner than that day, but had not opened the backdoor until then.

What I learned .... when we re-establish our pond I will put chicken wire over the top so as not to have the same problem again.

[jfe]

the only trouble we have had with animals is we have had a wild river hereon come and set down to a meal..Awful expensive meal of koi...we did have a neighborhood cat that caught 2 or 3.

[seleach]

The only things that have visited our pond is a pair of wild ducks. Lots of birds like to take a bath in it. We have a flat bird bath sitting on a ledge in the pond and that is what they use.

[jfe]

thats funny as to how they have all that water but just use the bird bath in the edge. Kinda like they been trained.